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    The Face of Peter Muhlenberg

    Artifacts & Memorials Generals Veterans
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    Peter Muhlenberg did not look like this.

    ​What did Peter Muhlenberg look like? The celebrated "fighting parson" has been depicted in stained glass, marble, bronze, and oil. The most frequently-seen image of the general might be the oil-on-canvas portrait in the collection of the Martin Art Gallery at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania. The gallery, however, identifies this portrait as the work of an anonymous artist, created on an unknown date “circa 1800-1900.” It appears, in fact, to be a copy of another portrait believed to be the work of noted founding era portrait artist John Trumbull. This portrait is in a private collection.
    As with many portraits of Revolutionary War figures, Muhlenberg appears in both paintings in uniform but as an older man. This is actually a good indicator that the general sat for the portrait. Former officers often had portraits made later in life, but wished to be depicted in uniform. An artist painting from his imagination would probably not have paired the older Muhlenberg's face with the younger man's uniform. Muhlenberg was just twenty-nine years old when he took command of the 8th Virginia. He was promoted to general in 1777 and breveted a major general when the army disbanded in 1783. By then, he was thirty-seven. The man in the Trumbull portrait and its copy appears to be in his late forties or fifties. Muhlenberg died on his sixty-first birthday in 1807. He wears two stars on his epaulets to indicate he is a major general, a practice begun during the war in 1780.
    The second-most commonly-seen image is probably the statue that stands in the United States Capitol, one of two statues representing the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. This statue, which was created in 1889 by Blanche Nevin, hardly resembles the Trumbull portrait. It depicts Muhlenberg as the new colonel of the 8th Virginia Regiment, removing his pastor’s robe to reveal a military uniform. It appears to be a Continental Army uniform, which would be incorrect--the 8th Virginia was a Provincial Virginia regiment at thetime Muhlenberg gave his famous sermon. He may, in fact, have worn the same hunting shirt that his junior officers and enlisted men wore. This statue is the prototype for countless other images of Muhlenberg as a dashing young pastor surprising his congregation by revealing a uniform under his cloak. In fact, neither his commission nor his uniform a surprise to his congregation. There is no reason to doubt the sermon itself.

    Portraits from life or personal knowledge

    Directly upstairs from that statue, in the Capitol rotunda, there is another image of Muhlenberg which may be the most reliable depiction of him as a soldier. It is a partially-obscured side image of the general in Trumbull’s grand depiction of The Surrender of Lord Cornwallis. According to the Architect of the Capitol, Trumbull created this giant painting “between 1819 and 1820, basing it upon a small painting … that he had first envisioned in 1785….  In 1787 he made preliminary drawings for the small painting. Although he struggled for a time with the arrangement of the figures, he had settled upon a composition by 1788.”

    ​    “To create portraits from life of the people depicted in this and other paintings," the Capitol architect's website says, "Trumbull traveled extensively. He obtained sittings with numerous individuals in Paris (including French officers at Thomas Jefferson’s house) and in New York. In 1791 he was at Yorktown and sketched the site of the British surrender. He continued to work on the small painting during the following years but did not [immediately] complete it; nevertheless, in January 1817 he showed it and other works in Washington, D.C., and was given a commission to create four monumental history paintings for the Capitol. Surrender of Lord Cornwallis was the second of these large paintings that he completed. He exhibited it in New York City, Boston, and Baltimore before delivering it to the United States Capitol in late 1820. He completed the small painting around 1828; it is now part of the collection of the Yale University Art Gallery.”
    Trumbull worked hard to make his depiction of the people in his history paintings as accurate as possible. He wrote that “to transmit to their descendants, the personal resemblance of those who have been the great actors in those illustrious scenes” was one of the goals of his patriotic painting. A war veteran from a prominent Connecticut family, Trumbull knew many of his subjects personally.
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    The 1889 statue by Blanche Nevin in the U.S. Capitol is a work of the artist's imagination.

    If he even needed a sitting, Muhlenberg would not have been a hard man for Trumbull to find. The retired general served in Congress and as vice president and de-facto governor of Pennsylvania during the earlier years of Trumbull’s project. In the Yorktown painting, Muhlenberg stands between Henry Knox and Edward Hand. All of them were in their thirties in 1781 and appear so under Trumbull's brush.

    A miniature portrait of the general from about 1784 also survives in a private collection. Here, he is facing the viewer directly and noticeably younger than he appears in the other paintings.

    The images were painted at different times and depict him at different ages, but at least one feature shows they are clearly the same man. The three-quarters portrait shows he has a long nose, slightly angled eyes, and jowly cheeks.  The Yorktown paintings show a side view and reveal a large and birdlike nose. Even the miniature, which might most easily have disguised the size of his nose, reveals its prominence.
    (Updated 9/17/21 and 8/20/25)

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    Locals Remember the Battle of Cooch's Bridge

    Artifacts & Memorials Brandywine & Germantown
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    ​At the start of September, 1777, Washington was doing all he could to block the British advance on Philadelphia. He had four natural barriers to work with: the Christina River/White Clay Creek, the Red Clay Creek, the Brandywine River, and the Schuylkill River. Washington tried to use each of these barriers to block General Howe’s Army.
     
    The first effort was at the Battle of Cooch’s Bridge, where William Maxwell’s light infantry (an elite, but temporary unit) engaged a much larger Hessian and and British advance guard. The 8th Virginia’s Captain William Darke led a contingent of men from General Charles Scott’s Brigade (including 28 men from the 8th Virginia). One of his men, William Walker, later complained that “no historian” had noticed the “very bloody conflict,” and declared, “For myself I can say that this detachment on that day deserved well of their country.”
     
    Cooch’s Bridge is still not well remembered. But for those who are interested, the site is well-marked and reasonably intact. The Cooch family has preserved much of the surrounding land for more than two centuries. The folks at the Pencader Heritage Are Association are doing a great job making sure the story is remembered and told. Their ten-year old museum, the Pencader Heritage Museum, has excellent displays and is staffed by volunteers who are eager to tell the story of the September 3, 1777 battle and other events in local history.
     
    Admission is free, but the museum is only open on the first and third Saturdays of each month. It is a very easy stop off of I-95 if you ever happen to be traveling that way on the right Saturday. Outdoor markers by the museum and battle site are worth the visit even if the museum is closed. The museum gets absolutely no government support—so think about lending it some of yours!
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    George Washington Took a Left at Hardee's

    Artifacts & Memorials Brandywine & Germantown
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    As I research the career of the 8th Virginia Regiment, I am frequently reminded of the close historic relationship the Shenandoah Valley has with southeastern Pennsylvania. I have lived in Virginia for many years, but I grew up in Chester County, Pennsylvania and later lived just to the west in Lancaster. The vast majority of the Shenandoah Valley’s early settlers traveled from Philadelphia and nearby ports through both of these counties along the Great Philadelphia Wagon Road, which is now U.S. Route 30 in Pennsylvania and U.S. Route 11 in Virginia. The ten companies of the 8th Virginia were raised in the Shenandoah Valley and other parts of the Virginia frontier. Many of the men were born in Pennsylvania or raised by parents who had lived in or traveled through it. There remain many ethnic, religious, and even architectural ties between the two regions.

    My interest in the Revolutionary War was probably first sparked by a tiny cemetery near my childhood home. It was the final resting place of twenty-two soldiers who died during the encampment at Valley Forge, a few miles to the east. The church across Ridge Road from the cemetery, used as a hospital for those men, is where I received my first Bible when I was about six years old. It has always felt like hallowed ground for me.

    In my studies I’ve looked at the French and Indian War and at Dunmore’s War, the conflicts in which many 8th Virginia men first experienced combat. I’ve looked at Peter Muhlenberg’s famous 1776 sermon in Woodstock, Virginia, to see if I can figure out what is fact and what is legend. I’ve followed the regiment’s travels south to Williamsburg, the Carolinas, and Georgia. (Their planned invasion of Florida was called off.) I’ve followed them north into Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York where the regiment (or a large detachment from it) fought at White Plains, Trenton, Princeton, Brandywine and the “Battle of the Clouds.” Brandywine and the “Battle of the Clouds” were both fought in Chester County, but not the part I come from.

    From the Battle of the Clouds, it took the Continentals fourteen hours to retreat just six miles to the village of Yellow Springs in a torrential downpour. One soldier (not from the 8th) declared the nighttime trek to be “one of the Hardest Marches known by any Soldiers in our army.” (I worked in Yellow Springs as a landscaper one summer when I was in college, knowing little of its history.) From there, seeking the only bridge across French Creek (which I used to swim in) the soldiers marched north on what is now Kimberton Road. (I graduated from the Kimberton Farms School.)  The army (after passing my old Little League fields) reached what is now State Route 23 and took a left across the creek. (For nearly two centuries, the General Pike Inn stood on the left at that intersection, built in 1808. I bought a beer there shorlty after turning 21. It was torn down in 1994 to make way for a Rite Aid pharmacy. For a somewhat briefer time there was a Hardee’s on the far side of that intersection. It has also been replaced—by a McDonald’s.)

    After crossing the creek, Washington took the army farther west (past the little cemetery and the church where I received my first Bible) and on into the northwest Chester County iron country. Iron extraction, furnacing, and forging were big business there as early as 1717 at places like Coventry and Warwick. (For three years I rented a converted outbuilding at the Coventry Forge iron master’s house).

    The exhausted and sometimes barefoot patriots’ long march of more than thirty miles from Yellow Springs to Reading Furnace occurred on September 18, 1777. The next day, they retraced their steps and crossing the Schuylkill river at Parker's Ford (where I once had a post office box).

    The 8th Virginia and the Continental Army went on to bitter defeat at Germantown, a cold winter at Valley Forge, and (for new and re-enlistees) an encouraging standoff at Monmouth Courthouse. For me, however, the two days they spent trudging along the roads of northern Chester County will always be the most personally relevant and meaningful part of the war. 

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    How Close Was William Darke to George Washington?

    Artifacts & Memorials Veterans
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    The sword believed to have been given by William Darke to George Washington. (CivilWarTalk.com)

    In the largest battle ever fought between Native Americans and European Americans, the “whites” lost—miserably. At the Battle of Wabash, in 1791, more than a thousand Americans were killed or wounded.  (This puts the much more famous Battle of Little Big Horn--“Custer’s Last Stand”, where about 270 U.S. soldiers died--into context.) Reputations were ruined, too. The only reputation that seems to have survived intact was that of Lt. Colonel William Darke, a veteran of the 8th Virginia Regiment of Foot. During the battle, Darke saw his own son take a wound that would kill him after several days of agony.

    Darke is a poorly remembered hero of the American frontier. He served in virtually every frontier conflict from the French and Indian War to the Whiskey Rebellion. He was among the first captains to recruit a company for the 8th Virginia in 1776 and was captured at the Battle of Germantown a year-and-a-half later. 
    After a prisoner exchange he immediately recruited a regiment of frontier militia and was present for the victory at Yorktown. An Ohio county and a West Virginia town are named after him. He was well-known to George Washington, who personally asked him to serve in General Arthur St. Clair’s army of 1791. 

    ​Washington clearly knew Darke and respected him. They may have served together in General Braddock’s army in 1755—though this is unproven and seems unlikely. If they served together in the French and Indian War it was more likely during the less well-known frontier conflicts that followed, when Darke served as a ranger. After the revolution, they had a business relationship though the Potomac Company, formed by Washington and others to make that river navigable. Darke Visited Mount Vernon in 1786 and 1787. Washington visited with Darke near the latter’s home close to Harper’s Ferry in 1790. In 1791, Washington wrote to Darke asking him to recruit officers for St. Clair’s army in advance of the campaign to pacify the Indians in Ohio. In that letter Washington bluntly and unapologetically told Darke that he was his third choice to command a regiment—pending a reply from his second choice (his first choice was “Light Horse Harry” Lee, who declined).
     
    Intriguingly, what may be the best evidence of a close (but certainly unequal) relationship between Darke and Washington is a gift. According to longstanding tradition—apparently perpetuated by descendants of Washington’s nephew—Darke presented Washington with a sword. The date of the presentation is unknown, but it is believed by at least one researcher to have been worn by Washington at his presidential inauguration. The sword itself is real—it is on display at the Washington’s Headquarters Museum in Morristown, New Jersey. 

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    The Fourth of July in Soldiers’ Eyes

    Charleston & Sunbury Disease
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    The 8th Virginia celebrated the Declaration of Independence under the Liberty Tree outside Charleston, South Carolina. (Author)

    The men of the 8th Virginia learned of the Declaration of Independence on the heels of a major victory. For nearly all of them, it was the high point of the war. It was followed by very deep lows.
     
    Two hundred and forty years later, most of us celebrate America’s independence with cookouts and fireworks. Colonel Peter Muhlenberg’s soldiers experienced the event in its original context, which meant learning of it many days after the fact. News traveled slowly back then. When they heard it read, a month after it was signed, the list of grievances in the middle of the document probably meant more to them than the high-minded introduction we focus on today. As is true in every era, their personal aspirations and disappointments meant more to most people than abstract ideas of political philosophy.
    ​​About three months before July 4, 1776, the regiment’s ten companies began to rendezvous in Suffolk, Virginia. Tidewater Virginia was abuzz with military affairs and politics. Lord Dunmore, the colonial governor, had fled the capital. From the safety of a British naval vessel, he had promised freedom to slaves who fled their masters and took up arms for the king. He met with British General Henry Clinton who had come south with a sea-born army of redcoats. Where those redcoats were headed was unclear. Williamsburg expected an attack at any time.

    ​When Clinton sailed south, the 8th Virginia was ordered to follow him (on foot), to counter him where ever he might attack. They departed just as Virginia’s defiant revolutionary assembly voted in favor of Independence on May 15, empowering its delegation to propose it in Congress. Less than a month later, Thomas Jefferson produced a Declaration for all the colonies asserting it to be “self-evident” that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”     ​
    Jefferson’s document also contained a long list of indictments against the King, including some that were of particular importance to the men of the 8th Virginia. At the end of the French and Indian War, the victorious British King had allowed the Canadians to maintain their French laws. He had extended the Province of Quebec south to the banks of the Ohio River, while also prohibiting new English settlements west of the Alleghenies. This obstructed the dreams of Virginia’s frontiersmen—and offended the convictions of those who hated (and had fought against) the French. The French, and their Catholic faith, were hated by the English who saw them as champions of tyranny. The parents of many 8th Virginia men had fled French armies in Germany. 
    Image description
    The Declaration of Independence, in reference to Canada and Ohio, accused the King and Parliament of “abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies.” The subtext here was that the King was abandoning the principles of the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and reverting to the tyranny of the old Stuart monarchs.
    The French were not Virginia’s only enemies. Of special relevance for the 8th Virginia was Jefferson’s charge that the King had "endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.” Most of the army's senior officers were veterans of the French and Indian War. Braddock’s defeat in 1755 had unleashed an era of conflict with the Indians in the Ohio Valley that would not really end until the War of 1812. There was already strong evidence that the King’s agents were stirring up the Cherokee and the Shawnee to create a two-front war for the Americans. ​
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    Charleston celebrated the Declaration under a southern live oak tree that had served as the city's "liberty tree" since the Stamp Act crisis. The tree was cut down by the British in 1780.

    The 8th Virginia was in South Carolina when the Declaration was signed. (Many of them, under the command of Major Peter Helphenstine, had participated in the miraculous victory on Sullivan’s Island on June 28.)

    ​News of the Declaration arrived in Charleston on either July 31 or August 2. A celebration was immediately planned. On an “intensely hot” day, August 5, all of Charleston was assembled and paraded out of the city to South Carolina’s Liberty Tree for the first formal reading of the document. 
    There was, according to Henry Laurens, a “Procession of President, Councils, Generals, Members of Assembly Officers & Military &c &c amidst loud acclamation of thousands.” The troops were assembled along with civilians. The tree was located north of town in an open area that would not be built on until after the war. “Thither the procession moved from the city…embracing all the young and old, of both sexes, who could be moved so far. Aided by bands of music, and uniting all the military of the country and city, in and near Charleston, the ceremony was the most splendid and solemn that ever had been witnessed in South Carolina.” No one seems to have noted the irony that the main speaker at the event was shaded and fanned by a slave as he expounded on liberty and freedom. It would take a long time for the full implication of the Declaration’s assertion that “all men are created equal” to penetrate American minds.

    For South Carolina and for Muhlenberg’s men, this was the high point of the war. The Battle of Sullivan’s Island was a tremendous victory that defied all odds and expert predictions. By the start of August, Americans had inflicted heavy blows upon the British regulars at Lexington and Concord, Ticonderoga, Bunker Hill, Great Bridge, Norfolk, Moore’s Creek Bridge, the siege of Boston, and now also at Charleston. The only major loss had been in Canada. The war was going well. America was winning and America had declared its independence.
    As summer turned into fall, however, fortunes changed. Washington suffered a series of major defeats in New York and New Jersey. The 8th Virginia marched on toward Florida on a mission they could not complete. The regiment’s mountain boys were already succumbing to the low country’s heat and ubiquitous mosquitos. For weeks, those mosquitos had been silently spreading malaria among the men. Those who had the weakest resistance, the ones born and raised in the Virginia mountains, began to die.​
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    The Battle of Fort Moultrie, painted by John Blake White in 1826. Maj. Gen. Charles Lee is portrayed in the foreground with his arm outstretched toward Col. William Moultrie, who is holding a sword. The 8th Virginia did not participate in the defense of the fort, which was called Fort Sullivan until after the battle. (United States Senate)

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    8th Virginia Men in Maxwell's Light Infantry

    Brandywine & Germantown Generals
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    The worn and broken gravestone of Pvt. Jonathan Grant, who served in Maxwell's Light Infantry. The grave is behind an Amish farm in Holmes County, Ohio. (KarenMillerBennett.com)

    In the summer of 1777, General Washington sent Daniel Morgan’s rifle battalion north to help fend off the enemy advance down the Hudson valley. One of Morgan’s companies was led by 8th Virginia Capt. James Knox who (along with the enlisted men he took with him) was technically still in the 8th but on detached duty. With Morgan's Rifles gone, the main army was without a light infantry battalion.
     
    Washington formed a new one, under the command of Gen. William Maxwell of New Jersey. Col. William Crawford—half brother of 8th Virginia captains John and David Stephenson—seems to have been in active command of this force. Maxwell’s Light Infantry played the central role at the battle of Cooch’s Bridge (September 3) and a key role at the Battle of Brandywine (September 11).
    As a temporary force, only hints about how Maxwell’s Light Infantry was structured survive, but it seems the soldiers were organized by their home brigades, as one would expect. The 8th was part of the 4th Virginia Brigade, commanded by Gen. Charles Scott. The recollections of a deserter from the 12th Virginia Regiment make it fairly clear that 8th Virginia Capt. William Darke was one of two captains sent by Scott to Maxwell.
     
    William Walker, also from the Scott's Brigade (and the 4th Virginia Regiment), left this colorful recollection of the events just before the Battle of Cooch’s Bridge: “At this place [a unit was formed composed of] 8 hundred men, chiefly volunteers, called the detached light infantry, I being among them. The following are the names of the field officers commanding this party, [Lieutenant Colonel] Rich[ard] Parker, [Lieutenant] Colonel [William] Heath [Heth] with a glass eye, Colonel [William] Crawford with his leather hunting shirt, pantaloons and Rifle, Colonel [Alexander] Martin from North Carolina. General [William] Maxwell being the commander, we marched to a place called Iron Hill where we remained until the 2nd of September, the enemy being as yet stationary, when a very bloody conflict ensued.”
     
    A week later, the unit spent many hours skirmishing with the enemy during the early hours of the Battle of the Brandywine—most of it exposed and alone on the enemy’s side of the river.
     
    There is no known roster of men who were detached to Maxwell’s command. In most cases, there is simply no way to know unless they left a record of it themselves. Fortunately, in the 8th Virginia's case, notes on the August, 1777 muster roll appear to tell us who they were. The roll, taken September 2, lists one sergeant and 29 privates as “at the lines” or “on command at the lines.” September 2 was the day before the Battle of Cooch’s Bridge. Maxwell's Light Infantry was the only Continental unit engaged in that battle. Therefore, this seems to be a fairly clear indication that these men were serving in the temporary  battalion. 

    There are a total of 31 men listed below: Capt. William Darke, Sgt. Edward McCarty, and 29 privates. It is probably not a complete list. Each brigade was ordered to furnish “one Field Officer, two Captains, six Subalterns, eight Serjeants and 100 Rank & File from each brigade.” Only half of the 8th Virginia's companies are represented. This reflects, in part, the uneven effect of malaria on the troops the year before. Darke's and Knox's companies were virtually wiped out, and the latter company was eliminated when Knox joined Morgan. Higgins' company, raised as a replacement unit, never had more than a handful of men. It is harder to explain why the companies of Jonathan Clark and Thomas Berry are not represented. It could be that for those companies no notation was made on the August muster roll. Alternately, they may simply have not contributed any men to Maxwell. This seems more likely because--at 29 privates--the 8th was already someone overrepresented coming from a brigade with five regiments. Western troops, like those in the 8th, were considered to be natural light infantrymen, so this overrepresentation is not surprising.
    Capt. William Darke
     
    Capt. Campbell’s Company:
    Pvt. George Ashby
    Pvt. Abraham Hogman
    Pvt. George Lair
    Pvt. Daniel Nichols
    Pvt. William Shovel
    Pvt. Barton Whitehorn

    Capt. Croghan’s Company:
    Pvt. Ezekiel Abel
    Pvt. Moses Crawford
    Pvt. Jesse Davis
    Pvt. Jonathan Grant
    Pvt. Aneas Lany
    Pvt. Thomas Owens
    Pvt. John Reed, Sr.
    Pvt. John Reed, Jr.
    Pvt. David Williams
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    Capt. Slaughter’s Company:
    Pvt. William Campbell
    Pvt. Joseph Delaney
    Pvt. William Fincham
    Pvt. James Johnston*
    Pvt. William Robert
    Pvt. Richard Roberts
    Pvt. John Rosson
    Pvt. Elzaphan Rucker
    Pvt. James Vowels

    Capt. David Stephenson’s Company:
    Pvt. Cornelius Cain
    Pvt. William Donavan
    ​
    Capt. Westfall’s Company:
    Sgt. Edward McCarty
    Pvt. Richard Cain
    Pvt. Zachariah Pigman
    Pvt. John Williams

    *Pvt. James Johnston reported in his pension affidavit in 1832, "I was then attached to the Company of Light infantry and sent to the Iron hills near the head of Elk under the Command of Genl. Sullivan we had a small skirmish with the British. We then returned to the main army and I joined my own regiment on the Evening before the battle of Brandywine." That Johnston's memory is imperfect is clear from his misidentification of General Maxwell as General Sullivan. His report that he rejoined the  regiment the night before Brandywine might be read to sow doubt on the participation of other detached men from the regiment in Maxwell's maneuvers on the American left at Brandywine. Unlike the other men listed above, however, Johnson is not listed as detached the September muster roll. I interpret that to mean that his short detachment was unique.

    [Updated 8/7/17 to add Pvt. William Donavan. Updated 9/12/20 to add James Johnston. Revised, 9/28/20.]

    Read More: "The 'B Team' of 1777: Maxwell's Light Infantry."

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