Hometown: Sharon, CT
Branch: Continental Army 
Unit: Capt. Woodbridge’s Company, Col. Elmore’s Connecticut Regiment
Date of Sacrifice: April 28, 1777 - KIA at Compo Hill, Fairfield, Connecticut 
Age: 24
Conflict: Revolutionary War, 1775-1783

Samuel Elmore Jr. was a fifth-generation descendant of one of the founding families of Connecticut Colony. The family—father Samuel, mother Mary (Pardee) Elmore, along with five siblings—lived in the small town of Sharon, near Connecticut’s western border with New York Colony.

Samuel Jr.’s father and namesake joined the provincial army and participated in the northern campaigns of the French and Indian War (1756-1763). In early 1776, as disputes between the American colonies and the British Crown intensified into insurrection, the elder Samuel Elmore was commissioned as a colonel in the Continental Army.

Samuel Elmore Jr. joined his father’s regiment and was commissioned as a first lieutenant. According to Paul B. Elmore, writing in the Cincinnati Fourteen magazine:

The regiment was assigned to garrison [guard] duty at the tumble-down ruins of Fort Stanwix (renamed Fort Schuyler)—America’s most northerly wilderness outpost on the Canadian frontier at the time…The regiment endured a northern winter of tedium and hardship, lacking provisions and warm clothing, in the small fort and at nearby German Flatts and Johnstown. Disease took a heavy toll. By the spring of 1777, eighty-two men were lost.

With the Connecticut Regiment about to be relieved by a battalion from New York, and his enlistment scheduled to end in April 1777, 1st Lt. Elmore was granted a furlough to return home.

Shortly after Elmore arrived back in Sharon, on April 25, 1777, the British Royal Navy dropped anchor near the mouth of the Saugatuck River on the Connecticut coast. Some 1,800 British regular troops were deposited onto what is now Compo Beach. Joined by 300 Loyalists, the British marched 25 miles north to the town of Danbury to destroy General George Washington’s munitions depot, then left a wake of destruction on their return to the shore.

Recalling the Danbury Raid, Continental Army soldier Joseph Plumb Martin later wrote that “the town had been laid in ashes, a number of the inhabitants murdered and cast into their burning houses, because they had presumed to defend their persons and property…I saw the inhabitants, after the fire was out, endeavoring to find the burnt bones of their relatives amongst the rubbish of their demolished houses.”

In The Invasion of Connecticut by the British (Connecticut Magazine), author William Hanford Burr recounts the aftermath of the Danbury Raid:

The church bells were rung all that night, and in the dusk of the early morning, one hundred men were marching rapidly down the Housatonic valley, to the assistance of their fellow patriots…Lieutenant Samuel Elmore, the eldest son of Colonel Samuel Elmore of Sharon, who while a lieutenant in his father’s regiment, serving under General Schuyler in the Northern Department, Ticonderoga and Crown Point, came home to Sharon on a furlough the day on which the report reached Sharon that Tryon had burned Danbury. He volunteered and immediately went with many others to assist in the repulse. They overtook the enemy as they were retreating to their vessels lying off the mouth of the Saugatuck.

Despite being greatly outnumbered, hastily mustered Connecticut militiamen rushed in to attack the invaders. In what became known as the Battle of Ridgefield, the militiamen made a desperate stand at Compo Hill, attempting to block the British retreat.

Author William Hanford Burr continued:

In the battle Lieutenant Elmore, seeing that his men were disposed to retreat, leaped upon a stone wall and shouted “For God’s sake men, don’t retreat, don’t run, let’s march up the hill and drive them off.” At that instant he fell shot through the body saying to George Pardee who was near him “Uncle George I am a dead man” and immediately expired.

1st Lt. Samuel Elmore Jr. was killed fighting for his new nation against overwhelming odds. He was buried where he fell, and later moved to a colonial burial ground at Green’s Farms. There, his father erected a headstone, inscribed:

Lieutenant Samuel Elmer, son of Col
Samuel Elmer of Sharon, was
Kill’d at Fairfield, fighting for the
liberties of his country, April
28, 1777 in the 25th year of his Age.

Our youthful Hero bold in Arms
His Country’s cause his bosom warms
To have her right Fond to Engage
And Guard her from a Tyrant’s rage
Flies to ye Field of Blood & Death
And gloriously resigns his Breath.

Sources
Artist’s rendering by Craig Du Mez, based on H. Daniel Webster’s bronze monument: The Minute Man
Details submitted by Mr. Paul B. Elmore, 1LT Elmore’s 5th great-nephew
William Hanford Burr, The Connecticut Magazine: The Invasion of Connecticut By The British
Paul B. Elmore, Society of the Cincinnati—Cincinnati Fourteen, Spring 2021: …And Guard Her from a Tyrant’s Rage
Today in Connecticut History—April 26: British Forces Attack, Burn Danbury
New York Times, September 5, 2019: Westport, Conn.: A Historic Town With a Global Mind-Set
Jack D. Warren, Jr., via RealClear Books & Culture: The Honor of Ordinary Men
The Society of the Cincinnati in The State of Connecticut: Lt Samuel Elmore, Jr.
Burial Site: Find a Grave