Walking the Berkshires

Out of the Frying Pan; Captain Gideon Olmsted, Privateer (part II)

His ship taken (and subsequently re-named Jamaica for service as a British warship); his crew impressed, imprisoned or scattered, and himself confined as a prisoner of war in the old fort at Montego Bay, Captain Gideon Olmsted had suffered cruel reversals as a privateer.  He endured a month of summer swelter in the fort before is circumstances changed.  The British armed sloop Active, Captain Underwood Commanding, had but 6 guns and a crew of 14 and lacked an experienced pilot to navigate the reefs of the Bahamas on a voyage to resupply the British in New York.  Captain Olmsted had just this knowledge from his peacetime voyages in the West Indies, and so one day he found himself brought before the owner of the Active, along with the Captain of the vessel, and offered a "compulsory" berth as second mate and trade captivity in the tropics for confinement in New York at the end of the voyage.

So it was that Olmsted and three other American prisoners, all Connecticut men but from a different ship than the poor old Polly, sailed on the Active bound for New York.  The cargo included rum, coffee, pimento and manufactured goods.  Provisions included sheep, goats, pigs, fowl and three large sea turtles.  They traveled in convoy lead by the Glasgow, and with Olmsted's assistance made their way safely through the Bahamas and even outdistancing many in the convoy as they rounded Cape Hatteras. To all outward appearances, Olmsted was a model prisoner.  Inside, he had no intention of rotting away in a prison hulk in New York harbor.

The Glasgow turned loose her charges on August 27th to make their way to New York under light escort, and Olmsted bided his time until the opportunity to strike presented itself.  It happened when they were on a course for Long Island, when Olmsted and seven picked men stood the watch shortly after midnight on September 6th, 1778.  His men, including the three Americans and others deemed the least threatening of the British crew had just come on deck when Olmsted ordered the gangway and afterhouse lashed tight.  A 4 pound gun and a swivel were aimed at the gangway and Olmsted spun the wheel and headed for Egg Harbor, New Jersey.

The Captain and two of the men below soon fired pistols through the companionway, wounding Olmsted but not disabling him, and threatened to blow up the ship if he did not surrender.  After daring each other to do their worst, Olmsted ordered the four pounder to fire into the cabin, and the fight continued for another day.  Spoons were melted for bullets, and efforts made to wedge the rudder, but by September 8th the British crew surrendered and the ship was Olmsted's prize.

It was an extraordinary feat of daring and heroism, but the laurels were soon to be snatched away, only this time by their own countrymen.  They were off Cape May when they encountered brig Convention, a Pennsylvania privateer under Captain Underwood that escorted them into Delaware Bay and on this basis claimed the Active as their prize.  Another privateer that was in the area when they sailed into the Bay also filed a claim, and The Philadelphia Admiralty Court under Judge George Ross, a Signer of the Declaration of Independence moved to condemn and sell the cargo even before Olmsted had the chance to make his claim.

Olmsted appealed this verdict and made his case for the Active as his lawful prize.  His prisoners all testified that he and not the Pennsylvanians had taken the ship, but a verdict awarded 3/4 of the proceeds to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and her native claimants, and but 1/4 to Olmsted and his men.  Olmsted appealed directly to the Court of Commissioners of Appeals of Congress, which on December 15th, 1778, ruled that the entire proceeds should be paid to Olmsted and the men who had seized the Active, but this was by no means the end of things, but only the beginning.

Olmsted's champion during his appeals was the military commander of Philadelphia, his fellow Nutmegger General Benedict Arnold.  Among the charges of misconduct subsequently brought against Arnold by Joseph Reed, President of Pennsylvania, was that his unworthy involvement had likely caused "the delay of justice in the courts of appeal."  This charge was dismissed as baseless but itself may have contributed to the erosion of Arnold's patriotism.

The value of the prize had been appropriated by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, converted to bonds and held by Judge Ross, the treasurer of Pennsylvania, who subsequently died in 1779.  As far as the Pennsylvania authorities were concerned, Ross held the bonds in a private capacity and they became embroiled in the settlement of his estate.  Olmsted has by this time returned home and then put to sea once more, and still had not received his full and lawful share.  He continued to fight for his claim for decades after the war was concluded, and it was not until 1809 that those who in the meanwhile had conspired to keep him from receiving his award were found guilty (and subsequently pardoned by President Madison).  Olmsted still maintained claims against Pennsylvania of roughly $30,000 at the time of his death in 1845.

All that was in the future.  In 1779 he commanded the Connecticut privateer Gamecock, and then in the Spring of 1780 he was master of the sloop Hawk, and during a successful cruise primarily in Long Island Sound he took several prizes, including the Brig St. Andrew.  That September he commanded the schooner Raven, and had another successful cruise.  But it was in 1782 that he set sail in command of the brigantine Nathaniel Greene (16 guns), only to be attacked well east of Nantucket Shoals by the British privateer Virginia (24 guns) , commanded by Captain Stanton Hazard of Halifax, and compelled to strike.  Olmsted was taken prisoner to New York, thus ending his revolutionary war service, but continued as a mariner and and unwavering defender of his legal claims against Pennsylvania, for many more years to come. 

He was 96 years old when he died.

Captain Gideon Olmsted, Privateer (part I)

The Olmsted family were among the first settlers of the Connecticut Colony.  One branch went on to help establish towns like Norwalk and Ridgefield, and we descend from them.  Another remained in central Connecticut, and can claim such notables as Frederick Law Olmsted in their pedigree.  They can also claim this dour looking fellow, a Connecticut privateer during the Revolution whose exploits lead to  one of the most notable legal battles in the early maritime of America.

Gideon Olmsted (b. 1748-49 d. 1845) began his Revolutionary service as a private soldier in George Pitkin's East Hartford Company of Spenser's militia regiment, and marched to the defense of Boston in the Spring of 1775.    In early 1776, however, Olmsted , previously an apprenticed seaman, took to the sea.  By the next year, he was master and part owner with his brother Aaron Olmsted and Abraham Miller, of a brand new sloop of 75 tons called the Seaflower.

Seaflower was a trim craft, but she lacked the one essential without which no privateer could flourish; she was without armament, and had great difficulty attracting a crew.  When she sailed into Long Island Sound at New London on November 7th, 1777 bound for the West Indies with a cargo of horses, swine, tobacco, onions, bricks and barrel hoops and staves, he had but seven crew and no cannon.  He made it to French Guadeloupe, but on the return voyage on April 6th, 1778, the Seaflower was taken by the British privateer Weir (Captain Williams commanding) and taken under a prize crew to New York.

Captain Olmsted and his crew remained prisoners on the Weir until they were eventually put ashore at Cape Francois on the Island of Hispaniola, from which they looked for opportunities to put to sea on a privateer.  In June, 1778, Captain Olmsted took command of the American brig Polly, whose owner had come to the area looking for a crew and with a number of blank commissions for officers under a Letter-of-Mark.  The Polly was a new vessel pierced for 16 guns. According to a 1933 biography of Captain Olmsted by Louis Middlebrook, most of the Americans in her crew were either commissioned or rated, with a Scotch sailing master, a French Lieutenant and Surgeon along with most of her petty officers and crew, a mulatto cook and even a few Spaniards.  A French merchant representing the owners of the Polly sailed as supercargo, and on July 4th, 1778, the Polly put to sea from Port au Prince on a privateering cruise northward.

Four days later while cruising off Jamaica, a ship approached flying British colors.  This was the ship-rigged sloop-of-war Ostrich, Captain Peter Rainier commanding: 200 tons burthen and armed with 16 carriage guns, cohorns and swivels and a crew of 110.  The Polly was a brig-rigged corvette of 200 tons mounting 16 cannon (6 and 9 pounders) along with nearly 2 dozen swivels and 102 men.  Olmsted, flying French colors, beat to quarters, and in response to a hail from the Ostrich, American colors were raised and a broadside unleashed.

The battle was fierce and bloody, with each ship maneuvering for advantage and broadsides blazing.  The Captain of the Ostrich was badly wounded early in the exchange and the master killed. As the afternoon wore on, the Polly was able to grapple the Ostrich and board her, during which Lieutenant O'Bryan of the Ostrich survived having his throat and larynx slashed by a pike.  The Ostrich caught fire and her colors were struck as many of her crew jumped overboard in expectation that the ship might explode.  The Polly likewise disengaged, but the fire was suppressed and the fight resumed once more.

The Ostrich endured another 30 minutes of fighting and all but her bow guns put out of action.  Yet just as victory seemed certain, another combatant entered the fray.  This was the British brig-rigged 'Lowestoffe''s Prize, a 10 gun vessel that had previously been an American from North Carolina and had been captured, as her new name suggests, by the Lowestoffe, a British frigate.  The prizemaster initially assigned to her had been a Lieutenant from the Lowestoffe by the name of Horatio Nelson.  Now the Lowestoffe's Prize turned the tide of battle, and at last Captain Olmsted was compelled to strike.  At least 36 of his crew were either dead or wounded.

Olmsted's initial voyages proved decidedly unsuccessful, and he was once again a prisoner. Yet the most remarkable exploit of his privateering career was soon to come.  We will pick up that part of this yarn in a subsequent post.

I Spy

I've been enjoying Alexander Rose's Washington's Spies; The Story of America's First Spy Ring, not only for the solid writing and his excellent detective work piecing together the inner workings of Patriot espionage in and around New York, but also because it contains a trove of period details you won't find in the D.A.R. archives or in your ancestor's Society of the Cincinnati biography.

Rose memorably describes New York during this period as "A bustling mercantile metropolis descended into a mare'snest, the leading red-light district in North America, the black market capital of the Revolution."  A third of it gutted by fire, the city was a brimming caldera of Tory refugees, smugglers, soldiers of the British empire and prisoners of war rotting away in floating hulks and packed on land in noisome hells where they died in appalling numbers. 

More than 500 prostitutes worked the notorious "Holy Ground" - then owned by the Church of England - at the site of today's "Ground Zero".  During the American occupation of the City in 1776, many a militiaman became "hors de combat" with the clap, and it was no different when New York became the main British garrison of the war. 

Loyalist privateers based in New York captured thousands of prizes during the war, and this fact reminds me that I am long overdue for a post on the remarkable career of Connecticut privateer and very distant relation Gideon Olmsted.  We shall remedy that situation early in this new year, as well as get back to the half finished series of posts I started last Summer on Knyphausen's Raid  which left off after the Battle of Connecticut Farms. 

As to the spy ring that is central to Rose's story, it is a gripping tale with invisible in and ciphers aplenty, but it also includes insights from recent scholarship that shed new light on old controversies.  Rose reveals that it is now known that the great fire that swept through the western third of the city as the patriots retreated from MManhattan may later have been encouraged by ad hoc arsonists, but was initially sparked by careless British camp followers hunkered down in a storehouse near Whitehall-dock.  They "procured from an adjacent yard a number of pine boards, the ends of which they places in the chimney [with] their opposite points resting on the cedar floor of the apartment" and subsequently left their fire unattended. 

I also had not been aware that the discredited Major Robert Rogers of French and Indian War fame had a central role in the discovery and capture of American spy Nathan Hale.  In 2000, a manuscript was donated to the Library of Congress that was written by Connecticut Tory Consider Tiffany and had been kept by his family for many generations.  Tiffany's account describes how Roger's suspected a spy had been smuggled across the Sound, and later not only spotted hale but through a ruse of friendship got him to betray himself in front of witnesses.  A British diary by an officer of the 40th foot confirms that Rogers was the spycatcher, recording that "Nathan Hales, a Captain in the Rebel Army & a spy was taken by Majr. Rogers..."

Aside from these juicy details, I believe I may know a descendant of Washington's spy-master, Benjamin  Tallmadge, and am going to put the question to my friend when I return to work tomorrow.  Both he and Benjamin Tallmadge share the same last name and come from the same part of Long Island.  Tallmadge retired just down the road from me in Litchfield, Connecticut, and his portrait at right of is in the collection of the Litchfield Historical Society.

Not only that, I discovered yet another mention of my ancestor Matthias Ogden in Washington's Spies, who not only concocted a plan to kidnap the heir to the British throne but also managed his own intelligence network while commanding the 1st New Jersey Continentals.  Just last month, in fact, I received a message from a descendant of one of his officers - Captain Daniel Baldwin, who lost lost a leg at Germantown - asking if I had any information about his later work as a spy in Newark's "Neutral Ground" reporting to Matthias Ogden.  Such are the joys of geneablogging!

The Annual Armistice Day Post

It has been 90 years since the end of the Great War.  There are only 10 confirmed veterans of WWI still with us who were there for the first Armistice Day.  There were 23 alive last year at this time, and 51 in 2006.  Next year may very well be the last.

Three of Britain's surviving 4 WWI veterans participated in remembrance ceremonies today. From the BBC:

"Henry Allingham, 112, Harry Patch, 110, and Bill Stone, 108, represented the RAF, Army and Royal Navy respectively at a ceremony at London's Cenotaph...

Mr Allingham - the world's oldest World War I veteran and the UK's oldest man - said: 'I'm glad to be here. It means a lot to me. I hope people realise what my pals sacrificed on their behalf.'

The last-known survivor of the Battle of Jutland, who is partially deaf and nearly blind, said his comrades should never be forgotten, and he could not describe what they meant to him."

The last living US veteran of the Great War is Frank Buckles, who enlisted at 15 in in 1917 and drove ambulances and motorcycles in France.  He was honored this past May at the white house as the last American doughboy.

Losses from the Great War are unimaginable, even in hindsight from the other side of WWII: 41 million casualties, military and civilian.  This includes 1,397,800 French military deaths with 4,226,000 wounded. Russia and the German empire lost more.  Pueblo, Colorado's courthouse plaque commemorated 62 deaths in WWI, until historian Michael P. Thomason started to research their stories and discovered 85 more area residents who served and died.

Memories fade, and old soldiers fade away.  It is imperative that we remember.

For my relatives: Ned Olmsted, Assistant Chief of Staff, G-1, 27th Division and Sergeant Stanley Clark of Newburgh, New York, who served in one of the National Guard units that comprised the 27th Division.

An Aunt Kate Day

What a day for sailing this would be!  The wind is blowing across the bay from the West, so there would be no need to tack against it to gain the Islands on the horizon or run before it to return.  Later it will shift to its customary southwest breeze. The sky is free of haze or cloud, and the air is clean and bright. Ospreys soar along the bluff and call out in the wind.  How my earthbound feet want to fly across the waves with a sail for wings.

There is a curious craft with a red sail making its way toward the west end of the Cape Cod Canal as I write.  She's made of wood - that much is clear through the scope by the great picture windows facing the bay - but her sail is stiffened throughout with stays like those of a Chinese Junk.  There actually is, or was, a Junk that sailed the waters of Buzzards Bay when I was growing up.  There are sloops and yawls among the pleasure craft today, and on very windy afternoons the windsurfers dance across the waves like skipping stones. Later today I may see a great rainbow-hued spinnaker billowing before the mast of some inbound vessel. 

To my mind there are not enough sailing craft in the bay today for such a glorious late summer Sunday.  Some of the best sailing weather is yet to come, in autumn wind with the whitecaps foaming, but today would be a day to savor summer to the dregs with the wind in my face and the blue water sparkling alongside. 

Tonight, if the weather holds, I'll bring the children down to the beach and into the water to swim as we watch the stars.  Maybe there will still be phosphorus glowing around us as there were earlier in summer.  Maybe the pale face of Jupiter will leave a shining path on the face of the water. 

My Great Great Aunt Kate, so I am told though she died when I was still an infant, had a favorite psalm for days like these:

"This is the day that the Lord hath made.  Let us rejoice and be glad in it!"

Such days as these are "Aunt Kate Days".

Tenting Tonight

We are heading for the Northway and the massive French and Indian War Grand Encampment at Fort Ticonderoga this weekend to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the Battle of Carillon.  We will be observers at this event, as were one or two of my ancestors: certainly Reverend Jonathan Ingersoll, Chaplain in Colonel Eleazer Fitch's 4th Connecticut Provincial Regiment, and possibly Lieutenant Elias Dayton of the Jersey Blues who was there the next year when the British took Ticonderoga.  Given my wife's French Canadian heritage, it is possible that some of her ancestors fought with the French.  In any case we'll be camping at Putnam Pond and enjoying the scenery and the gun smoke and a few days away from things like cell phones and blogging. 

Anticipate many pictures on our return.

Join the Circus

"Just join the circus like you meant to do, when you were so high.
Pitch your troubles under a tent and you’re bound to lose ‘em by and by.
Say so long to fair Schenectady greet sweet Santa Fe.
Toss your hat and cane in a sack again,
Shoulder your pack and then hitch up the shay.
Kiss the cat and never look back again,
When the circus comes your way."

The "Greatest Show on Earth" is in Albany, and four tickets came my way for my birthday, so today we packed the clowns in the car and headed for the circus.  Old Uncle Ira would have been proud. Thanks Mom and Dad!

Tryon's Danbury Raid (Part 3)

"Gather every available man and march in pursuit to intercept and give battle." This was the message carried throughout western Connecticut and nearby New York in response to Tryon's Danbury Raid in late April, 1777.  Some, like Benedict Arnold and David Wooster, were fast on the heels of the British and their Loyalist allies.  Others marched from farther afield. As with the Lexington alarm two years previously, many militia units and individuals turned out, but not all of them arrived in time to drive the British back.

The alarm reached Sharon, Connecticut, deep in the northwest corner of the state, sayting that the British were burning Danbury.  More than 100 men set off down the Housatonic Valley, among them, Lieutenant Samuel Elmore, Jr., on leave from the Northern Department where he served in the Continental Regiment of his father, Colonel Samuel Elmore.  Young Elmore arrived home on the very day that word of Tryon's raid reached Sharon. He must have had a swift horse, because he reached the shore on April 28th in time to participate in the final attack on the withdrawing British and where unfortunately he lost his life.

The most famous recipient of the Danbury alarm, however, resided in the Fredericksburgh section of what is now Patterson, New York.  Colonel Henry Ludington of the 7th Dutchess County militia (Patterson was then in the south precinct of Dutchess) received an exhausted express rider at about 9:00 p.m. on April 26th when the British were already in Danbury.  A biography of Colonel Ludington , published privately by his descendants in 1907 and styled a memoir , makes a claim that has gone down in legend:

"His regiment was disbanded, its members scattered at their homes, many at considerable distances.  He must stay there, to muster all who came in.   The messenger from Danbury could ride no more, and there was no neighbor within call.  In this emergency he turned to his daughter Sibyl, who, a few days before, had passed her sixteenth birthday, and bade her to take a horse, and ride for the men, and tell them to be at his house by daybreak.  Imagination only can picture what it was a century and a quarter ago, on a dark night, with reckless bands of 'Cowboys' and 'Skinners' abroad in the land.  But the child performed her task, clinging to a man's saddle, and guiding her steed with only a hempen halter, as she rode through the night, bearing the news of the sack of Danbury.  There is no extravagance in comparing her ride with that of Paul Revere and its midnight message.  Nor was her errand less efficient than his.  By daybreak nearly the whole regiment was mustered before her father's house at Fredericksburgh, and an hour or two later was on the march for vengeance on the raiders."

The "memoir" goes on to tell how the regiment reached Redding in time to join up with Arnold and Silliman and fought at Ridgefield, but this cannot be, as Arnold and Silliman spent the night of the 26th at Bethel, not Redding, and moved out in the morning to intercept the British at Ridgefield.  Redding is East of Ridgefield, so the Dutchess men need not have gone there to meet up with the defenders of Ridgefield.  Henry Noble MacCracken in his 1956 history Old Dutchess Forever!, describes Sibyl Ludington's forty mile ride on the 26th but adds "This, at least, is the tradition of the family (pg. 386)."  He also has the Dutchess men at the Battle of Ridgefield, but notes; "It must be added that Connecticut records at Ridgefield make no mention of Ludington's aid."  J. L. Bell of the blog Boston 1775 is skeptical about Sibyl's ride, observing that there is no record that she made it, nor that the Dutchess Regiment fought at Ridgefield, written before the 20th century.  In researching this post I did find one mention slightly older than the 1907 "memoir" that was written in 1896, but Bell's point still stands.

I believe it is quite likely that Ludington's regiment did march early on April 27th, but not that it reached Ridgefield, more than 20 miles distant, in time to take part in the battle early that afternoon.  As for Sibyl's ride, it could have happened, and many people believe it did.  I can shed no more light on the matter.

So who did oppose the British at Ridgefield?  To answer that, we must return to April 26th and the rain-soaked encampment at Bethel, three miles from Danbury of Major General David Wooster, Brigadier General Benedict Arnold, Brigadier General Gold Selleck Silliman, and between 500-600 militia.  General Wooster decided to split his forces to intercept the British should they return by Ridgefield rather than the Redding road, and so sent Arnold and Silliman across country with about 400 men from the Fairfield militia for this purpose.  He kept 200 men with him, and planned to strike the rear of the enemy column when the opportunity offered. 

Arnold and Silliman reached Ridgefield about 11:00 a.m. on April 27th and heard firing to the north along the road to Danbury that told them of the British approach.  Here they found Captain Ebenezer Jones with several dozen raw recruits from the 1st Ridgefield militia.  There were some New York militia there as well but these were from nearby North Salem, New York - a company of 50 men from Colonel Samuel Drake's 3rd Regiment of Westchester Militia under Captain Samuel Lawrence.  Finally, there were some continental troops under Ridgefield's own Colonel David Burr Bradley, the dark haired cousin of Aaron Burr and commander of the newly re-established 5th Connecticut Continental Line.  This was a three year's regiment and recruiting had been very slow to fill its quota.  There were not more than 50 men with Bradley, but among them was my ancestor, and Ridgefield native, Lt. Ebenezer Olmsted.  This was all the force at hand, and Arnold set about erecting a barricade of wagons and ox carts across Ridgefield's broad main street to wait for the British.

Tryon, meanwhile, had left Danbury still in flames early that morning, electing to return to the ships via the Sugar Hollow Rd. toward Ridgefield.  The Ridgefield, Conn 1708 - 1908 Bi-centennial Celebration says; "After the conflagration, pork fat was deep in the streets" following the British raid on Danbury.  The colum included 5 ox teams, 50-60 cattle and about the same number of sheep.  The rearguard were the 23rd Royal Welsh Fusiliers in their high bearskin headgear, and this may be the reason that some in Ridgefield took them for Hessians in mitre caps.  The end of the column had reached Ridgebury when Wooster swooped out the woods about three miles north of Ridgefield and crashed into Tryon’s rear guard as it paused briefly for breakfast. Killing at least two redcoats, Wooster took about fifteen prisoners in this first engagement, then vanished back into the trees. 

With Wooster using hit and run, swarming tactics, Tryon ordered three of the expedition's six cannon to the rear, served by the 4th Battalion, Royal Artillery.  A mile down the road General Wooster attacked again, but this time the cannon made the difference.  As he rallied his men, Major General Wooster was struck in the groin and fell from his horse.  His inexperienced militia broke, though his men had the forethought to strip off his General's sash as they bore him away to Danbury where he died five days later.  Captain Stephen Rowe Bradley eventually pulled the militia together and continued the pursuit.

The British pushed on down Ridgefield's mile-long center street in a solid column with the other three cannon up front and flankers to either side.  It was a little after noon.  They found a strong force of 500-600 men opposing them.  There were a number of excellent American officers at the barricade as well, and they had posted additional men to guard their flanks.  The British tested the defenders and were pushed back, then began a sharp engagement including close combat and the cannon which blasted the barricade and several nearby homes.  The British advanced on three sides and hurled a 600-man column under the command of Sir William Erskine against the barricade.  Lt. Colonel Alexander Gold ,who lead the Fairfield militia to Ridgefield, was shot from his horse defending the barricade and fell dead "with bloody sword."  The British broke through but at the cost on each side of more than a dozen killed and twice that wounded. 

The Patriots gave way but under Arnold's direction made a running fight down the broad street.  The General was characteristically brave to the point of recklessness, but finally a volley of nine bullets struck and killed his horse, pinning him to the ground.  As he struggled to untangle himself, one of the Royalists rushed forward with the bayonet shouting "Surrender, you are my prisoner!"  Arnold replied "Not yet", and freeing one of his pistols shot the other dead and managed to escape unscathed into some nearby bushes.

Arnold and Silliman withdrew to the south of Town and the third and final phase of the Battle of Ridgefield ended.  The British burned half a dozen buildings in Ridgefield, but though it had been pierced by seven cannonballs (one of which remains embedded to this day) and was initially set alight, they spared Timothy Keeler's tavern when a Tory neighbor feared the flames would spread to his property.  Later this loyalist told his townsman; "You may thank me that your house is safe." Keeler retorted; "No sir! I will not thank a Tory for anything.  I thank the Lord for the North Wind."

The British camped south of Town that night, burning a house to signal the ships waiting for them in the Sound.  Engineer officier Captain Robertson recorded their losses in the three parts of the battle as "50 or 60 men Killed and Wounded and 4 or 5 Officers, Major (Henry Hope, Captain Rutherford, etc." All around them, the countryside was marching.  Arnold and Silliman and their men would be joined by others, and already were planning how next to block the British.  We will discuss the final act of Tryon's Danbury Raid tomorrow, the anniversary of the concluding fight at Compo Hill.

Tryon's Danbury Raid (Part 1)

On this date in 1777, a British fleet consisting of two sloops, (Senegal and Swan), the brig Halifax, a dozen transports, a hospital ship, and upwards of ten smaller vessels lay off the coast of Connecticut.  More than 2,000 British and loyalist troops came ashore on the beach at Cedar Point near the mouth of the Saugatuck River and assembled on nearby Compo Hill.  Their objective was the Continental supply depot at Danbury, some 25 miles inland, and their leader was New York's colonial governor William Tryon who held the the local rank of Major General.   Tryon's Danbury Raid would prove to be the largest engagement in Connecticut during the American War of Independence.

During the next three days, Tryon's raiding force would lay waste to Danbury and fight two sharp engagements with the patriot forces: first at Ridgefield and back again at Compo Hill.   Along the way, Benedict Arnold would earn a belated second star for his heroism, patriot General Wooster would become another of the revolution's martyrs, and a young girl from neighboring New York would ride into legend.

Commemorations of the the Danbury Raid and subsequent memory have sometimes obscured the actual history.  Both the British and the Patriots claimed success, though the near term results clearly favored the invaders.  The descendants of two of my revolutionary ancestors - Ebenezer Olmsted of the 5th Connecticut Continentals and Thadeus Thompson of Lamb's Artillery - subsequently claimed these forebears were involved in repulsing the British invasion, but the evidence exists for only one of them to have done so.  On this 231st anniversary of Tryon's Danbury Raid, we will study this event and see whether we can clear up some of the ambiguities in how it is remembered. 

We'll begin with the Bfritish order of battle.  We can be far more confident about the composition of the British forces involved than the continental and militia units that rallied to oppose them as the raid progressed.

The corp of Tryon's invasion force consisted of between 200-250 men taken from each of six British regiments, the better part of two brigades from Sir William Howe's army in New York.  The First Brigade was under the command of Brigadier General James Agnew, who was later wounded at the Battle of Brandywine and killed shortly thereafter at Germantown. When Howe planned the raid, Agnew had been considered second in command, but that role was ultimately given to the Quartermaster General of the British Army in America, Sir William Erskine. 

Agnew's Brigade for this expedition included several companies of the His Majesty's 4th  Regiment of Foot (Kings Own), the 15th Regiment of Foot, and the 23rd Royal Welsh Fusiliers (shown below in a painting by Don Troiani).  The other British brigade consisted of detachments from the 27th Inniskillings (whose flags appear at left) and the 44th and 64th regiments of foot. The two royal regimentswere old and venerable units that had seen hard fighting during the return to Boston from Lexington and Concord.  Their light and grenadier companies were in the thick of the fight at Bunker Hill.  The 15th were among the reinforcements sent from Ireland in 1776 for the invasion of New York.  They were issued short jackets, gaiter coveralls and parred down hats for their American service, and along with the rest of their brigade fought at Long Island, Harlem Heights and White Plains.  The 44th had served under Braddock during the French and Indian War and carried the memory of the massacre at Monongahela.  The 64th (illustrated at right) wore black uniform facings and their Grenadier company was part of  the detachment that took part in Tryon's raid.  They had been part of the Boston garrison as early as 1768, and under its Colonel Alexander Leslie shed first blood at Salem Mass in February, 1775, three months before the shot heard round the world. They, too, had served through Long Island, and just a month before been involved in another British raid on colonial supplies, this time at Peekskill, New York.

The rest of Tryon's force included 300 loyalists: the Prince of Wales American Regiment in their new green jackets with white facings.  They had been recruited from several states and were led by Monfort Browne, the Royal governor of New Providence, who had been held prisoner in Connecticut for a time until exchanged for a Continental general taken at Long Island.  There were also a dozen troopers from the 17th Light dragoons under a subaltern, with the death's head embroidered on their plumed caps.  Significantly, and unlike the expedition to Lexington and Concord, the British brought with them a detachment of the 4th battalion, Royal Artillery with six cannon.  These would play a significant part in the raid. There is some disagreement as to the type of ordinance used - anything from 3 to 12 pound cannon have been mentioned by later historians.  Considering that a cannonball remains in the corner post of the Keeler tavern in Ridgefield that was fired during the battle that was fought there on April 27th, this ought to be something I can confirm on my next drive downstate.

Contrary to later accounts and claims that two Hessians were mortally wounded at Ridgefield, I am unaware of any contemporary evidence to confirm that British force included German mercenaries.  Ridgefield's Hessian Drive was so called because two skeletons thought to be those of Hessians were unearthed in sandpit in that vicinity in 1874.      

The British landed in the early evening and were on the road to Danbury by 10 that night.  As their destination became apparent, express riders fanned out to the north, east and west to raise the alarm and turn out the militia in defense of the state.  We will discuss the British route of march, how far the alarm traveled, and the patriot response in tomorrow's post.

The Tally Sheet of Shame

Unlike many people, I know the names of every one of my 32 Gr-Great grandparents.  Nearly all of them were in this country by the time of the American Civil War, and those who served in that conflict fought for the North - though here the exception proves the rule, as there was one Gracie ancestor with a brother who became a Confederate Brigadier, though the family was from New Jersey. 

Many lines in the pedigree can be traced far deeper into the past.  A significant number have been in North America for 12 generations.  I know about only a fraction of the 2,048 individuals in that generation of my family tree, but what I do know presents a particular challenge when looking to the ancestral past to understand something so volatile and deeply rooted as matters of race.  Proud as I am of their many accomplishments, it isn't stretching the point to say there is hardly a frontier atrocity or witch hunt in 17th or 18th century New England where I cannot place at least one of my forebears.  As for race relations, there wasn't one of them in that period who existed outside of the transatlantic mercantile system that sustained our colonial economy on the lives and labor of slaves.

I take pains to confront these ancestors on their own terms, to try to understand them in the context of the times in which they lived.  Even a family archive with as rich a trove of primary source material as ours only preserves what was deemed worthy of passing down.  A Society of Colonial Wars claim in our files tells me much about the service record of an ancestor from Connecticut:a chaplain with two different regiments during the French and Indian War.  It does not mention that he owned slaves, yet there are records for that as well.  To understand that part of his past means coming to grips with slavery in the northern states, but he is not the only northern slaveholder in this family tree, and we have southern kin as well. 

Reverend Jonathan Ingersoll (abt. 1713-1778), the French and Indian War veteran, was my 6th-Great Grandfather and a congregationalist minister in Ridgefield, Connecticut.  The Ridgefield Historical Society reveals:

Several prominent Ridgefield families of the period were slave owners, including Congregational Church Minister Jonathan Ingersoll. Inhuman as it seems, slave transactions such as Ingersoll's 1777 freeing of twenty-year old "Cyphax" were considered property transfers and duly recorded in town land records.

In this, Reverend Ingersoll was not unique, for half the ministers in Connecticut owned slaves on the eve of the Revolution.  Furthermore, Cyphax was freed the year before Ingersoll died and it is quite possible that the minister was settling his affairs.   Even as a free man, Cyphax faced Connecticut's "Black Code" that made for a very precarious existence:

Discrimination against free blacks was more severe in Connecticut than in other New England colonies. Their lives were strongly proscribed even before they became numerous. In 1690, the colony forbade blacks and Indians to be on the streets after 9 p.m. It also forbid black "servants" to wander beyond the limits of the towns or places where they belonged without a ticket or pass from their masters or the authorities. A law of 1708, citing frequent fights between slaves and whites, imposed a minimum penalty of 30 lashes on any black who disturbed the peace or who attempted to strike a white person. Even speech was subject to control. By a 1730 law, any black, Indian, or mulatto slave "who uttered or published, about any white person, words which would be actionable if uttered by a free white was, upon conviction before any one assistant or justice of the peace, to be whipped with forty lashes."

The Hartford Courant maintains an on-line collection of superb resources and articles called: Complicity. How Connecticut Chained Itself To Slavery.  There were more than 6,000 slaves in Connecticut by the time that my ancestor Jonathan Ingersoll manumitted Cyphax.  Slavery in Connecticut lasted for over 200 years.  It died a long death after the Revolution and was not fully abolished until 1848.

The Ogden branch of our family is justly proud of its prominent members who were considered among the "first families" of New Jersey at a time when that got you into the Social Register.  Signers and Senators, friends of Lafayette and companions of Arnold and Burr, they lead fascinating and active lives.  They also owned slaves, as did most of the principle families in Elizabethtown.  In the previous generation, my ancestor Robert Ogden was presiding Justice in 1741 when 2 or 3 blacks fleeing the panic in New York which followed the Great Negro Plot were apprehended in Elizabethtown.  His court formally sanctioned their execution by burning at the stake before the courthouse and local citizens were reimbursed for the cost of firewood and iron manacles they provided for the victims.

Hannah (Dayton) Ogden, widow of my collateral relation General Matthias Ogden of Revolutionary fame, and daughter of my direct ancestor General Elias Dayton, freed her mulatto slave, Michael Hardman, in 1797.  He was 26 years old. I discovered this bit of family history in Theodore Thayer's As We Were -The Story of Old Elizabethtown, published in 1964 by the New Jersey Historical Society.  Thayer also records that my ancestor Aaron Ogden, Governor of the State in 1812 and former US Senator and Presidential Elector, maintained a couple of slaves until he went bankrupt in the 1820s.  Like Connecticut, Slavery in New Jersey was practically as old as the first English settlement and persisted until 1846.

"New Jersey's slave population, unlike that of other colonies, actually increased during the Revolution, mainly through migration from other states. But the white population increased at a much faster rate, and wages for laborers became affordable to employers, while the cost of feeding and maintaining and guarding slaves remained high. By 1786, when a ban on slave importation into New Jersey took effect, the institution was dying an economic death. The 1800 census counted 12,422 New Jersey slaves, but the white population had boomed from 1786 to 1800, increasing at a rate six times that of blacks. This is not surprising, in part because in the same year New Jersey banned importing of slaves it also forbid free blacks from entering the state with intent to settle there."

My Gr-great Grandfather Dayton Ogden (1833-1914) married Esther Gracie, the sister of the aforementioned Confederate Brigadier, Archibald Gracie (1832-1864).  The Gracies were a New York mercantile family of great renown who resided in Elizabeth.  Her Grandfather, the first Archibald Gracie (1755-1829), was truly a merchant prince in the late 18th and early 19th centuries:

"As cotton was becoming a staple in the transatlantic trade, Scotsman Archibald Gracie immigrated to New York after training in Liverpool, Great Britain’s great cotton port. Gracie became an international shipping magnate, a merchant prince, building a summer home on the East River before losing much of his wealth. His son and grandson left the city to become cotton brokers in Mobile, Alabama, but their family’s summer home, today called Gracie Mansion, is the official residence of the mayor of New York."

All the same, in 1819 this same shipping magnate served on a committee of prominent New York Merchants to "devise some plan for checking the spread of African slavery." 

His son Archibald Gracie Jr. (1795 - 1865) married Elizabeth Davidson Bethune of Charleston, South Carolina, shown in a teenage portrait at left.  Her mother Margaret Willeman (b. 1782) was a second generation German immigrant.  The Willeman family came to South Carolina from Baden-Württemberg in the 1760s.  Her father, Christoph Willemann (b. 1748), appears in the 1790 Census as the head of a household with 2 free white males, 3 free white females, and 57 slaves.  Her Uncle, Jacob Willemann, allowed his slave Leander to buy his freedom for 900 pounds current money, or about 130 pounds sterling:

"I...do hereby declare that the said sum...was delivered to me by...Leander from time to time as Monies which he had by his great care, diligence and industry in his business Trade or occupation of a Butcher for several years passed got together and earned."

According to Against the Odds: Free Blacks in the Slave Societies of the Americas, a manumission deed from Jacob Willemann also shows that several years latter, he sold a slave Diana her freedom and that of her daughter for "the earnings and gains arising from her Labour and Industry [which she was] from time to time allowed to carry on and transact  during the term of her servitude."

Elizabeth, New Jersey was also a popular summer retreat for southerners in the age before air conditioning  and a number of them, including General Winfield Scott of Virginia, made their residence there. General Archibald Gracie (1832-1864) married Josephine Mayo, whose Virginia grandfather John Mayo married Abigail deHart of Elizabethtown.  Another southerner who arrived in New Jersey and married more directly into the family was Frederick Beasely D.D. (1777-1845) of Chowan County, North Carolina.  He was my 4th-Great Grandfather and wed the daughter of Constitution Signer Jonathan Dayton.  Beasely's mother, Elizabeth (Blount) Beasely, is listed in the 1790 census as the female head of a household that possessed 20 slaves.

I am not satisfied with simply outing my slave-owning ancestors.  It is too convenient to simply discredit and dismiss them as a way of distancing myself from the values and attitudes that allowed them to participate in and to profit by a racist system that countenanced slavery.  It is too simple to project the expectations of the present on the past.  Social change is neither quick nor self-evident...

...I remember a ride I got once from an Afrikaner farmer in Namibia.  I confess I expected him to be what I had come to think of as a typical Boer, and he certainly fit the profile in his rolled knee socks and his black farm workers riding in the dust in the back of his open truck.  I climbed inside and we began the customary exchange of pleasantries, but when he learned that I was living with and teaching black people his response completely put my prejudice to shame.  He told me that it was very hard for an Afrikaner to go against his parents and his church, but that was what was required in a post-apartheid country with majority rule. 

"Some day" he told me, "I will come home to my wife and I won't say I've invited my coloured friend and my black friend over for dinner.  I'll just say it is Johannes and Erasmus.  I don't want to always think about the colour.  I am not there yet, but I want to be."  I looked at him, there on the cusp of a strange new world, and told him I thought he was well ahead of the rest of us.