He is best-known as the rector of a Shenandoah Valley (Anglican) parish and colonel of the 8th Virginia Regiment, which was raised on the frontier and initially intended to be a “German” regiment. The famous but poorly-documented farewell sermon he delivered in Woodstock, Virginia, in the spring of 1776 has been the subject of epic poetry and modern political debate. After a tour of the southern theater under Maj. Gen. Charles Lee, he was made a brigadier general. His brigade of Virginians was in Maj. Gen. Nathanael Greene’s division at Brandywine and Germantown. He was at Monmouth and remained in the army to the end of the war. He played an important role in the Virginia campaign leading up to Yorktown. ...continue to The Journal of the American Revolution. More from The 8th Virginia Regiment
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Mosquitos are nothing new to South Carolina. In 1774 a resident called them “devils in miniature.” In 1776, Col. Peter Muhlenberg's soldiers had to contend with them and didn't have the option of going indoors. In May of that year, the regiment rushed south from Virginia to help defend Charleston. They were part of a small army led by the strict and sardonic Maj. Gen. Charles Lee. On their arrival, Capt. Jonathan Clark spent much of the first week staying at the home of Christopher Gadsden. Gadsden was a prominent South Carolina Patriot and an early champion of Independence. Clark initially camped in Gadsden’s garden, but recorded that upon the “arr[ival] of [the] Moschetto” he got up and moved “in the House.” Enlisted men didn't have the option.
Though they fended off the British, many of them lost their battle with the mosquitos. Unlike the mosquitos bothering Tony Melton in 2015, the mosquitos of 1776 were active malaria vectors. By the start of August, nearly one hundred and fifty 8th Virginia men were too sick to continue south with General Lee into Georgia for a planned attack on West Florida. Most of the men who did continue were soon also sick. The army stopped its march in Sunbury, Georgia. South Carolina's Col. William Moultrie recorded that several men were buried there each day. The mosquitos paid no attention to rank. Colonel Muhlenberg got it and would never fully recover. Major Peter Helphinstine got it and was so sick he was forced to resign his commission and died a slow death at home in Virginia. The regiment was ordered back to Virginia in the fall, significantly depleted. Malaria was endemic to South Carolina and neighboring states until the 1950s. Its eradication is something of a mystery but may be connected to the invention of air conditioning, which prompted people to spend more time inside during the summer. Still, it continues to kill millions every year in Africa and other developing parts of the world. (Based on an earlier post.) More from The 8th Virginia Regiment
Philadelphia's recently defaced Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is not a memorial for George Washington (though it is located in Washington Square). It is a memorial for the two or maybe three thousand penniless soldiers who are buried there in mass graves. Each was fighting for freedom at a time when a better understanding of freedom and equality was only just dawning on humanity. The evident majority who died of smallpox suffered more than most modern people can comprehend. They died for the principle that "all men are created equal" (the Declaration of Independence, written in 1776) and so that we might have the right "peaceably to assemble" and to "petition the Government for redress of grievances" (the 1st Amendment, written in 1791). "Black lives matter" has essentially the same meaning as "all men are created equal." Both are true statements. The newer slogan, however, is also a Declaration that the "arc of history" has farther to bend until it achieves justice. That is also true. Ask any member of "Mother Emanuel" AME Church in Charleston or the families of Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd. We have a better understanding of freedom and equality today than America's founding generation had. But you have to walk before you can run, and the men buried in Washington Square were among the very first common people on Earth to walk upright and proudly in defense of human and civil rights. Today, most of the world is still trying to catch up. We can't let up now, however. We have farther to go. Read More: "The Tragedy of Henry Laurens" (August 1, 2019) More from The 8th Virginia Regiment
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. More from The 8th Virginia Regiment
Dutch spends his free time studying local history and conducting archeology. He has made some important finds, including a string of frontier forts along what was once the “far” side of the Oconee. He’s pretty sure that Drury’s burial in that spot is an important clue to his life in the years following the Revolutionary War. From there, however, things get complicated. ...continue to Emerging Revolutionary War Era. More from The 8th Virginia Regiment
There seems to be another connection, as well. Among the first recruits for the Corps of Discovery were privates Reuben and Joseph Field. They signed up in Kentucky (where the entire extended Clark family now lived) but were—according to various sources—born in Culpeper County, Virginia. Meriwether Lewis said the brothers were “two of the most active and enterprising young men who accompanied us. It was their peculiar fate to have been engaged in all the most dangerous and difficult scenes of the voyage, in which they uniformly acquited themselves with much honor.” Three decades earlier, five men with the same last name enlisted in Capt. George Slaughter’s Culpeper County company of the 8th Virginia: Abraham, Henry, William, Larkin, and Reuben. This Reuben Field cannot be the Reuben Field from the Corps of Discovery, but there is every reason to believe they were closely related—perhaps first cousins or an uncle and a nephew. Genealogies posted on the internet show a large extended family that frequently used certain given names—Abraham, William, Reuben, Henry, and others—in many generations and collateral lines. They are consequently difficult to navigate. Captain Slaughter was himself married to Mary Ann Field, the daughter of Culpeper County’s Col. John Field (who fought at Braddock’s Defeat and died at the Battle of Point Pleasant). Mary Ann’s mother mother is identified as Anna Rogers Clark, who has been erroneously identified as the sister of the regiment’s Jonathan and John. Another genealogy seems to indicate that she was the aunt of the Corps of Discovery’s Reuben and Joseph. Colonial Virginia was a small place, genealogically speaking. It is entirely possible that Mary Ann was related to the famous Clarks. The 8th Virginia's Reuben appears to be the son of William Feld and Hanna Roberts Field. Genealogists state Reuben’s birth date as November 11, 1757 and the month of his death as April, 1815. This aligns with Virginia veterans records. This Reuben had a unique career in the war. He enlisted as a private early in 1776 but soon managed to get appointed as a cadet (an officer in training), still with the 8th Virginia. He was commissioned an ensign in March of 1777 and was a lieutenant by the Battle of Germantown, where he was captured. He was later exchanged, promoted to captain, and served nearly to the end of the war. Abraham Field was among the many 8th Virginia men to succumb to malaria during their southern campaign of 1776. He died on August 6 of that year. The same Virginia records indicate that he was Reuben’s elder brother. The 8th Virginia’s Henry Field, the original 1st lieutenant of Slaughter’s company, also contracted malaria. He went home on an extended furlough and died in 1778, probably from complications caused by malaria. He, however, does not appear to be our Reuben’s brother (though our Reuben had a brother of the same name). Almost certainly a cousin. This is all very confusing. Obvious errors in online genealogies confuse the matter further. I have made a point of avoiding genealogical investigations in this project, leaving that to the descendants of the men. Family relationships, however, were a major factor in the life of the 8th Virginia. Officers were given recruitment quotas in 1776 and looked first to those closest to them. Those who were not related before the war became related, in many instances, in the years after it. If anyone knows of an authoritative genealogy of the Fields family and can help connect the five soldiers of the 8th Virginia with the two brothers of the Corps of Discovery, I will be very grateful. Read More: "George Slaughter: Louisville's Forgotten Founder." More from The 8th Virginia Regiment
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. More from The 8th Virginia Regiment![]() Why Germans? The 8th Virginia Regiment of Foot was authorized by the revolutionary Virginia Convention on December 13, 1775. It had no numeric designation yet, but was intended to be unique in two ways. It would be ethnically-based and all of its men would carry rifles. It was conceived as a “battalion” to “be composed of Germans, with German officers.” The concept may have originated with the Rev. Peter Muhlenberg and Jonathan Clark, both delegates from Dunmore County in the Shenandoah Valley. Dunmore (now called Shenandoah County) was the cultural hub of German life in the Valley. It is inconceivable that the resolution could have been drafted without the involvement of at least Muhlenberg and probably of Clark as well. Muhlenberg was the Rector of Beckford Parish, the geography of which was identical to that of Dunmore County. His church was at Woodstock, the county seat. He was, however, more than just the community’s pastor. He was the son of the patriarch or the Lutheran Church in America, whose church was in the village of Trappe near Philadelphia. Clark was the county’s deputy clerk, an important job, under Thomas Marshall (soon to be colonel of the 3rd Virginia Regiment and father of future Chief Justice John Marshall). The Shenandoah Valley’s Germans had nearly all come the way Muhlenberg had: down the Great Philadelphia Wagon Road to Virginia. The road passed through communities that remain heavily German to this day, such as Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Scotch-Irish immigrants followed the same route, but tended to settle farther south in the Valley, around Staunton and Augusta County. Lutheran Germans like Muhlenberg were seen by the Virginia gentry as reasonably reliable and trustworthy. Their theology differed little from the Church of England. Muhlenberg had, in fact, gone to London to be ordained before taking his position in Woodstock. (King George III was himself of German descent and his great grandfather, George I, couldn’t speak English when he took the throne.) The Ulster Irish, however, were less trusted. They were theological dissenters and often politically radical. Their Calvinist faith differed in important ways from Anglicanism. They could, however, be counted on to fight “And be it farther ordained,” read the resolution, “That of the six regiments to be levied as aforesaid, one of them shall be called a German regiment, to be made up of German and other officers and soldiers, as the committees of the several counties of Augusta, West Augusta, Berkeley, Culpeper, Dunmore, Fincastle, Frederick, and Hampshire (by which committees the several captains and subaltern officers of the said regiment are to be appointed) shall judge expedient.”
Below them, the officers of the ten companies—captains, lieutenants and ensigns—were a diverse group. English, German, and Scotch-Irish were most common. Capt. Abel Westfall of Hampshire County was Dutch, though his family had been in America for generations. Lieut. Jacob Rinker was Swiss. Lieut. Isaac Israel was Jewish. Religiously, though it is hard to trace, they were mostly Anglican, Lutheran, German Reformed, Presbyterian, and probably Baptist. If there were no Methodists, some of them—including Capt. Westfall—would become Methodists soon. ` The diversity of the officers reflected the diversity in the rank and file. The 8th Virginia was a microcosm of the Continental Army at large. It was America’s original “melting pot.” Originally divided by race and religion, their shared hardships would soon make them a band of brothers. The committees were generally dominated by English elites and could be counted on to appoint the right kind of company officers. Only two of ten companies had Irish captains: Fincastle County and the West Augusta district (both on the frontier) selected James Knox and William Croghan. Both were capable and loyal officers. The choice of field officers, however, was up to the Virginia Convention and it chose three Germans as it had planned. Each was from a different down in the lower (northern) Shenandoah Valley. Muhlenberg was appointed to be the colonel. Abraham Bowman of Strasburg (also in Dunmore County) was appointed to be the lieutenant colonel. Bowman came from a prominent family. His grandfather, Jost Hite, had led the first group of German settlers into the valley from Pennsylvania in 1731. More from The 8th Virginia Regiment
The great event of the pre-Revolutionary frontier was the 1774 Indian war known as Lord Dunmore’s War. Carman had been a soldier in that war in the division of the army personally commanded by Dunmore—the royal governor. Dunmore’s division had arrived too late at Point Pleasant to join in the victory there on October 10. Negotiations to formalize terms with the defeated Indians were just about to begin when Croghan’s men marched out of town a year later. They marched southeast along Braddock's old road toward Winchester, en route to the provincial capital at Williamsburg and an intended final destination at Suffolk. The unique story of Croghan’s company in 1776 has been told here already. After another missed rendezvous, they were reassigned to the 1st Virginia Regiment for the year. Carman died too soon to leave a narrative of his specific experiences in the war. None of his five messmates are known to have left a record either. (They were Michael Martin, Moses Martin, George Martin, Daniel Viers, and John McDonald.) It is likely that he crossed the Delaware with Washington on Christmas Day for the attack on Trenton. Though most were too ill after the Trenton adventure he may also have been at the battles of Assunpink Creek and Princeton in early January. United at last with the 8th Virginia in the spring, he was very likely at the Battles of Brandywine and Germantown. Muster rolls confirm he was present and healthy during this time. His Continental service concluded when his two-year enlistment expired near the end of the winter encampment at Valley Forge Meanwhile, back in Pittsburgh, the Indian peace broke down again and there was plenty to keep the militia (every fighting-age male) busy. An expedition across the Ohio under Col. Edward Hand failed about the time Carman was discharged. If Carman returned directly to Pittsburgh, he may have participated in one or both of the campaigns led by Gen. Lachlan McIntosh and Col. Daniel Brodhead in 1778 and 1779. Though Pittsburgh itself was on the frontier Colonel Brodhead reported in 1780, “The Emigrations from this new Country to the Settlements on Kentucke & the Falls [of the Ohio—later Louisville] are incredible….” Joseph Carman and his family were among the thousands of pioneers headed to Kentucky, though the date of their move could fall anywhere between 1778 and 1787.
They were ambushed there by a party of Indians—probably Shawnee—who fired on them. Van Cleve had a finger and part of the breech of his gun shot off. Though wounded, he and Robbins were able to escape. Carman was not so lucky. Van Cleve and Robbins raced to the settlements along the Bullskin Creek for help. Robbins then led a rescue party that set off after Carman and his captors. From the site of his capture they followed a trail of blood for about two hundred yards to the place where the Indians had been camping. There they found Carman’s body “dismembered and hung about on saplings. They gathered it up and took it back to Well’s Station, his home, for burial.” He may have been tortured, though the record doesn’t say and there may have been no way for his neighbors to know. Carman left behind a wife, Mary, and six children. Though little more than courage can be discerned from our sources about Joseph Carman’s character, the fact that one of his sons was named “Isaac Newton Carman” is intriguing. Carman's fate was not an unusual one at that time on the frontier. A final "peace" with the Shawnee would not be achieved until after William Henry Harrison's victory at Tippacanoe in 1811 and the collapse of Tecumseh's Confederacy following the Battle of the Thames in 1813. (Thanks to Duane Carter for sharing information about his ancestor.) More from The 8th Virginia Regiment
The regions beyond the Blue Ridge Mountains were ethnically and religiously different from the rest of Virginia. Soldiers, some of whom were occasional subsistence hunters, were typically better marksmen than the average soldier. Consequently, the used rifles instead of muskets (for the first year). Their motives for fighting were less focused on taxes and trade and more focused on their desire to head west--something the King had forbidden since 1763. Political geography has changed. All of these counties were later divided, some within months of the regiment's formation. West Virginia, which is not shown, was created in 1863 and would occupy the left-center of the map. The disputed northeast part of the Augusta District is now southwest Pennsylvania, including Pittsburgh. Western Fincastle County became Kentucky County in 1776 and the Commonwealth of Kentucky in 1792. Most Americans are unaware that beginning in 1774, Ohio and lands west of it were pulled into the Province of Quebec. This, technically at least, extended holdover French civil institutions to the border of settled Virginia. Quebec had no elected legislature and had been allowed to keep its Catholic institutions. Both facts were seen by Virginians as sure signs of creeping tyranny. The West Augusta District and Dunmore County each raised two companies. Augusta, Berkeley, Culpeper, Fincastle, Frederick, and Hampshire counties each contributed one. Initially called the "German Regiment" and long remembered that way, the map also shows how wide-ranging and diverse the zone of recruitment actually was. The lower (northern) Shenandoah Valley counties of Berkeley, Frederick, and Dunmore had significant German populations and all three field officers were from that area. Hampshire had a smaller German population. Culpeper, the only Piedmont county, had a smaller German population that descended from the Germanna Colony. The other counties were predominantly Scotch-Irish and English. To learn more about the individual companies, visit the Soldiers page. [Revised and Reposted from 9/1/19] More from The 8th Virginia Regiment |
Gabe Nevilleis researching the history of the Revolutionary War's 8th Virginia Regiment. Its ten companies formed on the frontier, from the Cumberland Gap to Pittsburgh. Categories
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