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The Stamp Act and Captain Berry

11/14/2022

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An imprecise 19th century map shows Berryville and the Shenandoah River. Buck Marsh Creek ran through Thomas Berry's property.
​When future captain Thomas Berry bid on two lots of Shenandoah Valley land in 1774, it was the end of a sad story that had begun with the Stamp Act a decade before. The seller, George Mercer, had been one of Virginia’s leading citizens. Now he was bankrupt and living in exile.
 
Mercer had served in important civil and military positions, often with George Washington. He was one of Washington’s lieutenants at Fort Necessity, where he was wounded, and commanded the short-lived 2nd Virginia Regiment in the French and Indian War. He was with Washington in the Forbes expedition to take Fort Du Quesne in 1758. In 1761 he and Washington successfully ran together for Frederick County’s two seats in the House of Burgesses.
At the peak of his career, Mercer was selected by the Ohio Company of land speculators to represent their interests in London. The hated 1765 Stamp Act was enacted by Parliament while he was traveling. Not fully aware of sentiments at home, he accepted an appointment as Stamp Master for Virginia. He was overtaken by a mob and forced to resign when he returned to Virginia. Though the cheering crowd carried him out of the capitol in Williamsburg in celebration, Mercer soon left the colony for good.
The financial consequences of his exile eventually resulted in his mortgaging and then remortgaging his properties until he was ruined. He wrote to Washington, his cousin George Mason, and John Tayloe asking them to oversee the sale of his properties for him. The task fell to Washington. A large tract in what is now Clarke County was divided into lots by Francis Peyton and auctioned by Washington in 1774. Benjamin and Thomas Berry were among the bidders. Benjamin, who had more resources, acquired some prime riverfront land. Thomas acquired an inland lot but made up for it with the addition of a 20-acre island lot.
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The auction notice in Purdie & Dixon's Virginia Gazette.
​Less than two years later, the Frederick Committee of Safety chose Thomas to lead a new company of Provincial soldiers, which was then assigned to the 8th Virginia Regiment. He continued to lead his men until their enlistments expired at Valley Forge in April of 1778 and then returned home to lead what appears to have been a quiet life. He died in 1818.
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A sketch of the George Mercer plat made by Ingrid Jewell Jones in 1974 based on county records. Thomas Berry purchased lot 10 and the 20 acre island in the river. (Clarke County Historical Assn.)
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A satellite image shows the clear outline of lot 10. Note especially it's V-shaped bottom. Berry's island appears to have grown considerably over 250 years.
Benjamin, the older brother, was the founder of Berryville—a town just north and west of the old Mercer property. Benjamin is better remembered because of his namesake town, but Thomas’s military service deserves to be remembered as well.

Read More: "Lost & Found: James Kay & Thomas Berry"

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Three Centuries of Violence

3/9/2021

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Anatomy of a Massacre: The Destruction Gnadenhutten, 1782
Eric Sterner (Yardley, Pa: Westholme, 2020)
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In his first book, Anatomy of a Massacre: The Destruction of Gnadenhutten, 1782, Eric Sterner has taken on a difficult subject. Racial violence is something many writers would shy away from while others might delight in the chance to condemn the perpetrators. Mr. Sterner, laudably, does neither. Instead, he seeks to understand what happened.
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It is worth noting that the first known massacre of Indians by white men in what is now the United States occurred long before the events in the book. It happened near Jamestown, Virginia in 1610 when Virginia’s governor, Thomas West, 3rd Baron de la Warr, ordered an attack on the Paspahegh Band of Powhatans. Seventy men attacked the village, killing between 65 and 75 Paspaheghs and kidnapping the village leader’s wife and children. Rowing away, the colonists decided to kill the children, “w[hi]ch was effected by Throweinge them overboard and shoteinge owtt their Braynes in the water.” Three centuries of violence ensued.
Lord de la Warr’s name appears frequently in Mr. Sterner’s story. His name was given to the Delaware River, which in turn lent its name to the Lenape people who have long been known to English speakers as the Delaware Tribe. Mr. Sterner has provided the definitive account of the worst atrocity of the Revolutionary War. In 1782 more than eighty white settlers clubbed, killed, and scalped ninety-six peaceful, Christian Indians as they prayed and sang hymns. The attack on the Moravian mission town of Gnadenhutten (Ohio) was intended as both a punitive and preemptive strike, conducted by settlers whose families and farms had been targeted by other Indians acting as proxies of the British. It is a horrific story that has defied understanding until now.

​...continue to Emerging Revolutionary War Era.

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It's Not "Presidents' Day"

2/15/2021

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A sign for store windows printed before the Uniform Monday Holiday Act of 1968. (Library of Congress)
Are we really celebrating Millard Fillmore and Warren Harding today? Not according to federal law. Today’s national holiday is “George Washington’s Birthday.”  That’s the simple answer. The full answer is complicated: It’s not actually his birthday today. The holiday actually never falls on Washington’s real birthday. Moreover, we use a different calendar today than we did when he was born. Yet another complication is that in several states it is also “Presidents’ Day.” ​
Washington was born on February 11, 1731…under the Julian Calendar. This was the old calendar established under Julius Caesar. Pope Gregory moved the Catholic world to a more accurate calendar in 1582, but Protestant England, under Queen Elizabeth, wasn’t bound by the change. Leap year differences put Britain and the America colonies eleven days behind the rest of the western world. Moreover, New Year’s Day was March 25 under the old calendar, not January 1. Consequently, when the British Empire finally changed to the Gregorian Calendar in 1752, Washington’s birthday changed from February 11, 1731 to February 22, 1732. Both dates are correct, but the proper way to note the Julian date is “February 11, 1731 (O.S.).” The abbreviation stand for “old style.”

Washington’s Birthday was declared a holiday by Congress in 1879. Many people don’t realize that Congress has no authority to declare holidays (days off) for anyone other than federal employees and residents of the District of Columbia. States, however, followed the federal government’s lead and Washington’s Birthday was celebrated for decades on February 22. Abraham Lincoln’s birthday was never a federal holiday, but was celebrated by many states on February 12—just ten days before Washington’s birthday. In the 1950s, there was an effort to establish a third holiday, President’s Day, to honor “the office of the presidency” on March 4 – the original day of quadrennial inaugurations. Though some states adopted the new holiday, Congress declined to in the belief that three holidays in rapid succession were too many.

In 1968, Congress passed the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, guaranteeing three-day weekends for Washington’s Birthday, Memorial Day, Labor Day, Columbus Day, and Veterans Day. A proposal to also replace Washington’s Birthday with a generic “President’s Day” was specifically rejected. However, because the holiday was set to be celebrated on the third Monday in February, it was guaranteed to always fall between Lincoln’s and Washington’s birthdays yet never on either. This invited use of the generic term “President’s Day (with the apostrophe sometimes after the “s.”) Advertisers are usually blamed for popularizing the term.

Though the federal holiday is Washington’s Birthday, it is state law that determines days off for most Americans.  Only seven states celebrate Washington alone on the third Monday in February. Virginia calls it “George Washington Day.”Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Louisiana, and New York call it “Washington’s Birthday.” Twenty-two states celebrate “President’s Day” (with varying punctuation). The rest of the states name the holiday after Washington and someone else, most often Lincoln, but also Jefferson (Alabama), civil rights activist Daisy Bates (Arkansas), and all presidents (Maine and Arizona).

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The grave of 8th Virginia captain and major Jonathan Clark indicates that he was born under the Julian calendar. (author)
Under our present Constitution, the United States has had forty-five presidents. Some have been great and some have not. Reputations have waxed and waned as attitudes change and new biographies are written. Celebrating “President’s Day” seems to make no more sense that celebrating “Congress Day” or “Supreme Court Day.” In the fact, the notion of a “President’s Day” has vaguely monarchist overtones. Surely, we can all think of several presidents who don’t deserve the honor. Washington, however, stands high above the rest. He is rightly known as the father of the country. He effectuated a great break with the past, establishing durable and free government in part by repeatedly declining to cling to power. Only one other president rivals his claim to greatness.
 
Holidays have always been the subject of civic activism. Veterans Day was moved back to November 11 in 1975 to align with the World War I armistice. Columbus Day has been replaced by “Indigenous People’s Day” in Florida, Hawaii, Alaska, Vermont, South Dakota, New Mexico, and Maine. If you live in a place (such as, believe it or not, Washington State) that celebrates “President’s Day,” you might want to call your state legislator and point out that Chester Arthur doesn’t belong on the same holiday stage as George Washington.

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Greene Eludes Cornwallis

1/25/2021

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To the End of the World: Nathanael Green, Charles Cornwallis and the Race to the Dan
Andrew Waters (Yardley, Pa: Westholme, 2020)

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“In a place like Salisbury,” writes Andrew Waters of the North Carolina town that witnessed the 1781 Race to the Dan, “you can live among its ghosts and still not know it’s there.” Enthusiasts know that this is true of many Revolutionary War sites, including some of real importance. Mr. Waters complains in his book To the End of the World: Nathanael Greene, Charles Cornwallis, and the Race to the Dan of the simplified understanding most Americans have of the Revolutionary War. “For most of us, the story of the American Revolution is of George Washington and the minutemen, Valley Forge and Yorktown.” In our Cliffs Notes version of history, many places, heroes, and even whole campaigns are left out.

Like most of the war in the south, the Race to the Dan is overshadowed by Yorktown. The mere fact that George Washington was not a participant relegates the story to a second-tier status. The Race, however, holds unique challenges for the historian and the storyteller. It occurred over more than two hundred miles, depending on how you count it, rather than at one identifiable spot. Nathanael Greene’s genius is to be found in his mastery of logistics and strategy, which are subjects that make many people’s eyes glaze over. Though heroic and difficult, it was still a retreat and retreats don’t lend themselves to celebration. Its significance is not so much in what it achieved but rather in what it made possible, which requires detailed explanation.

Consequently, the Race to the Dan has been given short shrift for more than two centuries. It is mentioned in the war’s histories, but almost never in detail. In writing this book, Mr. Waters was determined to correct that and he has succeeded. One can’t resist noting the appropriateness his name: the waterways of the Carolinas play a central role in the story. He makes plain from the beginning that the story is personal to him. He is a conservationist and doctoral candidate in South Carolina who has made a career of conserving the Palmetto State’s watersheds. “Rivers are my business,” he says at the very beginning of the book. He also plainly declares, “We all need heroes, and . . . Greene has become one of mine.”


...Continue to The Journal of the American Revolution.

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The Mighty Oaks of the Forest

6/3/2020

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George Rogers Clark & William Croghan by Gwynne Tuell Potts (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2020)
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“The phenomenon of fame confounds and fascinates, indiscriminately raising some to glory while consigning apparent equals to exile.” This is Gwynne Tuell Potts’s insight in her new book on George Rogers Clark and his brother-in-law, William Croghan. “In its most satirical form,” she continues, “fame dooms an occasional soul to both states.” Potts’s 300-page volume is an exploration of the vagaries of fame and fortune.

George Rogers Clark was famous, once. He was a towering figure on the western front of the Revolutionary War. Potts quotes French Gen. Henri Victor Collot describing Clark as the person who had “gained from the natives almost the whole of that immense country which forms now the Western states.” Collot said Clark was “the rival, in short, of George Washington.” Clark’s reputation was diminished in his own lifetime and his fame has since waned. His story is not taught in most schools and his Virginia commission excludes him from the pantheon of well-known Continental generals.

William Croghan has never been famous, but his life illustrates the aspirations and achievements of America’s early frontiersmen. He fought for national expansion and then played an important role in that expansion by moving to Kentucky and running the office that parceled out bounty land to veterans. This was a lucrative position. Croghan prospered and built a stately home, which he called Locust Grove.

...continue to The Journal of the American Revolution.

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A Portrait of John Cuppy

1/15/2020

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Hampshire County's John Cuppy at the age of 99. (Museum of the American Revolution/Wisconsin Historical Society)
The story behind the face in a very rare photograph of a Revolutionary War veteran.
Most of the enlisted men of the Revolutionary War are faceless and forgotten—just names on lists. Biographies and painted portraits are honors that were reserved for officers. Even so, it is possible to trace the lives of some common soldiers using original sources. Many of them applied for pensions after 1818, which required them to provide (usually brief) narratives of their service. Some gave similar attestations when they applied for military bounty land. A small number left detailed accounts of their experiences in interviews, letters, or diaries. Finally, and very rarely, we have photographs taken in the last years of some veterans’ lives. Virginian John Cuppy may be the only Revolutionary War soldier to leave us an artifact in each of these categories.
Cuppy was born near Morristown, New Jersey on March 11, 1761. While still an infant, he was brought to Hampshire County, Virginia by his German parents. Their new home was on the South Branch of the Potomac River near the town of Romney, which is now in West Virginia. About forty miles west of the Shenandoah Valley, this was the very edged of settled Virginia territory. John was just fourteen years old when the war began—too young to be a candidate for service when Hampshire was directed to raise a rifle company in July of 1775. He was still too young when Dutch-descended Capt. Abel Westfall recruited a company there that winter for Col. Peter Muhlenberg’s new 8thVirginia Regiment.
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From Canada to Florida? Yes, and Maybe.

12/15/2019

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Picture(Image: Randy Steele)
As an old man, Daniel Anderson wanted to spend his last years in prayer. He said he would “ever pray for the success and prosperity of his native state and country.” He would pray “to secure the liberties of which in his younger days he voluntarily encountered the perils of war and shed his blood in her service.” These were not platitudes. The bloodshed was real and there is no reason to doubt that his prayers were just as authentic. He was a humbled man. He was disabled by his war wounds and obliged to use the few resources he had caring for his wife and three physically and mentally handicapped adult children.
 
Surprisingly, the unique contours of Anderson’s war service resolve a persistent question.  The men of the 8th Virginia fought almost everywhere during the Revolution. I have sometimes described them as having served “from New York to Georgia,” but wished I could say “from Canada to Florida.” The regiment didn't range that far, but I have long suspected that some of its men did over the course of the war.
 
The Florida question remains unsolved. In 1776, Maj. Gen. Charles Lee took the regiment south to  attack the Tory haven at St. Augustine. They made it to  Sunbury, Georgia before the expedition was called off. The malaria-stick regiment was posted there at Fort Morris, on the Medway River, for some time. Did they ever cross the St. Mary’s River into what was then the colony of East Florida? 
 
The governor of Florida reported in October of 1776 that “depredations were made by the Rebels as far [across the border] as Saint John River,” forcing him to commandeer a boat for defense. The main body of the 8th Virginia was probably gone by then, but had any of them gone scouting across the river before the raid? Quite a few men also remained behind to recover from sickness and some--like William Gillihan and Collin Mitchum--transferred to the 5th South Carolina Regiment. Did any 8th Virginia men participate in the foray to the St. John’s River that summer or fall? Probably. Maybe. We may never know.

PictureDaniel Anderson enlisted twice under Daniel Morgan, portrayed here in an anonymous portrait from about 1780.
The Canada question, on the other hand, is now settled. The very first companies of Congress-authorized “Continental” troops included two companies of riflemen raised in the Shenandoah Valley in July of 1775. I have hoped to find just one 8th Virginia soldier who was in Capt. Daniel Morgan’s Frederick County company. But was there one? Yes. Daniel Anderson enlisted in Morgan’s rifle company in July of 1775 and was with him at Boston and the attack on Quebec. He was wounded at Quebec in the chest and the right arm, captured, and held prisoner for months. He was eventually exchanged and then discharged at Elizabeth, New Jersey. 
 
In February 1777 he enlisted again under Morgan, who was now the colonel of the 11th Virginia. There is no record of Anderson in the 11th Virginia rolls, however, because he was promoted to sergeant and transferred into Capt. Thomas Berry’s company of the 8th Virginia. Anderson was with the 8th through Germantown, Whitemarsh, Valley Forge, and Monmouth. He was discharged on February 2, 1779. He then received a state commission as a lieutenant in the Western Battalion of Virginia state troops (state regulars—not militia and not Continentals), probably fighting Indians as far west as Indiana under Col. Joseph Crockett.  Other 8th Virginia men were on the frontier as well, serving as far west as Illinois. After the war, Anderson settled in Shenandoah County, Virginia and lived the rest of his life there.
 
So what can we claim for the length and breadth of the regiment’s service? “From Canada to Florida” is still a stretch beyond what we can prove. To the Florida line? Still too far. Until we can prove more, we’ll have to settle for “From Canada nearly to Florida.” Can we also say, “From the Atlantic to the Mississippi?” Not yet, but it’s entirely plausible. Regardless, the range of the 8th Virginia’s men is impressive. Almost all of that movement was covered on foot.
​
In retirement, Daniel Anderson’s wounds kept him from performing hard labor—even the work of a subsistence farmer. Still, he somehow had to support his wife and three disabled children. “I am by occupation a farmer,” he said in 1820, “but owing to wounds and age I am unable to follow it. I have my wife living with me, aged 57 years; 1 daughter, aged 23 years, a cripple; and two dumb children, both simple, one a girl aged 14 the other a boy aged 27. The reason for his older daughter’s disability was her being “so much afflicted with Cancers that she has not been out of the house for 16 months.” The word "dumb" in those days still meant "mute." "Simple" meant intellectually disabled.

There were no federal pensions yet, but he applied to the Virginia legislature for pension on the basis of his own service-connected disability. He made his case before a judge. His conclusion was recorded by the court in the third person: “The prayer of your petitioner therefore is that your honorable body will pass an Act allowing such pension as in your wisdom you may deem sufficient to enable him to end his few remaining days in praying, as he will ever pray for the success and prosperity of his native state and country to secure the liberties of which in his younger days he voluntarily encountered the perils of war and shed his blood in her service.”

The date of his petition isn’t shown, but it was supported by notes from doctors and a letter from Daniel Morgan in 1796: “The bearer of this Dan’l. Anderson Inlisted a soldier with me in the year 1775 march’d with me to Boston & from thence to Quebec – was with me in the storm of the garison, on the last Day of Dec’r. when Gen;l Montgomery fell. He Rec’d two wounds in the action, one in the Breast & one in his Arm which Doctor senseny & Doctor Balwin certyfies that said wounds has so disabled him as to Rendered unfit for Hard Labour & thinks Him a proper object for a Pension.”

"Doctor Balwin" was Cornelius Baldwin, the former surgeon of the 8th Virginia. Anderson received his state pension and later received federal support as well. He died on November 6, 1840.

​UPDATE: Thanks to Carolyn Brown Butler who alerted us to the pension of her ancestor William Smith. Smith, after his time in the 8th, served under George Rogers Clark and (former 8th VA captain) George Slaughter. He was sent by Clark as an express rider to the Iron Banks, six miles below the mouth of the Ohio on the Mississippi. So now we can say that at least one 8th Virginia man served from "the Atlantic to the Mississippi."

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Shenandoah Martyr: Richard Campbell at War

12/3/2019

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Reviving the memory of a Revolutionary War hero from Woodstock, Virginia.
PictureThe Battle of Eutaw Springs, by F.C. Yohn.
There is no dignity in being forgotten. A case in point is Virginia Lt. Col. Richard Campbell, a Continental officer who died bravely for his country but lies today in an unmarked grave far from his home. “Killed near the end of the battle at Eutaw Springs,” wrote the authors of a 2017 study of that battle, “he is virtually unknown today.” In his own day, however, Nathanael Greene called him a “brave, active, and intrepid Soldier.” Light Horse Harry said he was an “excellent officer” who was “highly respected and beloved.” In 1832 one of his soldiers still remembered him as “the brave Col. Campbell.” Dick Campbell, as he was known, deserves to be remembered.
 
Little is known of his early life. Historian Louise Phelps Kellogg asserted a century ago that he was “a distant relative of the Campbell family of southwest Virginia.” This would tie him to militia Gen. William Campbell, a leader at the Battle of King’s Mountain. He was evidently born in Virginia about 1730 and raised in Dunmore (now Shenandoah) County, where he was appointed a sheriff’s deputy in 1772 and reappointed in 1774. The Shenandoah Valley was culturally distinct from the eastern parts of Virginia. Many of Campbell’s neighbors were Germans who had migrated from Pennsylvania.
 
As war approached, he joined the First Independent Company of Dunmore. News of the Virginia Powder Alarm sent the company parading out of the county seat at Woodstock toward Williamsburg. When word of a peaceful settlement arrived they returned and held a barbeque. In November 1775, Campbell was tasked with conducting a census of his part of the county, reporting for his own household ten white and two black residents. Notably, his was the only household out of seventy-six that reported black, likely enslaved, members.

...continue to The Journal of the American Revolution.

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For Veterans Day: "More thanks than my lips can express."

11/11/2019

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On November 21, 1821 an old Revolutionary War veteran in Buckingham County, Virginia named Bartholomew Cyrus wrote a letter to the President and the Secretary of War. Missing one of his hands and living in desperate poverty, he was looking for help resolving a bureaucratic problem with his pension. It is a powerful narrative from a “poor boy” who owned nothing but his “shirt and pantaloons” when he entered the Continental Army in 1777. Like many enlisted veterans, Cyrus was barely literate. Nevertheless, he wrote to President James Monroe and Secretary of War John C. Calhoun asking for help. 
The tone is desperate but also dignified. Though poor, he addresses Monroe and Calhoun as duty-bound public servants and concludes familiarly by writing “no more at present but your well wishing friend” above his signature. Though he was poor, they worked for him. It is worth navigating the misspellings and missing punctuation to read an enlisted-man’s perspective that is only scarcely available from the Revolutionary War.

​Annotations are given below as end-notes to preserve the flow of the text.

The Letter from Bartholomew Cyrus to President James Monroe and Secretary of State John C. Calhoun

 
Nov. 21st 1821 Buckingham Cty.[1]

Honorable presedent[2]and secatary of war[3]belonging to the united states I wish to inform you of my sufferance in the revolutionary war I inlisted in the year 1776[4]I went from Chesterfield County under Capt. James Harris a three year Soldier then inlisted some time after that for during the war I belonged to the 15 Virginia Ridgment General Woodfords brigade near Philadelphia at valy forge next summer we fought at monmouth the year following our brigade was sent off to Charlestown[5]South Carrolina there almost all were taken prisoners by the British[6]then General Green took command of us[7]and the first battle was at Gilford Courthouse[8]the next at eutawsprings[9]and a number of lives were lost on both sides we lay at ninety six siege[10]near 1 month scarcely 1 hour in the night but firing like claps of thunder many days we could not get any thing to eat 40$[11]was cried through the camp for 1 hoecake of bread and it could not be got we were like hogs that had been wallowing when we came out of the intrenchment the next siege was at camblain[12]near 1 month and we suffered very much there and a great many dserted and would not stand the sufferance[13]I was never absent one day without liberty. I was discharged in the year 1783 July the 6 day at winchester barracks[14]under the command of General neulinburg[15]Capt. kirk partrick was my Capt.[16]I served during this time without ever being confined or one lick[17]which few can say in truth sir look at your records and you’ll find this to be truth Sir I have received three draws from the pension you bestowed us then I sent my Schedule and have got no return from it proved before judge Daniel I am upon sufferance I have had the misfortune a few years since to loose one of my hands by a gun bursting and am troubled at times with reumatic pains and my wife worse off than myself I am going on 64 years of age and my wife is near 70 years of age I was a poor boy had nothing but my shirt and pantaloons when I went in to the army. I think it hard for me to suffer now after doing as much for my country as I have and without your assistance am oblige to go to the poor house and I had almost rather died[18]I thank you for what you have done with more thanks than my lips can express and would freely down with my nees for assistance[19]no more at present but your well wishing friend 
 
Bartholomew Cyrus


I would be thankful to you to let me know at Oakville post office Buckingham County what I am to depend on 
 
Bartholomew Cyrus.[20]

 
Cyrus got his pension. After his wife died, he got married again in 1833 to a younger woman named Phebe. He died in 1855 at the age of 97, and Phebe inherited his pension. A decade later, after the end of the Civil War, sheapplied for the restoration of the benefit, which had been suspended during the war. She was unable to return the old pension certificate, because it hd been “destroyed by being in a house between the lines of the two armies while engaged.” She had given the certificate to a neighbor named William Durrum to keep in his house, but during the Battle of Appomattox Courthouse “it was destroyed or taken off by the soldiery.” She stated that she had resided in the town of Appomattox Courthouse during the Civil War, when her means of subsistence had been “a small remnant of her pension fund and then she was supported by her relations and friends, except a small allowance from the pauper fund from the Overseers of the Poor of Appomattox County.” The Bartholomew Cyrus pension file contains an Amnesty Oath signed with her mark. The oath, as prescribed by President Johnson, was as follows:
 
I, _____, do solemnly swear or affirm, in presence of Almighty God, that I will henceforth faithfully support and defend the Constitution of the United States and the Union of the States thereunder. And that I will, in like manner, abide by and faithfully support all laws and proclamations which have been made during the existing rebellion with reference to the emancipation of slaves, so help me God.
 
[Source:Pension Application of Bartholomew Cyrus W25467, transcribed and annotated by C. Leon Harris. Summary of Phebe Cyrus application adapted from C. Leon Harris.]


[1]Rural Buckingham County lies between the Appomattox Court House, where the Civil War ended, and Thomas Jefferson’s home at Monticello. 

[2]James Monroe, now in his second term.

[3]John C. Calhoun of South Carolina.

[4]An error. He enlisted in 1777.

[5]Charles Town was renamed Charleston at the end of the war.

[6]Maj. Gen. Benjamin Lincoln surrendered May 12, 1780. Cyrus evidently escaped or avoided capture.

[7]Maj. Gen. Nathanael Greene, 3 Dec 1780.

[8]The Battle of Guilford Courthouse, North Carolina, March 15, 1781.

[9]The Battle of Eutaw Springs, September 8, 1781.

[10]The Siege of Ninety-Six, South Carolina, May 22 to June 18, 1781.

[11]Forty dollars.

[12]Probably a mis-transcription of “Cambdain,” or the Second Battle of Camden, better known as the Battle of Hobkirk’s Hill, April 25, 1781. Though it was an American loss, Greene returned to the area after the battle so it is not unreasonable for Cyrus to recall it as a “siege.”

[13]The actual sequence of events was: Guilford Courthouse, Camden, Ninety-Six, Eutaw Springs.

[14]Winchester, Virginia.

[15]Brig. Gen. Peter Muhlenberg.

[16]Captain Abraham Kirkpatrick.

[17]Jailed or whipped.

[18]He would almost rather die than go to the poor house.

[19]He would go down on his knees to beg for help.

[20]A post script.

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​The Fort Gower Resolves: “We can live weeks without bread or salt”

10/27/2019

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See "The Fort Gower Resolves" (August 3, 2022) for a longer essay on this subject.
PictureAfter defeating an army of Shawnee and other Indians at Point Pleasant in 1774, Virginia militia officers pledged their loyalty to the King "whilst his Majesty delights to reign over a brave and free people." (Image: "In Pursuit" by Doug Hall, doughallgallery.com)
Long after the Revolution, Col. John Stuart of Greenbriar County recalled the Virginia Militia army that defeated the usually victorious Shawnee at the Battle of Point Pleasant in 1774.
 
General Lewis’s army consisted chiefly of young volunteers, well trained to the use of arms, as hunting, in those days, was much practised, and preferred to agricultural pursuits by enterprising young men. The produce of the soil was of little value on the west side of the Blue Ridge— the ways bad, and the distance to market too great to make it esteemed. Such pursuits inured them to hard ships and danger. We had more than every fifth man in our army killed or wounded in the battle,— but none were disheartened ; all crossed the river with cheerfulness, bent on destroying the enemy;- and had they not been restrained by the Governor’s orders, I believe they would have exterminated the Shawanese nation.
 
Stuart said this after noting that the Shawnee were the tribe that had (often with allies) repeatedly defeated Virginian and American armies on the frontier: those of Gen. Edward Braddock (1755) and Major James Grant (1758) in the French and Indian War; colonels John Todd and Stephen Trigg at the Battle of Blue Licks (1782) in Kentucky; and against generals Josiah Harmar (1790) and Arthur St. Clair (1791) in Ohio.
 
The victory at Point Pleasant was a very big deal. Moreover, though Lord Dunmore (the governor of Virginia) had raised and led the army, the victory had been won without him by the other of two divisions. An army of frontier Virginia marksmen, many of them occasional subsistence hunters, had proven what they could do.
 
Dunmore headed back to Williamsburg. His officers, cognizant of political events, convened on November 5 at Fort Gower (modern Hockingport, Ohio) on the Ohio River. Among those present were many men who would be important in the Revolution, including William Campbell, George Rogers Clark, Simon Kenton, Andrew Lewis, Daniel Morgan, William Russell, and Adam Stephen. An unidentified officer (possibly Adam Stephen) addressed the group. Having concluded the campaign against the Indians, he said, “it only remains that we should give our country the strongest assurance that we are ready, at all times, to the utmost of our power, to maintain and defend her just rights and privileges.”
 
He was careful to deny that the army had any revolutionary intentions while also making it clear where their real loyalties lay.  “We have lived about three months in the woods without any intelligence from Boston; or from the Delegates at Philadelphia. It is possible, from the groundless reports of designing men, that our countrymen may be jealous of the use such a body would make of arms in their hands at this critical juncture. That we are a respectable body is certain, when it is considered that we can live weeks without bread or salt; that we can sleep in the open air without any covering but that of the canopy of Heaven; and that our men can march and shoot with any in the known world. Blessed with these talents, let us solemnly engage to one another, and our country in particular, that we will use them to no purpose but for the honour and advantage of America in general, and of Virginia in particular. It behooves us then, for the satisfaction of our country, that we should give them our real sentiments, by way of resolves, at this very alarming crisis."
 
A committee was formed to draft the resolves, which were published soon after. Like other documents of the period immediately before the war, it proclaims loyalty to the King and the governor, but in a way that implied a threat.
 
Resolved, That we will bear the most faithful allegiance to his Majesty King George the Third, whilst his Majesty delights to reign over a brave and free people; that we will, at the expense of life, and every thing dear and valuable, exert ourselves in support of the honour of his Crown and the dignity of the British Empire. But as the love of Liberty, and attachment to the real interests and just rights of America outweigh every other consideration, we resolve that we will exert every power within us for the defence of American liberty, and for the support of her just rights and privileges; not in any precipitate, riotous, or tumultuous manner, but when regularly called forth by the unanimous voice of our countrymen.
 
Resolved, That we entertain the greatest respect for his Excellency the Right Honourable Lord Dunmore, who commanded the expedition against the Shawanese; and who, we are confident, underwent the great fatigue of this singular campaign from no other motive than the true interest of this country.
 
Signed by order and in behalf of the whole Corps,
 
BENJAMIN ASHBY, Clerk.

 
Lord Dunmore, whose motives for leading the campaign came to be suspected, fled Williamsburg just a few months later.
 
Little is remembered about Benjamin Ashby, who signed the document on behalf of the unanimous officers. The ink he put to paper had an impact, however. Just three years later his nephew, George Ashby, a private in the 8th Virginia, would be scrambling about the ground during the Siege of Fort Mifflin collecting and recycling hot cannonballs as his comrades’ ammunition ran low.

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The site of Fort Gower in a 1974 photograph. The exact location is now evidently under water. (Ohio History Connection)

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    Gabriel Neville

    is researching the history of the Revolutionary War's 8th Virginia Regiment. Its ten companies formed on the frontier, from the Cumberland Gap to Pittsburgh.

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