Battle of Bunker Hill
As the war began, William Stacy served as major in Colonel Benjamin Woodbridge's regiment of Minutemen, which was organized into Woodbridge's (25th) Regiment. During the Siege of Boston, Woodbridge's regiment was based at Cambridge, Massachusetts, near Boston, and participated in the Battle of Bunker Hill, the first large-scale battle of the war. An orderly book shows that on June 13, 1775, several days before the battle, Major Stacy was officer of the night guard, while Colonel William Prescott, who would be the primary leader of patriot forces during the battle, was officer of the day. Stacy was recommended for commission on June 16, the day before the battle. On June 17, 1775, Woodbridge's regiment of 300 soldiers arrived at Bunker Hill and took up positions immediately prior to the battle, and parts of the regiment engaged. A portion of Woodbridge's regiment joined Colonel Prescott's regiment at the redoubt and breastwork on the hill, and a company from Woodbridge's regiment deployed on the right flank.
The defenders on the right flank fought valiantly from behind what cover they could find. The men at the redoubt and breastwork fought until they had no more bullets, finally fighting with the butts of their guns, rocks, and their bare hands. Woodbridge's regiment "was not commissioned, and there are few details of it, or of its officers, in the accounts of the battle." Stacy's disposition is unknown. He later signed an affidavit regarding the guns of a fellow patriot who was killed in action at Bunker Hill. Sergeant Benjamin Haskell (Haskall), also of New Salem and also a co-signer of that same affidavit, was reportedly in the center of the action near General Joseph Warren when Warren was killed during the battle. The New Salem Sesquicentennial Committee paid homage to Stacy, Haskell, and others of that village, proclaiming:
And in those days of darkness and disaster, which, as they come to all nations, will surely again come to us, he will tell us of another Jeremiah Meacham, of more Jeremiah Ballards, of another Benjamin Haskell, of another William Stacy...
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