Rev. Samuel Cooper, famous as a ‘patriot preacher’ at the Brattle Street Church in Boston (attended by John Hancock, Joseph Warren, and Samuel and John Adams), had fled the city for his life, and spent the early months of the war preaching to Groton’s congregation in the First Parish Church (Groton had dismissed its minister, Rev. Samuel Dana, over a sermon in which he advocated non-resistance to the British).  Painting of Samuel Cooper (1725-1783) by John Singleton Copley