1st Lt. James Taggart, 1st Regiment, New Hampshire Continental Line
James Taggart was born May 11, 1742 in Roxbury, Massachusetts. As a child, his family moved to Peterborough, New Hampshire. James Taggart was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in Colonel James Reed’s 3rd New Hampshire Regiment on May 8, 1775. His residence is given as Charlestown, New Hampshire. On January 1, 1776, Second Lieutenant Taggart was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the 2nd Continental Infantry (the temporary designation for the 3rd Regiment, New Hampshire Continental Line).
On November 8, 1776, Second Lieutenant Taggart was promoted to First Lieutenant and transferred to Captain Isaac Farwell’s 1st Company of the First Regiment, New Hampshire Continental Line.
During the Continental Army’s encampment at Valley Forge, First Lieutenant Taggart is listed in Captain Isaac Farwell’s Company of the 1st New Hampshire. He is further marked as “Furlough” for December 1777, “Furlough” from January to March 1778, and finally as “Present” for May and June of 1778.
First Lieutenant Taggart resigned from the Continental Army on August 23, 1778.
Sources: Francis B. Heitman, Historical Register of Officers of the Continental Army, (Baltimore, 1914), 531; Frederic Kidder, History of the First New Hampshire Regiment in the War of the Revolution (Albany, 1868), 84, 129; Selected Wartime Service Records of First Lieutenant James Taggart.
