The Letter's Copyist - Daniel Tyler, Jr.

The copyist, Daniel Tyler, Jr. (1750-1832), lived in Brooklyn, Connecticut. He graduated from Harvard in 1771 and, that same year, married Mehitable Putnam, daughter of General Israel Putnam. A brief biography on Tyler in Sibley's Harvard Graduates recounts Tyler copying out this alarm letter, noting that he “dashed off a copy of the Worcester message for the next Committee of Correspondence [i.e. the one at Norwich],” before heading to Boston with his father-in-law. He served as Putnam’s adjutant during the Battle of Bunker Hill on June 17, 1775 and for the rest of the Siege of Boston, which ended on March 17, 1776.

  Captain Daniel Tyler, 1801.
  John Brewster, Jr. (American, 1766–1854).
  Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston