Dr. Joseph Warren is killed at the Battle of Bunker Hill.

After declining to take command of the Colonial forces even though he had recently been commissioned as a major-general, Warren is shot and killed while fighting as a common soldier. Then, according to Benjamin Hichborn, British soldiers cut the head off Warren’s corpse, violate his body, and bury it in a mass grave. After the British leave Warren’s body is identified by his brothers on April 4, 1776, and he becomes, according to Esther Forbes, “Boston’s “most migratory corpse,” as his remains moved first to the Granary Burying Grounds, then St. Paul’s Cathedral, then to his family’s estate in Roxbury, and finally to Forest Hills Cemetery.