Walking the Berkshires

Why My Ancestors Fought in the Civil War

Our family archives, rich in material for some branches of the tree as they are, contain very little first hand testimony as to why my ancestors enlisted in various Union regiments (and one Confederate) during the Civil War.  Their pension records provide some clues, along with a rare surviving letter or two, but there is nothing definitive about their motivations for doing so.  Still, one can draw a few inferences.

Brothers Theodore and Nathaniel Abbott were 19 and 17 years old respectively according to the 1860 census and lived in New York City.  Theodore was a mechanic who enlisted in May, 1861 in the 9th New York (Hawkin's Zouaves) and served for a two year enlistment.  Nathaniel joined the 133rd NY (2nd Metropolitans), a unit that recruited heavily from the metropolitan police force in which his father was then a policeman and in which the son would also serve after the war.  

There were a number of younger Abbott siblings as well as their maternal grandmother living in their apartment, so one of their motives may have been the 13 dollars a month (and in Nathaniel's case, an enlistment bounty) to provide support for the family.  Theodore''s early enlistment in a flamboyant Zouave unit may also indicate a sense of adventure.  Nathaniel fell sick soon after arriving at Fort Monroe and was left behind when his regiment sailed for Louisiana, but the following year he enrolled in the 10th Regiment Veteran Reserve Corps and served until late 1865.  Whether money or patriotism prompted his reenlistment can only be speculated but he was certainly under no legal obligation to do so.

Private William Taylor was mustered into Company A, 1st NY "Lincoln" Cavalry on July 27th, 1861 in New York City.  A first generation immigrant from England, a weaver by trade with a wife and young family, he chose a branch of service for which he may not have been suited, for he was discharged disabled that October after been thrown from a horse at Camp Meigs in Washington, D.C.  Again, gainful employment may have motivated his service, but perhaps also a feeling of duty to his new country.  He died from complications from his injuries in 1864.

Young Samuel Barker, Jr. lied about his age to enlist in the 37th Wisconsin Infantry in March, 1865.  He and his unhappily married mother and young sister were living in poverty when he enrolled.  He served less than 90 days and was sick in camp as well when the war ended.  The enlistment bounty was a prime motivator for him, according to a surviving family letter.

William Nisbet Olmsted was a member of the elite 7th NYSM, a bandbox regiment which claimed members from the best of New York City Society.  He served for one month at the outset of the war, marching to the Capitol and purloining Congressional Stationery before heading back to New York and a career in the China Trade.  For him, he met his obligation as a gentleman to show courage and do his duty but appears had no stronger attachment to fighting in the cause of the Union.

The Confederate Brigadier from New Jersey, Archibald Gracie, Jr. fought for the honor of his wife and mother's people who were from the South, initially as captain of a militia company in Mobile where he had managed his family's business interests since resigning from the US Infantry in 1856.  

Charles G. Johnson of New York  was a wagoner, Company B, 5th New York Volunteer Inf. (Duryea's Zouaves) 1861-1863 and then for a third year in Company G., 146th New York Volunteer Inf.  He was a deeply religious man and this may well  have helped him withstand the stress of long service, as McPherson notes in For Cause and Comrades, but I do not know whether he held abolitionist sentiments.  Nor do I know what motivated Jesse M. Jones to enlist as Hospital Steward on the U.S.S. Monitor, but he fortuitously resigned before the ironclad foundered off Cape Hatteras.

Patriotism, a better life, belonging to something bigger than themselves.  Bonds of family, class and friendship.  Honor and courage and the ideals of manhood.  I sense that these may have been behind some of their decisions to fight.  The fact of their service does not mean that they were at all times heroic, nor that they held to the highest of purposes.  They were, after all, human beings with human frailties.  But they did enlist, and in some cases reenlist, and whether they stepped off at the very outset or in the very last moments of the war, all of them volunteered and for whatever personal reasons felt it was the right choice. 

A Tory Conflicted

My ancestor William Currie, Anglican minister at St. Davids in Radnor, Pennsylvania for many years prior to the Revolution, was unable to reconcile continuing his ministry while the colonies were in armed rebellion against the king and head of his church.  His original letter of resignation hangs on a wall in an antechamber of the church, along with a typed transcription which I reproduce here:

"To the Wardens and Vestrymen of St. David's Church

May ye 18th, 1776

Gentlemen

Age & infirmity have rendered me unable to officiate any longer, I take this method to inform you that I shall decline attending your church any more, but though providence has so ordered that I Serve you no more in public, yet God forbid that I should cease to pray for you in private; No: as I have taken the best care I was able under an infirm State of health to Shew you the good and right way, So while I breath(e); I will not cease to pray that God may give you his grace and enable you to walk in it - - - And as I Shall not cease to pray for you,, I beseech you neglect not to pray for your Selves.  Prayer is at all times your duty, but more especially in troublesome times.  When deprived of the Church, make use of the Closet, and there pour out your Complaints to him who Seeth in secret, & will in his own good time reward you oppenly (sic)..  A Devout man 'tho he has but his Chamber to retire to, and his doors be shut upon him, yet he lives as it were in Goshen.  When flashed of Judgement burst upon other persons, tis calm in the prayer room.  When the destroying Angel has overrun every house in Egypt with death, when there was nothing but Carcasses & Crying in each dwelling, There was not one Shriek in all the land of Goshen.  When a thick darkness fell upon the nation, the praying Israelites had light in all their dwellings.  And when a Sad Dark Cloud Sits as it were on God's countenance and pours down Innundations (sic) of Tempests upon a careless lukewarm & Backslideing (sic)  people, yet even then, his face Shines in the Closets of Devotion, there he breaks in & reveals his comforts, as is So there as his Angel was, at that time a Pillar of Light to the one, & of a Cloud to the other.  Let the devotion Chamber be your Sanctuary till these troublesome times be overpassed, flee for refuge to the horns of the altar, the Throne of grace, there offer up the Incense of your prayers, & let the lifting up of your hands be as the evening Sacrifice.  Thus my dear little flock I bid you heartily farewell. & and am with great love and affection your faithful pastor till death.

William Currie

Clearly there was much more behind this resignation than failing health.  Scots born Reverend Currie was in his 66th year of life and 40th of his Pennsylvania ministry when he stepped away from the pulpit.  He was unable to violate his ordination vows by omitting the Anglican prayer for the King, and with Congress now debating Independence the mood of the rebellion had gone farther than he was prepared to go. Three of his sons were either then inn the service or about to march to war, but of these Ross Currie had been captured during the failed Canada expedition and would later join the Pennsylvania Loyalists as an officer, Dr. Alexander Currie would soon resign as Surgeon of Atlee's musketry Battalion (again citing ill health but subsequently settling in the West Indies), and my ancestor Richard Currie would die of disease that September contracted in service with the 1st Pennsylvania (Chester Valley) Militia in the Flying Camp.  Richard's orphaned children undoubtedly lived with their grandfather Reverend Currie, as indeed the old minister did after the war with his grand daughter, my ancestor Margaret (Currie) Walker.

Reverend Currie returned to his flock after the war, reinstalled as pastor in 1783.  He is buried by the old St. David's church wall, next to the graves of his son Richard and daughter-in-law Hannah (Potts) Currie, which I visited last week when I was in the neighborhood.  .Richard's colonial era Stars and Stripes flutters near the upper right corner of Reverend Currie's tomb.

The Graves of My Ancestors Rev. Jonathan Ingersoll and Dorcas Moss

The Olde Town "Titicus" Cemetery in Ridgefield Connecticut holds the mortal remains of several of my ancestors, including my 6th Great Grandparents: the Reverend Jonathan Ingersoll and Dorcas (Moss) Ingersoll.  Yesterday I had occasion to stop and visit their graves, which I had found several years before and relocated without much difficulty. 

His older marker has endured the elements far better than her later one, on which her name is no longer legible.  At one time, like many of the older stones in this burial ground, The headstone of Dorcas Moss broke in two, but unlike many others it was later repaired.  You can still read many of her vital statistics under the streaked and crumbling marble, while his are finely etched in stronger stone.

Reverend Jonathan Ingersoll (1713-1778) was the son of Jonathan and Sarah Ingersoll of Milford, CT.  The Ingersolls were early settlers of Hartford who later removed to Westfield, Massachusetts.  A great uncle of Reverend Jonathan Ingersoll's was killed in the French and Indian raid on Deerfield in 1704. 

Reverend Jonathan Ingersoll graduated from Yale in 1736.  In 1740 he married Dorcas Moss (1760-1811), the daughter of Reverend Joseph Moss of Derby, CT.  He came to Ridgefield as the 2nd minister in its Congregational Church in 1739  He held this post for nearly 40 years until his death in 1778 from "an apoplectic fit".  

During the French and Indian War. Reverend Ingersoll served as Chaplain for Connecticut Troops operating around Lake George and Fort Ticonderoga (then called Carillon).  In 1758 he was chaplain for Colonel David Wooster's 4th Regiment in Abercrombey's ill-fated expedition against the French at Carrillon.  Wooster's men were caught up in the attack, and Chaplain Ingersoll wrote to a fellow church colleague that God showed "distinguishing mercy to the Connecticut Troops" who suffered few deaths in that dreadful slaughter.

During Lord Amherst's campaign the following year he was chaplain of the 3rd Regiment, again under Colonel David Wooster.  They traveled from captured Fort Carillon to Oswego and then down the St. Lawrence.

"Ebenezer Olmsted, late, failing collector of state taxes.”

The 1912 Genealogy of the Olmsted Family in America has a lengthy entry for my ancestor Ebenezer Olmsted (1748-1801).  It includes many details about his service in the Revolutionary War, along with a transcription of a pension declaration made by his widow in 1838.  I have been interested in Lt. Olmsted not only for his war record - three campaigns, three promotions, wounded at Germantown - but also because despite these accomplishments he remains something of an enigma. 

For a former Continental officer and the son of one of the most respected men in town and a Continental Officer, he sure drops out of the spotlight in the conventional histories of Ridgefield, Connecticut where he lived all his life.   I have searched the Olde Town "Titicus" cemetery in vain for his grave, and I have yet to find a record in Town of a veteran's marker for him.  True, it appears he sired my direct ancestor with the minister's daughter a year before they were legally married, but that was more common than you might think in the late 18th century.  

It turns out there was another skeleton in his closet, though, and it was a big one.

A terrific online timeline for the Town of Ridgefield maintained by Jack Sanders Books and based largely on public records, notes that on December 21, 1780, the Town Meeting appointed Lt. Ebenezer Olmsted constable "“to collect the state tax for the year ensuing."  The following March he was among five leading citizens, including his old regimental commander Col. Philip Burr Bradley and his kinsman Captain David Olmsted, chosen to serve on a committee “to procure soldiers to compleat (sic) the town’s quota for filling up the Continental Army and this state’s service.”  These were marks of public trust and approbation, but it appears that in at least the former case they were sadly misplaced.  My ancestor, while very good at collecting taxes, was much worse at forwarding them along to Hartford, and appears to have robbed the town blind.

April 10, 1786 – The Town Meeting agrees to “accept the resignation of Lt. Ebenezer Olmsted of his office of collector of ye state taxes on ye list of 1780, on conditions of his accounting with and paying to the Select Men the full that he has collected and received on the rates made on said list, and deliver up said rate bills and warrants to the Select Men.” The same meeting appoints Capt. Nathan Dauchy to “be ye collector of ye rates missing on the list of 1780 that are not collected, which Lt. Olmsted has resigned.”

Aug. 18, 1786 – The Town Meeting appoints Col. Philip Burr Bradley and three other prominent residents “a committee to assist the Select Men in a settlement of the taxes which appears by Ebenezer Olmsted, ye late collector’s rate bills, to be due on ye bills he lately resigned to the select man, which we made on ye list of ye year AD 1780.”

Sept. 30, 1786 – The Town meeting votes that “Ebenezer Olmsted, late collector of ye state taxes for ye town of Ridgefield, holden under arrest at the suit of the town of said Ridgefield, shall be liberated and discharged from said suit, upon condition for the said Olmsted shall fully vest the fee simple right” to a list of his property holdings in town. The property includes his 13-acre homestead on Main Street, about 25 acres scattered around town, eight tons of hay, his right to some cows, and “2,258 Continental Dollars.” He is ordered to deliver all to the town treasurer and told to post a 1,000 pound bond to guarantee payment of the owed taxes.

Dec. 4, 1786 – A committee that includes such notables as Col. Philip Burr Bradley, Capt. David Olmsted and lt. Joshua King, is ordered by the Annual Town Meeting to “to make sale of the real and moveable estate that the town hath obtained of Ebenezer Olmsted, late, failing collector of state taxes.”

Ebenezer Olmsted had by this time a fair number of children to support and his landholdings -however ill-gotten-  were relatively modest.  Whatever else he may have done with the embezzled funds, the proceeds of the sale of all his property did not cover the taxes that were due to the State.  

March 12, 1787 – The town holds a sale of the property of Ebenezer Olmsted, who had pocketed the state tax collections he had made in 1780. The house fetches only 129 pounds – Olmsted had paid 300 pounds for it in 1782. The sale and confiscations are not enough to cover what is owed to the state, however, and the issue drags on.

There were problems with taxes collected after 1780 by another tax collector as well.  In December, 1790, Ridgefield was still dealing with the issue, requiring tax collectors to post performance bonds and authorizing the Selectmen to "hire a collector to collect the arrears due on the rate bills … as cheap as they can."  In 1792 the Town Meeting voted “that ye Select Men be instructed and authorized in ye behalf of ye town to borrow such sums as shall be necessary to settle ye demands the state treasurer has against this town.”

All this time, Ebenezer Olmsted appears to have remained Ridgefield, though I do not know how he supported his family.  He received a very small allowance in 1792 relating to lost claims as a veteran to lands in Connecticut's Western Reserve.   His eldest children lit out for the sea, or for Canada, or the circus as soon as opportunity presented itself, and not one of his brood remained in Ridgefield as adults.  Still, in 1800, the year before his death, the Congregational Church records that Ebenezer Olmsted still was assigned to the 4th pew.  After all, he did make an honest woman the former minister's daughter, though he seems to have been less than honest himself.

Ancestor Approved

Heather Wilkinson Rojo at "Nutfield Genealogy" has very kindly recognized Walking the Berkshires with an Ancestor Approved Award.  What tickles me most about this honor, aside from the very kind words about my writing style, is the dour faced look of disapproval sported by the matronly mascot of this genea-blogging distinction.  That old girl's no Mona Lisa: more American Gothic.

The idea behind the Ancestor Approved Award is to highlight excellent blogging from the genealogy community and challenge those so recognized to list 10 things we have learned in their course of our ancestral research that have surprised, humbled or enlightened us.  Here then, are my 10 lessons learned.

1. You've Got a Friend:  I think many of us are drawn to genealogy for the thrill of the chase and the opportunity to personalize the past.  Our own bloodlines may be the hook, but genealogists tend to be a generous bunch and are just as excited to learn about each other's stories and research as in documenting our own.  And we do love a good story.  Finding this supportive community online was a pleasant surprise for me when I added genealogy to the rotation of post topics at Walking the Berkshires.

2.  God Bless Google Books:  Genealogy is not simply a matter of vital statistics.  It is more about the lives of the people that these names and dates represent.  Applying the skills of the historian, the archeologist, the social scientist and psychologist really animates family history for me.  To that end, as a non academic researcher I swear by the gold mine of source material represented by Google Books.  Querying this trove has delivered untold data on countless ancestors, the communities in which they lived.  In many cases this results in completely new information that changes my understanding of who they were and what they did,  Idly searching for information on one of my Revolutionary War era ancestors with Google Books, for example, revealed evidence in Washington's correspondence of a court martial.  Among the many happy results were this 11 post series on the Court Martial of Matthias Ogden and a connection to a group of avid reenactors who depict the New Jersey regiment that Col. Ogden commanded.

3.  Trust but Verify:  I am often surprised as how much family tradition gets right about my ancestors that subsequent research verifies.  If cousin Archibald Gracie did not exactly get his head taken off by a cannonball in the Petersburg Trenches, he was killed by an exploding shell which fractured his neck and struck him three times in the shoulder.

4.  Maybe it Ain't So: There is still no substitute for primary source material.  It is amazing how much bad history gets repeated as subsequent authors take at face value the claims made in other texts .  Sometimes the silences say more than false claims.  A privately printed genealogy of the Walker branch in my mother's pedigree from the early 1900s identifies the revolutionary war service of a collateral relation, but neglects to mention his subsequent and much longer service as an officer in the Pennsylvania Loyalists.  The only clue was that his father's will provided for grandchildren in New Brunswick, Canada after the war.

" 5.  Ancestor Worship is not Good History:  A good genealogist respects good data even while paying respect to one's forebears.  We take tours through the intimate details of our ancestor's lives.  We look in their underwear drawers and read their private letters.  If it turns out that they were more complex human beings with real flaws and contradictions - in other words, that they were human -  we have an obligation to treat them fairly and honestly.   

6.  Let Us Now Praise Famous Women:  It is "herstory" as well as "history".  I am the beneficiary of women in my family who have been keepers of the genealogical record for their own lines and those of their husbands for many generations.  Women's history can be found in the pension applications of Civil War Veterans, in the letters women wrote and the causes they championed.

7.  Sooner or Later, You Become the Source:  Good bloggers are good aggregators.  People searching for topics of an historical or genealogical nature are often lead to my blog.  On matters having little or no family connection, like the Morro Castle Disaster about which I blogged four years ago, I still get daily hits.  Once you go back a half dozen generations or so, the odds of sharing a common ancestor with others doing family history expand exponentially.  A post I wrote about my grandfather's experience as a doctor in wartime  lead the son of one of the officers he served with to my site, as well as the grand-niece of a man who died on the Liberty Ship later that took my grandfather to the South Pacific.

8.  Expect the Unexpected:  When searching the 1860 Census Records to try to close a gap in my primary Abbott line, I found that my Gr-great grandfather had an older brother. Since I was at the National Archives, I searched under his name for a Civil War service record, and discovered that he had enlisted in the 9th NY Hawkin's Zouaves.  Not only that, but his pension record gave me additional data that helped with my inquiry into his parents, and also revealed where he died out in Montana.  A few years later, I was vacationing at Glacier National Park and called up the nearby Old Soldiers Home that had been his final residence and in about 30 seconds found the number and location of his grave.

9.  All in Good Fun:  Remember, no matter how passionate our interest in the lives of our ancestors, not too take things too seriously.  19th Century Facial Hair and old family photos have tremendous comic possibilities.   For me, this prompted a long running and very popular Family Archive Caption Contest.

10.  Life is for the Living:  The family history at greatest risk of disappearing is being made now, and is still in the minds of those still with us.  Every genealogist I have ever known regrets not asking more of those now departed who could have told us more.  The memories we make now will enliven the past for those who come after.

And now the fun part.  To share the love and pass on this award, Here are 10 worthy genea-bloggers whose fine work has inspired me and who do their family history proud:

Bill West of West in New England; Sheri Fenley at The Educated Genealogist; Jasia at Creative Gene; Apple at Apple's Tree; Craig Manson at GeneaBlogie ; Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings;  Footnote Maven; Thomas MacEntee of Destination: Austin Family ; Grant Mishoe of Lowcountry Ramblings and M. Diane Rogers of CanadaGenealogy, or, 'Jane's Your Aunt'  Congratulations, and see if any of you can get the old lady to crack a smile.

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".