During the war of the Revolution Gilsum had no Tories to report. Col. Ashley’s seventh company, numbering fifty-seven men, almost all of whom belonged in Gilsum and Surry, marched to the relief of Ticonderoga, in June, 1777. In another regiment, under Col. Moses Nichols, the ninth company, comprising forty men, was about half from Gilsum and Surry. This company joined the Continental army at Saratoga, and was in the battle of Bennington, where three of their number, Michael Metcalf, Joshua Fuller and William Wood were killed.
In the war of 1812, no demand for soldiers was made from Gilsum till September, 1814, when Governor Gilman ordered the “whole militia to hold themselves in readiness to march at a moment’s warning ” A detachment -from twenty-three regiments was ordered to ” march to Portsmouth immediately.” Gilsum was called on to furnish seven men. The captain of a Gilsum company was Benjamin Ware. Solomon Mack was sergeant and Obadiah Ware, drummer. The captain called his company together and proposed a draft. Fourteen men at once volunteered. The seven who went were Roswell Barden, Iddo Kilburn, John Raymond David Bill, Jonas Brown, David Dort, and Ira Ellis.
The Adjutant-General’s report, under date of April 30, 1865, credits Gilsum with a surplus of ten men over her quota under calls for the late war. The number enrolled as liable to military duty was seventy-nine, and it was estimated that Gilsum had forty men then in service, in army and navy. A large number more of Gilsum men served in the war from other towns, and from other states. The whole number of three-months men furnished was four, and for three years, sixty-seven. Eleven men were drafted, of whom three went into the service. Eleven citizens not drafted furnished substitutes, the town paying them $300.00 each,-the price of substitutes being from $500.00 to $1,100.o0 each. Two other citizens paid bounties, one $55.00, and the other $110.00. In 1864 most of the citizens liable to draft paid $20,00 each, as a fund towards furnishing substitutes. Those who procured substitutes were obliged to pay from $100.00 to $200.00 each, in addition to the bounties from all other sources.
