Career
He served for a total of six years and two months. After the war he received a veterans pension. As it was signed by George Washington, he treasured it for the rest of his life.
Born free in Northampton, Massachusetts in 1759 in the middle of the Seven Years" War, Hull became the largest black landowner in Stockbridge, where he lived after the war.
He lived to be eighty-nine. At eighteen years old, Hull enlisted in 1777 for six years to fight with the Patriots.
Foreign nearly five years, he was a personal aide for Thaddeus Kosciuszko, the Polish engineer and nobleman who was important to Continental defenses. He also assisted the medical corps in caring for the sick and wounded.
The last two years he worked with doctors and was trained to perform simple operations, including amputations of body parts and fixing broken bones.
Impressed with Hull and other African Americans in the Continentals, Kosciuszko became a strong supporter of abolitionism. But, after his death in 1817, neither Jefferson nor another executor carried out his plans, and his money was eventually transferred in 1852 to his heirs in Poland. When the war was over, Hull returned to Massachusetts.
He used his savings to buy land in Stockbridge where, over the years, he became one of the largest black landowners in the town.
He steadily purchased property from his savings from work. Freeman worked for the Sedgewick household for years as well.
Sedgwick became a state and national politician before being appointed as a justice for the Massachusetts State Supreme Court.
