Seth Drew (1747-1824) was born in Kingston, Massachusetts, to Cornelius and Sarah Drew. He married Hannah Brewster, daughter of Wrestling Brewster, on December 3, 1772, and worked in Kingston as a ship-builder. In 1775, after getting news of the Battle at Lexington, Drew joined the Kingston Minute Company as a lieutenant under Captain Peleg Wadsworth, and marched to Boston. He remained in the Army for 10 years serving with the 23rd Continental Infantry and the 2nd and 3rd Massachusetts Lines and participated in battles at Ticonderoga, Trenton, Brandywine, and Monmouth. In 1777, he was promoted to captain and then to major in 1783.
Upon returning to Kingston at the end of the war, he resumed shipbuilding and in 1797 was appointed justice of the peace. Drew also served as Kingston's first postmaster, and represented the town multiple times in the Massachusetts General Court. He was appointed an agent and superintendent of fortifications in 1808, when the Army Corps of Engineers began rebuilding coastal defenses in anticipation of war with Great Britain. He was in charge of construction and management of the Plymouth, Massachusetts, harbor. Drew died in Kingston in 1824.
From the guide to the Seth Drew papers, Drew, Seth papers, 1808-1812, (William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan)
