Capt. Eleazer Bennett, who died in Durham in 1852, at the age of one hundred and one, said “that at the time of the capture of the powder he was in the employment of General Sullivan, at his mill at Packer’s Falls, when word was brought in to come down to Durham, to go to Portsmouth, and to get anybody else he could to come with him.” So far as he could remember, the following persons were with him: Maj. John Sullivan, Capt. Winborn Adams, Ebenezer Thompson, John Demerritt, Alpheus and Jonathan Chesley, John Spencer, Micah Davis, Isaac and Benjamin Small, Alexander Scammell, John Griffin, James Underwood, and Eben Sullivan, the major’s brother. On arriving at Portsmouth they were joined by John Langdon with another party. They captured the fort, took the captain and bound him, and frightened away the soldiers. In the fort they found one hundred casks of powder and one hundred small arms. A portion of the powder was taken by Major Demerritt to his house in Madbury, but most of it was stored under the pulpit of the meeting-house in Durham. On July 19, 1775, as a final proof of Sullivan’s leadership in this movement, Matthew Patten, chairman of the committee of safety for the county of Hillsborough, wrote to General Sullivan congratulating him on his appointment to the rank of Brigadier-General, in which he said: “An appointment which, as it distinguishes your merit, so at the same time it reflects honor upon, and shows the penetrating discernment of those truly eminent patriots from whom you received it; nor are we less sanguine in our expectations of the high advantages which must result under God to the public by your military skill and courage, as you have been indefatigable in attaining the first, and have given a recent instance of the latter, to your great honor and reputation, in depriving our enemies of the means of annoying us at Castle William and Mary, and at the same time furnishing us with materials to defend our invaluable rights and privileges. This, sir, must ever be had in remembrance, and (amongst the actions of others, our heroes of 1775) handed to the latest posterity. That the Almighty may direct your counsels, be with you in the day of battle, and that you may be preserved as a pattern to this people for many years to come, is our frequent prayer.” In Sullivan’s reply he said: “It gives me great pleasure to find so respectable a number of the worthy sons of freedom, in the colony to which I belong, have so publicly given their approbation of my conduct in assisting to secure the warlike stores at Fort William and Mary, and thereby preventing these evils which must have resulted from our enemies having possession of them.”