Job Shattuck
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British America
United Colonies
United StatesJob Shattuck | |
|---|---|
 Perhaps the most famous image of Shays' Rebellion: "Regulators" Daniel Shays (left) and Job Shattuck (right), two of the main protesters of the uprising, from a 1787 Boston Almanack woodcut, Artist unknown. | |
| Born | February 11, 1736 |
| Died | January 13, 1819 (aged 82) |
| Buried | Old Burying Ground, Groton, Massachusetts |
| Allegiance | British America United Colonies United States |
| Rank | Captain |
| Conflicts | |
Job Shattuck (February 11, 1736 – January 13, 1819) was an American military officer and landowner who served during the Seven Years' War and the American Revolutionary War. He first served with the Massachusetts Militia in the 1755 Battle of Fort Beauséjour. He was later active at the Siege of Boston in 1776 and then in preparing defenses at Mt. Independence and Ft. Ticonderoga later that year.
Following the end of the American Revolutionary War, Shattuck returned to Massachusetts where he was the largest landowner in Groton, Massachusetts. He was a key figure in the nation-defining 1786–87 farmers' revolt known as Shays' Rebellion, leading forces that shut down a state court in Concord. He was arrested in late 1786 on charges of treason, but was pardoned in 1787 by Governor John Hancock.
Shattuck was born in the rural central Massachusetts town of Groton in 1736, not long after the final Indian raids and skirmishes that had so often embattled the town during its early colonial period. His family occupied a large tract of land in the northwest corner of town, much of the acreage fronting the banks of the Nashua River. He would eventually become, through ultimogeniture, and his own purchases, the largest landowner in Groton with an estate of approximately 500 acres. At the age of 19, Shattuck joined the Massachusetts Militia as a private in Captain Ephraim Jones's company and took part in the expulsion of the Acadians from Nova Scotia in 1755.
In 1775, he responded to the Lexington Alarm, arriving too late to participate, continued on to Cambridge for several days and then returned to Groton where he served on a town committee to assist the Boston poor that had evacuated that city upon the British return. He was part of a company of men that went to Boston in the fall of 1775 for a six-week period to provide necessary backup as Washington put the Continental Army into place. He returned to Groton, but then went back to Boston to participate in the siege. That summer of 1776 he led Groton men to Mt. Independence and Ft. Ticonderoga as part of the northern defense, returning to Groton in December 1776. He was promoted to the rank of captain by the provincial congress in 1776 and was also elected town selectman of Groton on three occasions during the war.[1]
Groton Riots
In October 1781, while serving as town selectman, Shattuck was one of eighteen men obstructing the tax collecting efforts of two constables on three separate occasions, a series of events called the "Groton Riots." In April 1782, he pleaded guilty to rioting and paid a fine of ten pounds. Notwithstanding, townspeople continued to elect him to various positions in local government and as its representative in negotiating benefits on the behalf of soldiers.