Library of Congress photo A portrait of Gen. Joseph Warren, killed 244 years ago Monday.

His death was “worth the death of 500 men.”

And – in an interesting twist – an affair he was alleged to have been involved in may have tipped the Colonists about British plans to raid Concord and arrest John Hancock and John Adams.

General – or more appropriately, doctor – Joseph Warren, the city and county’s namesake, was killed on June 17, 1775 – 244 years ago Monday.

Warren trained as a doctor – serving John Adams’ family, among others – according to the New England Historical Society.

“Warren also had Loyalist patients: the children of Thomas Hutchinson, British Gen. Thomas Gage and his wife Margaret,” according to the NEHS. “After his own wife died, Joseph Warren is believed by some to have had an affair with Margaret Gage, who may have tipped him off about the British plans to raid Concord and arrest Hancock and Adams.”

Reproduction of oil on canvas from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts available via public domain Gen. Joseph Warren’s death was memorialized in this painting “The Death of General Warren at the Battle of Bunker’s Hill, June 17, 1775” by John Trumbull.

Warren then took on a leadership roll in Boston with the Sons of Liberty.

“In 1775, he won election as president of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress,” according to the NEHS. “In addition to practicing medicine in Boston, he gave speeches, wrote newspaper essays and authored the Suffolk Resolves, a bold declaration of resistance to British authority.”

Warren was killed on June 17, 1775 during the Battle of Bunker Hill outside Boston.

While he had been commissioned a general, a National Park Service article notes that Warren “refused to take command, instead going into the line as a regular volunteer. On the third and final British assault near the redoubt, while attempting to rally the militia, Warren was instantly killed by a ball between the eyes.”

The New England Historical Society further reports that the British “stripped his body and stabbed it beyond recognition, then threw him into a shallow grave with another patriot killed in the battle.”

According to the NPS, Paul Revere identified Warren’s body “by the set of false teeth he had fashioned for him.”

The NEHS noted that Warren wrote to his mother just weeks before the battle: “Where danger is, dear mother, there must your son be. Now is no time for any of American’s children to shrink from any hazard. I will set her free or die.”

The Warren County Historical Society said in a Facebook post that “there is no record of him setting foot here.

“An impressive 14 counties in the United States are named after the general, and there are four known monuments to this Revolutionary War hero,” according to the WCHS. “Three are in the Boston area. The fourth, seen here, stands proudly in General Joseph Warren Park in the city of Warren in Warren County, Pennsylvania.”