Asa Redington

DAR Ancestor #: A094149

Corporal 1st New Hampshire Regiment

To the honor and memory of Asa Reddington, a revolutionary soldier who served from the beginning of the war to the victory at Yorktown.
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By Steve Pinkham

As a young boy, Asa Redington, who was born in 1761 in Boxford, Massachusetts, lost his father and went to live an uncle, who provided him with a good basic education. He was residing in Wilton, New Hampshire when he first enlisted into the Revolutionary Army in 1778, serving in Col. Peabody's Regiment at Rhode Island. Reenlisting the next year, he was in Col. Scammon's New Hampshire Regiment, and between 1781 and 1783 he was at West Point, Philadelphia, New Jersey and Saratoga.

In July of 1883 Asa Redington, while in the First New Hampshire Resident, was appointed a corporal in the elite company known as the Commander-in-Chief's Guard, which protected General George Washington, and served as his personal body guards. In September he was present at the Battle of Yorktown and was one of the few officers who kept a journal of that final battle. Of that nine-day battle he wrote, "On the 17th, at about 10 o'clock the British raised a white flag on their walls, beat a parley on their drums, and the firing ceased on all sides." He was discharged at the end of the war, having served over four years.

After the war Redington removed to Vassalboro, Maine in 1784, where he lumbered and was occasionally made surveys. He married a daughter of Nehemiah Getchell and settled in Waterville, where he and his father-in-law built the first dam across the Kennebec in 1792 in order to obtain water rights and construct a large saw mill. One year a freshet wiped out his mill, but he soon constructed another. Ever the enterpriser, Redington served as Town Clerk, Fire Warden, Post Master, owned a bank, and was one of the founders of the Waterville College, now Colby College.
In 1811 Redington built a beautiful home on Silver Street for his son William, which now serves as Redington Museum and is the headquarters for the Waterville Historical Society. After a very fascinating and successful life, he died in Waterville in 1845, at the age of eighty-three.