The following information was assembled from numerous sources and cannot be used directly as proof of Qualifying Service or Lineage.
It is considered a research aid and is intended to assist in locating sources that can be used as proof.
State of Service: MA
Qualifying Service: Lieutenant
No Memorial ID entry found in Find-a-Grave in Feb 2021
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Author: Howard Armstrong Mayo, Jr.
John Mayo was born 21 February 1743 in Roxbury. He served in the French and Indian War and was a member of Captain Simeon Slocumb’s Company, of Colonel J. Frye’s Regiment, which was enlisted in March and April 1759. Part of their service was garrison duty that year and the next at Fort Cumberland in Arcadia.
He was in Major Dudley’s Co. of Roxbury.
John evidently moved to Warwick before 1767. He was an officer in the Revolution and first served in Captain Eldad Wright’s of minutemen. The battle of Lexington was fought on 19 April, and the alarm reached Northfield about noon of the 20th. The long roll was beaten by Elihu Lyman, and before night Captain Wright and his minutemen were on their way to Warwick and Cambridge. Captain Wright’s Company was in Col. Samuel William’s Regiment.
John’s next service was an Ensign in Captain Ichabod Dexter’s Company. He was recommended for a commission 16 June 1775 while at Cambridge Camp, and his commission was ordered issued in the Provincial Council on 21 June 1775.
He was next a 2nd Lieutenant in Woodbridge’s Massachusetts Regiment from June to December1775, and on 1 January 1776 he was made 1st Lieutenant in the Third Continental Infantry.
John was killed 4 March 1776 at Guild Row, Roxbury, by a cannon ball from the British. Drake’s History of Roxbury states: ‘The excessive cannonade and bombardment of last night did not other damage than mortally wounding Lieutenant Mayo of Learned’s Regiment. He lately belonged to Roxbury; his father and friends now living in this town were with him when he died.’ In the same book, the autobiography of John Turmbull states: Opposite the door (of the Bell house) there stood in 1776 a large pear tree. A shot from the South-Battery in Boston took off a limb of the tree, glancing, killed Lieutenant John Mayo who was getting his men in readiness to march to Dorchester Heights, on the ground were the church stands, then occupied by the Americans and covered with breastworks. This was the only casualty attending that important movement. In the autumn of 1840 an old graybeard man was seen examining this tree. He told an occupant of the house that he was a soldier in Mayo’s Company and that he had never until now had an opportunity of revisiting a scene which had so deeply impressed him.
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