Captain Jesse Adair

Research still in progress

• Adair Jesse 2nd Lieut, 41st 13 July 1756 Promoted 1st Lieut, 113th Co
• Adair Jesse 2nd Lieut, 41st Company; 1st Lieut, 113th 19 Jan 1759
• Adair Jesse 1st Lieut 113th 27 Oct 1760 Accession of George III
• Adair Jesse 1st Lieut, 44th 1 May 1763 Peace Establishment
• Adair Jesse 1st Lieut 58th 10 December 1770
• Adair Jesse Adjutant Chatham 14 August 1775
• ..........For his meritorious & distinguished behaviour in action on 17 June 1775
• Adair Jesse Captain Lieut, 12th 24 July 1775
• Adair Jesse Captain 45th 17 Oct 1776
• Adair 2nd Lieutenant 55th 17 Oct 1776 Cancelled
• Adair Jesse Captain 48th 31 August 1783 Peace Establishment

Battle of Bunker Hill

Adair is characterized in some of the passages that I’ve read as a young, impetuously aggressive officer. One would imagine that in a Marine Lieutenant from an Irish family with a strong military heritage. However, Adair was not a young officer. He was somewhere between 35 and 44 years of age at the time, though he certainly was aggressive. He may also have served in the French and Indian Wars with Pitcairn. At the Battle of Bunker Hill, Adair would be noted , not only for his courage in surmounting the colonist’s defenses, but also as the “Eldest Lieutenant”. (That makes his promotion with the seniority system not indicative of any particular merit.) There is also a story of Lieutenant Adair as not quite the sharpest officer during the 1776 evacuation of Boston as he was dispatched along Boston Neck to impede any pursuit.

Lieutenant Adair of the Marines, an acting engineer, was ordered to strew crow-feet in front of the lines to impeded the march of the enemy, as it was supposed they should attack our rear. Being an Irishman, he began scattering the crowfeet about from the gate towards the enemy, and, of course, had to walk over them on his return, which detained him so long that he was nearly taken prisoner.

Though it may simply have been an ethnic joke at the Irishman’s expense. Battles of Lexington and Concord

'Casualties among British Officers on the Concord Mission, April 19 to June 17, 1775' is listed: Lt. Jesse Adair, Royal Marines under a subcategory of Advance Patrol, Volunteers and Officers on Special Assignment. Perhaps this is why on p. 282 the text reads: "Also at Bunker Hill was Lieutenant Jesse Adair, the hard-charging young Irish Marine who had volunteered to lead the British vanguard to Lexington, and sent it headlong into Parker's militia. At Bunker Hill he volunteered again to lead the assault, though he was not supposed to be there at all, and miraculously survived. On the day the British Army left Boston he volunteered once more to command its rear guard. His orders were to slow the American advance by scattering in its path a thick carpet of caltrops, or crow's feet.

Lt. Jesse Adair of the British Marines was one of the officers who was on the march out to Concord on 18-19 Apr 1775, stopping provincial horsemen along the way.

He was also one of the last British military officers to leave Boston during the evacuation on 17 Mar 1776, as Martin Hunter (then a lieutenant, later a general) described in his memoir: Lieutenant Adair of the Marines, an acting engineer, was ordered to strew crow-feet in front of the lines to impeded the march of the enemy, as it was supposed they should attack our rear. Being an Irishman, he began scattering the crowfeet about from the gate towards the enemy, and, of course, had to walk over them on his return, which detained him so long that he was nearly taken prisoner. I don’t think any American source describes Continental soldiers trying to capture Lt. Adair, so I suspect that part of Hunter’s story is jocular exaggeration. After all, what’s an ethnic joke without wild exaggeration?

Lt. Adair fought at both the battle of Lexington and the Battle of bunker hill.

As the British came to the edge of the green, Jesse Adair, the marine lieutenant to whom Pitcairn had given command of the van, saw that to take the left fork and march along the southwest side of the green on the road to Concord would leave armed provincials whose intentions were unknown on the right flank as the light infantry companies marched passed. Adair decided that this situation was unacceptable, and directed the three leading light infantry companies to take the right fork, the road to Bedford, that took them toward the militia. When Pitcairn arrived at the fork a moment later he ordered the rest of the column to the left, and stopped the third of the three companies that had followed Adair. But the two forward companies (the light infantry of the Fourth and Tenth Regiments) marched on, increasing their pace to the quick march. About seventy yards from the militiamen, they deployed from march column into battle line, an evolution that called for men in the rear to run forward to form three parallel lines. Trained to shout and huzza as they ran into position, we may suppose that on this brisk morning, after a miserable night march, the regulars may have put a little more zest than usual into this shouting and huzza-ing. The vigor of their cries is much commented on in American accounts of the day.

Adair was later promoted to Captain, and rose to command Number 45 Company of the Royal Marines, in the Plymouth Division.

Jesse Adair sold his business in Belfast and moved to Lincoln, England - Advertisements in "Belfast Newsletter" 286450 page 3 22 - 26 Aug. 1796 3 tenements, High St. sold public auction 1 Oct. Market-House, Belfast property Adair, Jesse, Lyle, Thos. lease Marquis of Donegall May 1767 Nov. 1792 paid bills Wilson, Robert, Donegall St. 26. 208811 23 - 26 Sept. 1788 page 3 3 chintzes calicoes cottons dimities corduroys fustians articles sheriff Co.Antrim writs fieri facias sell public auction. market-house, Belfast packs bales goods property Wilson, Nath. Grimshaw, Nichs. lease town parks title interest late Wilson, N. land Shankill Rd, Belfast, Staunten widow purchased Adair, Jesse Adair, Ann wife.

Gentleman's Magazine, obituary of remarkable persons

Aged 66, Jesse Adair, esq. of Lincoln, late a Captain in the army.