699. Who Was Joseph Plumb Martin?

699. Who Was Joseph Plumb Martin?

From The Way the World Works: A Tuttle Twins Podcast for Families by Connor Boyack

June 18, 2026 · 12 min · Episode 699

About this episode

This episode explores the life of Joseph Plumb Martin, a young soldier in the American Revolution, and his firsthand account of the war's hardships.

Joseph Plumb Martin was just a 15-year-old farm boy when he signed up to fight in the American Revolution — and the memoir he wrote at age 70 gives us one of the only firsthand glimpses of what war was actually like for an ordinary Continental soldier. The story of the American Revolution is usually told through its most famous figures — George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, the Declaration, the Constitution. But the war itself was fought by ordinary people who left their homes, picked up muskets, and faced hunger, cold, and unimaginable hardship for a cause they believed in. Joseph Plumb Martin was one of them. In this episode of The Way the World Works , we tell the story of a Connecticut farm boy who voluntarily enlisted in June 1776 at just 15 years old, fought through the entire war until 1783, and rose from private to sergeant. Decades later, at age 70, he wrote one of the only honest firsthand accounts we have of what life as an enlisted Revolutionary soldier was actually like — the starvation, the freezing winter without shoes, the unpaid wages, the friends lost. His memoir was largely ignored in his own time, but a century later it became one of the most important…

People in this episode

Host: Connor Boyack

Topics covered

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: the Declaration, the Constitution

Places: Connecticut

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