Colonel Ephraim Doolittle

Ephraim Doolittle was born in 1721 and spent his adult life in the communities of Worcester County, Massachusetts, where he built the local standing that made him a natural military leader when the crisis of 1775 arrived. Worcester County was a region of small farming communities whose male inhabitants had long organized themselves into militia companies as part of Massachusetts's traditional defense structure, and Doolittle was among the officers who had been developing that local military capacity through the years of political tension that preceded the outbreak of fighting. When news of Lexington and Concord reached Worcester in April 1775, the county's militia mobilized with a speed that reflected both genuine outrage and existing organizational readiness.

Doolittle led Worcester County forces eastward to participate in the siege of Boston that bottled up Gage's army from April 1775 onward. His service during the siege was significant enough to warrant his appointment as colonel of the 24th Continental Regiment when Washington organized the forces surrounding Boston into a Continental Army structure in the summer of 1775. The 24th was composed largely of New England men who had answered the call of April 19 and who found themselves now committed to a siege that would last through the winter. Doolittle's command required managing the logistics, discipline, and morale of soldiers who were serving far from their farms through a season when their labor was needed at home, under conditions of hardship that tested even committed Patriots. The siege ended successfully in March 1776 when Washington's placement of artillery on Dorchester Heights forced the British evacuation.

Doolittle's career after his regimental command was shorter than that of officers who continued through the full course of the war, but his service at the siege of Boston placed him among the founding cadre of Continental Army officers who transformed a colonial militia response into a professional military force. Worcester County's role in the early war — as the region whose mobilization had helped make the siege possible — was directly connected to the organizing work that men like Doolittle had done before and during that critical period. He died in 1779, having lived to see independence declared if not fully secured.