2nd Lt. Robert Bradford Wilkins, 2nd Regiment N.H. Continental Infantry – Original Member
Robert Bradford Wilkins was born in Amherst, New Hampshire in 1755. He was the son of Daniel and Lucy (Bradford) Wilkins. He served at the Battle of Bunker Hill as a Private in Captain Levi Spaulding’s Company of Colonel James Reed’s 3rd New Hampshire Regiment. He was wounded in the right elbow joint by a musket ball and later received a pension for this. During the Continental Army’s encampment at Valley Forge, Robert Bradford Wilkins appears as a Sergeant in Captain Isaac Frye’s Company of the 3rd New Hampshire Regiment, Continental Line. Furthermore he was listed as “Present” for December 1777-May 1778 and “Sick at Valley Forge” in June 1778. He was commissioned as an Ensign in the 3rd New Hampshire on May 1, 1779. He was further promoted to 2nd Lieutenant. He transferred to the 2nd New Hampshire Regiment, Continental Line when the New Hampshire Line was reorganized by order of Congress and consolidated into two Regiments from three. Heitman states he resigned in March 1782, which appears to be in error as he was listed on March 21, 1782 as a Lieutenant, under the command on Lt.-Col. George Reid, on a return of the Officers of the New Hampshire Brigade agreeable to General Orders. According to his pension he was commissioned a Lieutenant in the Second New Hampshire Regiment on July 1, 1782 (a rank he received on April 19, 1781), continuing in said regiment as lieutenant, until it was reduced to a battalion in 1783, and serving in said battalion until the army was disbanded, his name appearing on the rolls until discharged by a resolve of Congress in November 1783.
In 1796 he is listed as being received by the Society of the Cincinnati in the State of New Hampshire as a member.
He appeared and gave a sworn affidavit of his service in Concord, New Hampshire on May 30, 1818. He died in 1832.
Sources: William Heath, Henry Lee, Henry Dearborn, James Wilkinson, The History of the Battle of Breed’s Hill, (Portland, 1835), 28; Francis B. Heitman, Historical Register of Officers of the Continental Army (Baltimore, 1914); Selected Wartime Service and Pension Records of 2nd Lieutenant Robert Bradford Wilkins.
