Prince Estabrook’s place of birth is debated amongst scholars and historians, with some claiming he came directly from Africa during the transatlantic slave trade and others coming to the more likely conclusion he was born in Lexington, MA c. 1740. Prince was the son of a man named Tony, enslaved by Benjamin Estabrook, a farmer and grit-mill operator. Historians have found little reliable evidence or documentation about much of Prince's life and it is believed that he died unmarried with no offspring.
At the time of the American Revolution, Provincial Law prohibited Indigenous and Black men from training as soldiers. They were, however, still required to answer armed when an emergency signal was put out. Enslaved men serving during wartime became more common as the war progressed, but irritation persisted for White soldiers serving alongside Black men. When Prince enlisted in 1775, he was a member of the Lexington militia and assembled with that militia under the command of Colonel John Parker during the Battle of Lexington and Concord. Getting shot in the shoulder with a musket ball at the Battle of Lexington and Concord, Prince was one of the first men to be wounded in the Revolutionary War. Prince Estabrook is noted on a document titled “List of the Names of the Provincials who were Killed and Wounded in the late Engagement with His Majesty’s Troops at Concord, &c” under the section titled “Wounded of Lexington.” Prince recovered from his injury and continued to fight with the Continental Army until the end of the war in 1783. He fought with Captain Parker’s company in Cambridge in 1775, with Colonel Jonathan Reed’s regiment at Fort Ticonderoga from 1775 - 1776, with Colonel Eleazer Brook’s regiment at Cambridge from 1776 - 1777, was part of a group of men raised to reinforce the Continental Army from 1780 - 1781, with Colonel John Greaton’s regiment in 1782, and with Colonel Michael Jackson’s regiment in 1783. Prince Estabrook was rewarded for his bravery throughout the war with his emancipation.
Prince adopted the Estabrook last name after he was emancipated and presumably lived and worked with Benjamin Estabrook. After Benjamin’s death, Prince moved to Ashby, MA to work for Benjamin’s son, Nathan Estabrook. Family records state that Prince Estabrook died in 1830 around the age of 90. Prince was buried in Ashby in the pauper’s section of Ashby’s First Parish Unitarian Universalist Church graveyard without a gravemarker. Prince Estabrook was not given a gravemarker until 100 years later in 1930 when Rev. Henry A. Estabrook, a descendant of the Lexington Estabrooks gave him a marker and eulogized Prince as a “brave defender of American liberty.” In 2008, a bronze plaque was affixed to a boulder at Buckman Tavern, the place where Prince and his fellow Minutemen awaited the British assault. The plaque honors Prince Estabrook and the thousands of other African Americans who fought in the American Revolutionary War.
Sources
- "Prince Estabrook of Lexington." National Park Service. Available at NPS.gov.
- "Prince Estabrook Memorial." Find a Grave. Available at Find a Grave.
- Fikes, Robert. "Prince Estabrook (1740-1830)." Black Past. Available at BlackPast.org.
Edited by Alisa Grishin