History of the Dighton Community Church
Other slaves in Dighton enlisted for the war. One was Prince, servant of John Pierce. He really distinguished himself as the strong man who broke down the door where the British Colonel Prescott was staying in Newport. He bashed his head against it.
Caesar, Thomas Church’s servant, was also freed and enlisted for the war’s duration. One of the Baylies brothers, Dr. William or Thomas Sargent, must have had a slave who had already been freed and enlisted for the duration of the war. He was a blacksmith by the name of London Baylies.
Honor needs to be given to these black men who fought through the whole war. Many residents of the town had service records of just a few days as they went on alarms to nearby Rhode Island.
At the March town meeting in 1781, the people voted for Dighton’s Emancipation Proclamation freeing the slaves in town and promising that in case they should be incapable of supporting themselves that the town would consider them in the same manner as they do white inhabitants in like circumstances and do equally well by them.
Another famous man born in Dighton who was a hero of the Revolutionary War was Commodore Silas Talbot. He had left town to go on a ship when twelve years old. At that time the meeting hose at Lower Four Corners was not built, but Silas Talbot’s brothers and sisters, cousins, nieces and nephews were for many years a source of strength to what is now the Community Church. Commodore Talbot was engaged in the siege of Boston and distinguished himself in New York. The Constitution or Old Ironsides was Commodore Talbot’s flagship. Her anchor was cast in Hodijah Baylies’s foundry at Westville and brought to Dighton by a team of oxen. A book has been written about Commodore Silas Talbot.