Peter Salem (1750–1816) was an African American who served as a soldier in the American Revolutionary War. He was born in Framingham, Massachusetts, a slave of Jeremiah Belknap. Salem was later sold to Lawson Buckminster, who gave him his freedom. {At least one record calls him "Salem Middlesex"}

Peter Salem took part in the battle of Concord on April 19, 1775. One week later, he enlisted in Captain Drury's company of Colonel John Nixon's regiment (6th Massachusetts Regiment). He served with his regiment in the Battle of Bunker Hill, where he may have fired the shot that killed British Marine Major John Pitcairn. (The shot was attributed to "a black soldier named Salem", who local historians identified as Peter Salem or Salem Poor.) Salem reenlisted in 1776, and fought again at the battles of Saratoga and Stony Point.

After the war, he lived near Leicester, Massachusetts and married Katy Benson in September 1783. He died in the poor house at Framingham in 1816 at the age of 66. A gravestone monument was erected in 1882 in Framingham in his memory.

Salem became well-known in American history in part because for a long time it was thought that he was the black soldier shown in John Trumbull's famous painting of the Battle of Bunker Hill. Historians in the 1980s determined that the soldier in the painting was actually Asaba Grosvenor, the enslaved servant of Lieutenant Thomas Grosvenor.

References

• Celebrate Boston article about role in Battle of Bunker Hill
• Framingham School page on Peter Salem
• African American article on Peter Salem
• New York Review of Books clarification about Peter Salem in Trumbull's painting
• "Patriots of Color", more information about Salem and the Trumbull painting
• Identifying the Soldier Named “Salem”, from Boston 1775