Author: Dr. Michael Bernard Gunn
ATTUCKS, CRISPUS (Suffolk County) [42.35724 -71.06135] Born about 1723 in Framingham, Massachusetts parents Jacob Peter and Nanny Peter Attucks and he is known as a black man. An early Patriot and recorded as the first to be killed in the Revolutionary War. He was an American stevedore and whaler, widely regarded as the first person killed in the Boston massacre and thus the first American killed in the American Revolution. Historians disagree on whether Crispus Attucks was a freed or escaped slave at the time of the massacre, He died on March 5, 1770 and is buried at the Granary Burial Ground, 83-115 Tremont Street, Boston, Suffolk County, Massachusetts 02108. Cemetery notes and/or description: The Granary Burying Ground was established in 1660. Town officials set aside for burials part of what was then the Boston Common to help alleviate overcrowding in the near-by King's Chapel Burying Ground. The Granary Burying Ground took its present name in 1737 when a granary, a small building used to store grain, was moved to the site presently occupied by the Park Street Church. His Name is on a memorial stone along with Samuel Gray, Samuel Maverick, James Caldwell on the Boston Commons. Toward evening March 5, 1770, a crowd of colonists gathered and began taunting a small group of British solders. Tension mounted rapidly, and when one of the soldiers was struck the others fired their muskets, killing three of the Americans instantly and mortally wounding two others. Crispus Attucks was the first to fall, thus becoming one the first men to lose his life in the cause of American independence. His body was carried to Faneuil Hall, where it lay in state until March 8, when all five victims were buried in a common grave. He was the only victim of the Boston Massacre whose name was widely remembered. In 1888 the Crispus Attucks monument was unveiled in the Boston Common. Cause of death: Shot with a musket by the British Soldiers. Revolutionary War Graves Register. Clovis H. Brakebill, compiler. 672pp. SAR. 1993. Also SAR Revolutionary War Graves Register CD. Progeny Publishing Co: Buffalo, NY. 1998. "Africans in America – Part 2 – Crispus Attucks."