Private Alexander Quapash*
Private Alexander Quapash (1741 - 1776), of Indigenous heritage, was born in Yarmouth, Wampanoag lands, in 1741. He later moved to Dedham and married Sarah David, an Indigenous woman of that town. David died just before the war began in 1774.
Quapash enlisted from Dedham on May 8, 1775, into Captain Daniel Whiting’s Company under Colonel Jonathan Brewer in the 13th Massachusetts Regiment. He marched on Bunker Hill on June 17, 1775, and was later selected to serve on the Main Guard under Lieutenant Colonel Loammi Baldwin. Records show that a bounty coat was ordered for Quapash in December 1775.
Quapash fell ill during the winter of 1775-76 and was nursed in the home of Michael Bacon and his family in North Natick. The Bacon home was inside the Needham Leg on the 1750 Livermore Map. This section of Natick, referred to as the Needham Leg, was part of Needham during the war. Quapash died in the Bacon home on March 23, 1776, and was buried at the Indian Burial Ground on Pond Street in Natick.
The details of Quapash’s final days are documented in a July 1776 petition to the Massachusetts General Court by Michael Bacon:
“That one Alexander Quapish a Poor Indian Belonging to this State who was taken Sick in the Army Near Cambridge and was Dismissed Came to the House of your Petitioner in Said Needham in a Suffering Condition on the 15th Day of November 1775 and Remained there Sick untill the 23rd Day of March 1776 and then Died, and your Petitioner was at Great Trouble & Charge in Boarding Nursing, and Burying Said Indian.”
How Quapash came to be nursed in the Bacon home is unknown. Michael Bacon also served in Captain Daniel Whiting’s Company of the Massachusetts 13th Regiment. Bacon returned home in October 1775, just before Quapash became ill.
Deeper Analysis: As noted above, Quapash was buried at the Indian Burial Ground on Pond Street in Natick in 1776. Tragically, his remains were disinterred less than one century later.
In 1856, Dr. Henry Jacob Bigelow of the Warren Anatomical Museum (at the Harvard School of Medicine) documented the museum’s receipt of Quapash’s remains. While it is unclear who was responsible for the disinterment, it is known that Quapash’s remains were accessioned into the museum’s collections. His remains stayed in the collections at the Warren Anatomical Museum until NAGPRA was passed in 1990, and they were turned over to the federal government. NAGPRA researchers have noted that Alexander Quapash’s case was the only one of over 1,000 cases in which they were able to match a name and story to repatriated human remains.
In December 2020, Quapash was reburied on Pond Street in a ceremony overseen by Mashpee Wampanoag and Nipmuc Nation citizens.
Note: More often than not, service, vital, and/or other historical records were created and kept by men of English and European backgrounds. They employed a wide range of descriptive terms, such as "mulatto," “negro," and "dark complexion." These terms cannot fully capture any soldier's identity, but they do offer clues. In some cases, the surname of a soldier of color connects him to a Natick family that is well documented. Often, these soldiers are Indigenous men. The biographies in this project make it possible to say more not only about a soldier's identity or background, but also about the life he led in Natick and beyond.