Lot 3 The Very Fine and Rare Jonathan Leonard Jr. Engraved Powder Horn, Engraving possibly by Richard Cresey, Bridgewater, Massachusetts, March 22, 1779

Horn inscribed AMERICAN / INDEPENDENCE/  DECLARED / JULY: 4 1776, JONATHAN LEONARD JU: HIS HORN MADE BRIDGWATER MARCH 22 1779 / LIBERTY / BRITAIN: TO WASHINGTON SHALL YIELD / FREEDOM SHALL TRIUMPH IN THE FIELD and HONI SOIT MAL PENSE.

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This horn was originally owned by Jonathan Leonard Jr. (February 17, 1763 – January 25, 1849).  He is most certainly the Jonathan Leonard listed in Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors of the Revolutionary War, (Boston, Massachusetts: Wright & Potter Printing Co., 1902) on page 695 as a Private in Captain James Allen’s company in Major Eliphalet Carey’s regiment.  When he was 17, he marched on July 30, 1780 with his company to Rhode Island on an alarm. He was discharged August 9, 1780.

Leonard graduated from Harvard College after the Revolutionary War in 1786 and settled in Sandwich in about 1789 where he became an eminent physician.  He married Temperance Hall, May 10, 1796, and they had five children. He was 86 years old when he died.

The unique phrase “Britain to Washington Shall Yield, Freedom Shall Triumph in the Field” is paraphrased from the last verse of the highly popular song of the time, Great News from the Jerseys.  William Clinton Armstrong states in New Jersey and the American Revolution: Patriotic Poems of New Jersey, (New Jersey Society Sons of the American Revolution, 1906), pp.61-3 “the ballad, under the guise of classical mythology, tells how the news of Washington's masterly campaign in the Jerseys was received in monarchial England. The song takes its title from New Jersey because it was here that Washington won the marvelous victories of Trenton and Princeton. It expresses the unbounded joy and exultation of the Americans at the recovery of the Jerseys in January, 1777. Written immediately after the battle of Princeton, this song at once became a favorite both among the soldiers and among the people; and no wonder, for it is a remarkably strong assertion that the new-born Republic was a world power.”

The last verse is:

Britain shall cease to plague mankind,
With sister tyrants cease to bind
     And check the free-born soul;
To Washington her trophies yield
Freedom shall triumph in the field
     And rule from pole to pole.