The service rendered by Woodstock during the Revolution was most valuable. The town voted to purchase as few British goods as possible, and sent sixty-five fat sheep to Boston as a contribution to alleviate what the town records call "the distressed and suffering circumstances" of that city. Captain Elisha Child, Charles Church Chandler, Jedediah Morse, Captain Samuel McClellan, and Nathaniel Child, were appointed a committee[96] "for maintaining a correspondence with the towns of this and the neighboring colonies." The spirit of revolution, which had been growing, rose to fever-heat when the powder stored in Cambridge by the patriots was removed, in September of 1774, to Boston. The news flew as fast through the New England towns as horses' hoofs could take it. A son of Esquire Wolcott brought the news to Curtis' tavern in Dudley, and a son of Captain Clark carried it to his father's house in Woodstock, where it was carried to Colonel Israel Putnam in Pomfret.[97] The young men of Woodstock did not wait for the call to arms. They hurried to Cambridge, and, with the inhabitants of that and other towns, were with difficulty restrained from marching into Boston to demand, with their loaded muskets, the return of the powder. At the very beginning of the Revolution Woodstock was eager to do its duty. When the cry went through New England that blood had been shed at that "birthplace of American liberty," the historic Lexington, one hundred and eighty-nine men from Woodstock answered that call.[98] Ephraim Manning, Stephen Lyon, Asa Morris, and William Frizzel were officers in Colonel Israel Putnam's regiment when that regiment was stationed at Cambridge, while Captain Samuel McClellan had charge of the troop of horse, of which John Flynn was trumpeter. Captain Nathaniel Marcy, Captains Elisha and Benjamin Child, Lieut. Josiah Child, Captain Daniel Lyon, Jabez and John Fox, Samuel Perry, and many other Woodstock men, rendered services in this war equally efficient. When Samuel Perry, in his old age, used to go up to the store on Woodstock Hill in the evening, the boys would ask him to tell them about the battle of Bunker Hill, and would always ask if he had killed any of the British in that battle. "I don't know whether I killed any," was his reply, "but I took good aim, fired, and saw them drop!" Another Woodstock name, always honored at home as another of the same family name is to-day no less honored abroad, was Dr. David Holmes He had served as surgeon in the French war, and-- ----"lived to see The bloodier strife that made our nation free, To serve with willing toil, with skilful hand, The war-worn saviors of the bleeding land."[99]