09/07/2026
Anthony Marsh was one of the many soldiers who marched to Fort Ticonderoga and never came home. Two and a half centuries later, we know very little about Marsh. We know that on January 15, 1776 he enlisted as a private in Captain Silas Wild’s company of Colonel Edmund Phinney’s 18th Continental Regiment from Massachusetts. We know that he marched 70 miles from his home to Cambridge to join the regiment, likely putting his hometown somewhere in the southern tip of Maine, where much of the regiment lived.
We know that Marsh served with Phinney’s regiment for close to eight months, spending the spring and summer of 1776 in Cambridge and Boston, then traveling to Ticonderoga in late August. And we know that on September 7, 250 years ago today and a week after his regiment’s arrival at Mount Independence, Marsh died. The cause of his death is unknown, but it’s likely that he died from one of the diseases circulating through the army.
Much of what we know about Marsh comes from this inventory of his possessions compiled by his company’s lieutenant William Frost just after his death. The items he had with him were valued, then likely sold at vendue to other soldiers; Marsh’s surviving family would be repaid, and the goods would be put to good use by their new owners. Today, this inventory sheds light on what soldiers carried to war.
Most of Marsh’s things were clothes, including a pair of leather breeches, three shirts, three pairs of stockings, knee and shoe buckles, two coats, three jackets, a hat, and shoes. He had a few small, useful items with him as well, like needles and thread, buttons, a ball of yarn, a pocketbook, and a knapsack to carry it all. He had some money from several different monetary systems; the inventory lists “one five Dollar bill”, “one ten Shilling Bill”, and “3 Coppers”. The total value of Marsh’s possessions was 4 pounds, 13 shillings, and 4 pence. Combined with the wages he hadn’t received yet, the army owed his survivors 8 pounds, 3 shillings, and 5 pence.
Learn more about this inventory (object ID MS.2070) on the Ticonderoga Online Collections database: https://fortticonderoga.catalogaccess.com/archives/29811
