Exactly 250 years after his death, it is time to remember Capt. Remember Baker, the Green Mountain Boy hero.  At 11:30 a.m. on Friday, August 22, interested citizens will dedicate a Vermont roadside historic site marker in East Arlington, honoring patriot Remember Baker, who died at age 38 on August 22, 1775.  The program is free, and the public is welcome.

Don Keelan will serve as master of ceremonies and Bill Budde, curator of the Russell Vermontiana Collection, will speak on the topic of Remember Baker’s place in history.  There will be brief remarks from both Arlington Select Board chair Dan Harvey and from Vermont Historic Preservation Officer Laura V. Trieschmann.  The text of the marker will be read by Israel Provancha, a member of the Vermont 250th Anniversary Commission.

The dedication ceremony will be held beside the intersection of Old Mill Road and Ice Pond Road in east Arlington, Vermont.  After the unveiling, the Vermont Society, Sons of the American Revolution, will sponsor a nearby reception, with refreshments, inside the Federated Church’s Bailey Hall.  Free parking is available across Ice Pond Road from the Federated Church of East Arlington.

Remember Baker was born on June 6, 1737, in Roxbury CT, and served bravely as a soldier in the Provincial militia during the first half of the French and Indian War.  In 1764, Baker, with his wife and young son, moved to East Arlington, where he built a grist mill and was the first town clerk of Arlington.

On March 21, 1772, bounty hunters from the Province of New York attacked the Bakers, cutting off Remember’s thumb and taking him captive.  His fellow Green Mountain Boys rescued Baker before they could cross the Hudson River.

On May 11, 1775, Capt. Remember Baker joined his cousin Capt. Seth Warner for the capture of the British fort at Crown Point.  On August 22, 1775, Remember Baker was shot and killed by Indians two miles north of today’s Vermont border with Canada.  The enemy Native Americans cut off Baker’s head and showed it to British officers at Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu.  The horrified British purchased the head and buried it with Remember’s body where he was killed, along the Richelieu River at Noyan QC.

Ethan Allen accurately wrote that “Captain Baker was the first man killed in the Northern Department” and that Baker’s “death made more noise in the country than the loss of a thousand men towards the end of the American war.”