Private Plato Lambert*
Plato Lambert was a Black veteran of the Revolutionary War who was born in Framingham on December 1, 1737. As an enslaved infant, Plato Lambert was taken away from his family and gifted or sold to Martha Nichols of Framingham. This was a common practice in colonial Massachusetts.
Later, Plato Lambert was sold to Joseph and Hannay Taylor. The Taylors lived on a farm on Pond Street in Framingham. Before the Revolutionary War, Plato Lambert had been manumitted by the Taylors and had moved to Natick.
On April 21, 1775, two days after the Battles of Lexington and Concord, the Massachusetts Committee on Safety voted to enlist 8,000 of men and organize them into regiments. A few weeks later, on May 1, 1775, Private Plato Lambert enlisted in the company of Capt. James Mellen, in Col. Jonathan Ward’s regiment. Ward's Regiment, also known as the 21st Continental Regiment, was raised April 23, 1775, as a Massachusetts militia regiment at Cambridge, Massachusetts. The regiment joined the Continental Army in June 1775. Private Lambert and the regiment saw action during the Siege of Boston and the Battle of Bunker Hill. The Siege of Boston was the eleven-month period from April 19, 1775 to March 17, 1776 when colonial militiamen effectively contained British troops within Boston, and after the Battle of Bunker Hill, to the peninsula of Charlestown.
In late April 1775, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress resolved to raise a “Massachusetts Grand Army” of 13,600 men and to provide each man with a military coat as his enlistment bounty. On July 5, 1775, communities were given the option to deliver the coats produced by the town to the soldiers from that town. By August 1775, over 10,000 coats had been received at the public clothing storehouse in Watertown. However, the number of coats received in 1775 was less than the number of troops in the field.
On December 26, 1775, while serving in Dorchester during the Siege of Boston, Private Lambert was awarded a bounty coat. He was one of the last soldiers to receive the thigh-length, tobacco brown jacket that year. Private Lambert was fortunate; it is reported that Captain Maxwell’s company of western Massachusetts did not receive any coats.
Private Lambert served honorably with the colonial forces for 8 months and Natick is listed as his hometown on the list of Massachusetts’ African American Soldiers, Marines and Patriots of the Revolutionary War.
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.