that they had impressed the required number in the several counties and towns, fitted them out with arms, ammunition, clothes, and all necessary equipments; that the men were on the ground, ready to go forward.  There was no time for recruiting, or raising bounties, or substitute brokerage; no time for electioneering to get commissions.  The rank and file were ready:  they had been brought in by a process that gave no time for canvassing for offices.  A summons had been left at the house of every drafted man, to report himself the next morning.  If any one failed to appear, some other member of the family, brother or father, had to take his place.  The organizing and officering of this force must be done instanter.  All depended upon suitable officers being selected.  A company was waiting at Boston for a captain, and a captain must be found.  Some one in authority happened to think of Nathaniel Davenport.  His childhood and youth had been passed at Salem Village and on Castle Island:  on reaching maturity, he had removed to New York, and been there for years in commercial pursuits.  A short time before, he had returned to Boston, and engaged in business there.  His father had been dead since 1665, and not many persons knew him,—­only, perhaps, a few of his early associates, and the old friends of his father:  but they knew, that, from his birth to his manhood, he had breathed a military atmosphere,—­was a soldier, by inheritance, of the school of Lothrop, Read, and Trask; and it was determined at once to hunt him up.  He was serving at Court; taken out of the jury-box in a pending trial; and placed at the head of the company.  The accurate historian of Boston, Samuel G. Drake, says, “Captain Davenport’s men were extremely grieved at the death of their leader; he having, by his courteous carriage, much attached them to himself, although he was a stranger to most of them when he was appointed their captain.  On which occasion he made ’a very civil speech,’ and allowed them to choose their sergeants themselves.”  He had no time to settle his accounts, arrange his affairs, or confer with any one, but led his company at once to the rendezvous.  These circumstances, perhaps, partially explain why so little seems to have been known of him in Boston, or to local writers.

Besides Captains Gardner and Davenport and the men whose names have been mentioned as killed or wounded, there were in the Narragansett fight the following from Salem Village and its farming neighborhood:  John Dodge, William Dodge, William Raymond, Thomas Raymond, John Raymond, Joseph Herrick, Thomas Putnam, Jr., Thomas Abbey, Robert Leach, and Peter Prescott.  There may have been others:  no full roll is on record.  The foregoing are gathered from partial returns miscellaneously collected in the files at the State House.  The Dodges (sometimes the name is written Dodds, which appears, I think, to have been its original form), and the Raymonds (sometimes written Rayment), were, from the first, conspicuous in military affairs.  A few words explanatory of their relation to the village may be here properly given.