William Roark And A Jersey Boy In The Revolution

The fictional story of A Jersey Boy in the Revolution:

Captain Joshua Huddy, whom Tom had now recognized as his captor, spoke sternly, and the lad could see that he was regarded with suspicion by the doughty leader in the Monmouth militia. In the advance which Washington had made in the preceding summer into the county, Captain Huddy had been of great assistance in the troops of General Maxfield; but after the battle he had left the army and remained to aid the scattered people in their defense against the marauding bands of Tories and refugees. Tom Coward knew him well, and the rugged zeal of the famous Jerseyman had strongly impressed him, as it had all the people of Old Monmouth.


The authentic affidavit of William Roark, soldier in the American Revolutionary War:

That he was drafted into service in the county of Sussex, state of New Jersey first under Captain John Fleet and served a tour under him during which time we were marched to Amboy in said state.

The next tour of a similar service was under Capt. Mark Thompson, during which time we were marched to a place called Bound Brook.  The next tour was under Capt. John Maxfield [Maxwell?].  These several tours comprised a time of...

I do not recollect many of the United States officers excepting those mentioned and General Washington who was about this time in New Jersey and General William Maxfield [Maxwell?] the brother of my captain.  Some where during this time Capt. John Maxfield [Maxwell?] received a commission of captain in the regulars, and enlisted a company at the Grand Camps and I enlisted in it under him.  I was at the battle of Millstone and took a prisoner at or near the settlement of Monmouth.  I had lived with an uncle who was acquainted with the General and he came down and got me off from further service at this time.  

Davy Crockett's View Of Martin Van Buren

Source

Dr. Wasdin First To Attend To President McKinley

"The fatal shots were fired at seven minutes past four [on September 6, 1901].  Dr. Herman Mynter, accompanied by Dr. Eugene Wasdin...was the first surgeon to arrive." President McKinley died on September 14, 1901.

Source

"Surgeon Eugene Wasdin of the Public Health and Marine-Hospital Service died at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on November 17, 1911. Dr. Wasdin was born in Georgetown, South Carolina, September 28, 1859; he graduated from the Medical College of the State of South Carolina in 1882, and was appointed an Assistant Surgeon in the Marine Hospital Service August 2, 1883. He was stationed successively at New Orleans ,Louisiana; Galveston, Texas;, New York NY; Chicago, Illinois; Mobile, Alabama; Charleston, South Carolina; South Atlantic Quarantine, Pittsburg, Pennsylvania; Havana, Cuba; Washington, D. C.; Buffalo, New York; and Memphis, Tennessee. He also served upon the Yellow Fever Commission of the service to which he belonged and was a delegate to the International Medical Congress in 1899. He was also detailed for special duty at Bremen, Hamburg, Antwerp, and Rotterdam. While in Buffalo in 1901 he was assigned to special duty with the President. On July 22, 1909, Dr. Wasdin was relieved from active duty at Memphis, Tennessee on account of ill health."

Veteran Of Point Pleasant Battle Marched To The Aid Of General Washington

One of the first companies that marched to the aid of Washington when he was at Cambridge in 1775 was that of Captain Michael Cresap, which was raised partly in Maryland and partly in the western part of Virginia. ...his company may be taken as a fair sample of what the riflemen of the frontiers of our country were, and of what they could do. We will therefore give the words of an eyewitness of their performances. This account is taken from the Pennsylvania Journal of August 23rd, 1775.

Battle In Lord Dunmore's War

"On Friday evening last arrived at Lancaster, Pa., on their way to the American camp, Captain Cresap's Company of Riflemen, consisting of one hundred and thirty active, brave young fellows, many of whom have been in the late expedition under Lord Dunmore against the Indians. They bear in their bodies visible marks of their prowess, and show scars and wounds which would do honour to Homer's Iliad.

"At night a great fire was kindled around a pole planted in the Court House Square, where the company with the Captain at their head, all naked to the waist and painted like savages (except the Captain, who was in an Indian shirt), indulged a vast concourse of people with a perfect exhibition of a war-dance and all the manoeuvres of Indians; holding council, going to war; circumventing their enemies by defiles; ambuscades; attacking; scalping, etc. It is said by those who are judges that no representation could possibly come nearer the original. The Captain's expertness and agility, in particular, in these experiments, astonished every beholder. This morning they will set out on their march for Cambridge." [Source]

Directly From Savannah

The Hornet's Nest, A novel of the Revolutionary War by Jimmy Carter, is concerned with the war "as it was fought in Georgia and the Carolinas...".

When William Few assembled Ethan Pratt and other platoon members near Wrightsborough late in June 1779, he gave them some bad news, directly from Savannah.  Indian Superintendent John Stuart had died earlier that year, and Governor Wright and leaders in London had decided to appoint Thomas Brown as superintendent of the Creeks, Cherokees, Catawbas, and a few smaller tribes along the Atlantic Coast.

Also see Thomas Brown In The Hornet's Nest.

Thomas Lincoln's Marriages

In 1816 Thomas Lincoln and his family migrated to Indiana, where his wife, Nancy Hanks, died October 5, 1818.

The marriage [of Sarah Bush and Daniel Johnson] occurred March 13, 1806, three months before Thomas Lincoln's marriage to Nancy Hanks [June 12, 1806].

Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks Marrige Cabin in Harrodsburg, Kentucky

An undisputed tradition and one entirely credible, is that Thomas Lincoln made love to Sarah Bush before he sued for the hand of Nancy Hanks. It is wholly creditable to Thomas Lincoln that he returned for his second wife to where he was so well known as at Elizabethtown. His suit is said to have been favored by Sarah's male relatives who had accompanied Thomas Lincoln on a voyage down the river to New Orleans. Thomas Lincoln's marriage to Sarah Bush Johnson or Johnston occurred December 2, 1819. [Source]

Lieutent-Colonel's Commission

Portrait @ The Karl C. Harrison Museum Of George Washington

Journal of Colonel George Washington: Commanding a Detachment of Virginia Troops, Sent by Robert Dinwiddie, Lieutenant-governor of Virginia, Across the Alleghany Mountains, in 1754, to Build Forts at the Head of the Ohio:

Surveying Expedition Of Washington And Fairfax

Source

"One spring morning, early in the month of March, 1747, eight years before the French and Indian war,  two young men might have been seen standing at the gates of 'Old Belvoir' the elegant home of the Hon. Wm. Fairfax on the Virginia shore of the Potomac river, two miles below Mount Vernon...".

Captain William Trent

From The Plains of Abraham by Brian Connell:

"As a stop-gap, Dinwiddie persuaded a frontiersman, Captain William Trent, to recruit a hundred men from among his fellow Indian traders. ..they were packed off post-haste to start constructing a fort on the neck of land between the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers."

Source

"In August, 1753, he (Trent) was directed by Governor Dinwiddie, to examine the site selected by the commissioners, in 1752, for a fort on the Ohio. This was at the forks of the Ohio, where Pittsburg now stands. In a letter from John Frazier to an Indian trader named Young, dated "Forks, August 27, 1753," we find the following reference to Trent: "There is hardly any Indians now here at all, for yesterday there set off along with Captain Trent...".

Early in January, 1754, Governor Dinwiddie commissioned Trent to raise one hundred men for immediate service on the frontier. By the last of the month this force was raised, and immediately

marched to the mouth of Redstone creek, where a temporary store house was erected for the Ohio company, in which to place articles and supplies, to be carried from thence to the mouth of the Monongahela. While at Redstone, the Captain received instructions from Governor Dinwiddie to build a fort at the forks of the Monongahela and Ohio... .

Fort Pitt and Redstone On Map (Source) (Also seen here)

On the 17th the fort was given up, but not until highly honorable terms were obtained from the enemy. At this time, a Virginia regiment under Col. Fry, with George Washington as lieutenant colonel, was at Wills creek, Maryland, on its way to the forks. 

...the French enlarged and completed the fort, and named it Fort Du Quesne, in honor of the governor of Canada. 

One Of Washington's Surveying Tools

Displayed at Karl C. Harrison Museum Of George Washington In Columbiana, Alabama

"Washington...kept a diary not only of all surveys of the tracts and lots made, but also of many curious and interesting circumstances incident to the wild, romantic life which their business required." [Source]

Cross-posted at In Deeds

Scarcely Any Taxes - Illinois In 1817

Lincoln-Berry Store In Illinois

Letters from Illinois ...., By *Morris Birkbeck, John Melish:

November, 1817

"...a few miles farther West [in Illinois] opened our way into a country preferable in itself to any we had seen... ".  "...foresee greater than in the state of Ohio, being so much nearer the grand outlet at **New Orleans." 

"...we have no rent, tithe, or poor's rate and scarcely any taxes, perhaps one farthing per acre." 

"Where we are settling, society is yet unborn as it were. It will, as in other places, be made up of such as come...".

*Morris Birkbeck's memorial at FindAGrave.

**After Abraham Lincoln returned from taking a flatboat to New Orleans, he clerked in New Salem for Denton Offutt, the boat's owner. A year later he and William Berry bought an interest in a general store... . (Source)

Belestre's Incursions

By a letter from him [Belestre] dated April 29, 1756, it appears that, with a number of French and Indians, he went down the Ohio river, and thence east and south to the Carolinas, and

"marched about 30 leagues through settlements that had been abandoned, at the end of which time he fell in with a village of 30 or 40 houses which were taken and burnt; close by was a small wooden fort that was summoned to surrender; on its refusing to comply it was carried by assault and the garrison put to the sword. The killed and prisoners amounted to about 300; all the oxen and cows having been collected together were killed; 120 horses, which they found, served to carry the large quantity of plunder the Indians got, and in returning they set fire to all the settlements they had left."

Belestre was slightly wounded in one arm and in the shoulder. Returning to Fort Duquesne, he engaged with a party of Cherokees and a few Frenchmen on incursions in the neighborhood of that place and was captured by the English troops on June 17, 1757, and on June 20 was taken for examination before a committee composed of Edmund Atkin, superintendent of Indian affairs, Col. George Washington and George Croghan, deputy to Sir William Johnson.

Source - Scouts Overlooking Fort Duquesne (Site Of Pittsburgh)

We have no account of the manner in which Belestre escaped from the Americans, but the next we hear of him he was in the northern part of New York, commanding a body of 300 men, of whom 200 were Indians. They left Montreal in October 1757 and proceeded among the Iroquois Indians to stir them up to attack the English. Some forts and a village in the Palatine were attacked and destroyed, and the people either carried off or massacred. The official report states that during this time a party of Canadians and Indians ravaged and burned 60 houses of the Palatines, their barns, and other outhuildings, as well as the water mill. Forty English perished, either killed or drowned, and 150 men women and children were taken prisoners. Apparently in 1758 Belestre was promoted to a lieutenancy, for he is referred to as a lieutenant in Montcalm's report of Feb 19, and a few months later in the "Bulletin of the most important operations during the winter of 1757-58," he is called a captain of colonial troops. [Historical Collections, Volume 34]

See another post about Belestre at Braddock's Defeat

Political Villains

General Andrew Jackson Statue In New Orleans, Louisiana

[Andrew] Jackson *wrote to the Army quartermaster [William Berkeley Lewis]: ...is this the reward of a virtuous administration, to its patriotic sons, or is it done by a wicked monster, to satiate the vengeance, of a combination of hypocritical Political Villains, who would sacrifice the best blood of our Country, to satiate the spleen of a villain who their connections with in acts of wickedness they are afraid to offend...?  Jackson made it clear that one of the villains to whom he referred was Wilkinson. [Source: The Devils Backbone...]

*Transcription of Andrew Jackson's letter below:

Martin Van Buren, Heir-Apparent

Source

"[President Andrew] Jackson is open, bold, warm-hearted, confiding, and passionate to a fault. Van Buren is secret, sly, selfish, cold, calculating, distrustful, treacherous; and if he could gain an object just as well by openness as intrigue, he would choose the latter."

What Is An American?

What is an American? asked St. John de Crevecoeur before the Revolution, and the question has been repeated by every generation from his time to ours.  Poets and novelists, historians and statesmen have undertaken to answer it, but the varying national self-consciousness they have tried to capture always escapes final statement.

Men of Thomas Jefferson's day emphasized freedom and republicanism as the defining characteristics of American society; the definitions of later thinkers stressed the cosmopolitan blending of a hundred peoples into one, or mechanical ingenuity, or devotion to business enterprise.

But one of the most persistent generalizations concerning American life and character is the notion of that our society has been shaped by the pull of a vacant continent drawing population westward through the passes of the Alleghenies, across the Mississippi Valley, over the high plains and mountains of the Far West to the Pacific Coast. [Source]

The Duel

Source

"Aaron Burr had a fine mind, personal charm, and the knack of winning votes. These qualities carried him to the United States Senate, and almost to the Presidency. In 1800 the federal electors divided their votes equally between Burr and Jefferson for thirty-six ballots before they finally named Jefferson President and Burr Vice President."

"In his political activities Burr had incurred the enmity of Hamilton, although outwardly the two men were friends. In 1804, during the course of a hot campaign for the governorship of New York, the ill-feeling came to the surface. Hamilton, it was said, had asserted that Burr was a 'dangerous man and one who ought not to be trusted with the reins of government.' Burr demanded an explanation; Hamilton made an evasive reply. Burr issued a challenge; Hamilton accepted, though reluctantly. The duelists met at Weehawken, New Jersey, on July 11, 1804."

George's Insight

Source - 1759 Map Of Pittsburgh Area (Probably Not Washington's Map)

From The Plains of Abraham by Brian Connell:

George, precise and methodical, had his surveyor's notebook with him, making a remarkably accurate map of their progress, pin-pointing likely land for clearance and development and applying his as yet untrained military mind to the possibilities of erecting forts and strong points. With true insight, he made a special note of the gently rising point of land where the Monongahela and the Allegheny join, now the site of the city of Pittsburgh.

A Diplomat From Jonesville

"The Political Career of William Walton Murphy...".

Jonesville, Michigan, On The Map [Source]

Source

Appointed By President Lincoln

From the Michigan Historical Collections:

Surrender Of Fort Ann

Source - (Fort Ann Near The "R" In New York)

The Fort Edward Book: Containing Some Historical Sketches...:

30 October 1780 letter to George Washington mentioned the surrender of Fort Ann (9th instant)...

Prisoner Held In Quebec

For background information, see earlier post.

NARRATIVE

OF

MR. JOHN DODGE

DURING HIS CAPTIVITY

AT DETROIT

 The story of the rescue of a prisoner from the Indians, related in his Narrative, is contained in the report of the Virginia Council of June 16, 1779. Sometimes at liberty, engaged in trading, and sometimes confined in jail as a rebel, he remained in Detroit and Mackinac till May, 1778, when he was sent down to Quebec, at which place he arrived on the first day of June.

In the reports of rebel prisoners at Quebec in June and July, 1778, are three entries referring to Dodge as follows: "John Dodge, 24 years old, from Connecticut, a trader settled at Detroit for seven years, sent down by Lieutenant Governor Hamilton. His commercial effects at Detroit. Taken up on suspicion of having been in arms with the rebels." He remained in Quebec until the ninth day of the following October when he escaped, going first to Boston and subsequently to General Washington. Dodge does not state where or when he met Washington, but as the General was in attendance at Congress from December 21, 1778, until some time in the following January, he probably met him at Philadelphia. Dodge says he visited Congress "having some matters relating to Canada worthy their hearing." This related to the "certain expedition" referred to by Washington in his letter of December 29th, a proposition to invade Canada. Dodge was at Fort Pitt in the early part of January, 1779, and from that port wrote a letter to John Montour. There is no record of Dodge's appearance before Congress, but he wrote a letter on the subject, to Congress... .

John Dodge - Last Name In Excerpt Of List Of POWS