George Johnston at Bunker Hill -Reflections on New Evidence

A little while ago I did a post on eleven year old George Johnston's experiences at Bunker Hill. My interpretation of the evidence for Johnston's action was based on several assumptions implied in the evidence I had gathered to that date: 1) that Johnston was in Boston with his parents  2) that he had not yet joined the Marines 3)  that consequently he was a spectator not a participant in the battle of Bunker Hill 4) that because he was with his wife in Boston, Johnston's father, Captain David Johnston was nursed by his wife in their rented residence in Boston.

New evidence that has come to light has overturned all these assumptions. Young George actually joined the Marines as a ten year old in October 1774 and came to Boston alone with his father in January 1775. His father went went with Lord Percy's First Brigade to relief Lt. Colonel Francis Smith at Lexington after the latter's disastrous retreat from Concord. Young George remained in Boston.

Bunker Hill was George's first experience of battle. He was in the rear line of the third attack against the Breed's Hill redoubt, where, according to the Johnston family tradition, he took the regimental standard from the hands of a dying ensign and rushed to the front of the battle. It is unlikely he saw his father, seriously wounded in the chest during the storming of the Breed's Hill redoubt, until he was brought down to the beach at the battle's end. David Johnston's wound was most likely treated in one of the hastily established regimental hospitals in Boston town., Though the wound was serious, he did recover, leaving his son behind in Boston when he was returned to England with the rest of the wounded several months later.

My narrative of George Johnston's time in Boston changed because new evidence came to light. This raises interesting questions about the nature of history. How can two completely different narratives, both based on reasonable evidence, arise out of the same sequence of events. The first narrative, in an earlier post, obviously was partly, though not entirely, fiction. The second narrative is probably the more accurate. So how close to fiction can history get?  Or, to put it another way, when is history wrong and when is it right, if it is ever right, once you stray beyond the basic established facts of a narrative? These are among the questions about the philosophy of history I have pondered most of my adult life, but as is ever the case with philosophy have never been able to come up with a definitive answer.They are worth pondering, even if they are irresolvable.