Joseph and Mary Whitaker, 17th Regiment of Foot, make their claims

A few miles southwest of Dublin is a village called Kill, in County Kildare. In 1736, Joseph Whitaker was born there. He grew up to pursue the trade of a whitesmith, crafting metal into products with shiny surface finishes. This was a good trade, but for some reason not enough for the young Irishman; at the age of twenty he enlisted in the army.

His skill and education served him well as a professional soldier. After nine years, he was a sergeant, the highest rank that most common soldiers could expect to achieve, and one in which afforded numerous opportunities for earning extra money over and above the base pay. By 1772 he was in the 17th Regiment of Foot, a regiment that had spent ten years in North America, first participating in the sieges of Louisbourg in 1758, Ticonderoga in 1759, Montreal in 1760, then in the West Indies, and on the American frontier during Pontiac's Rebellion. It is not known whether Whitaker was in the 17th during this time, or served in a different regiment before joining the 17th. Whether he had been to America before or not, in late 1775 he embarked with his regiment for Boston to reinforce the British garrison that was besieged there.

The 17th Regiment of Foot disembarked in Boston in December 1775. Joseph Whitaker served in the regiment's grenadier company. Detached from the regiment and joined with other grenadier companies to form a grenadier battalion, Whitaker's company was in the forefront of many of the war's most fierce and famous battles. He came through it all unscathed. And his time in America brought more good fortune to him.

The British grenadier battalions spent most of the second half of the war quartered in the area of New York City. Probably during that time, he met Mary Williams, a widow who had lived in the city "prior to and during the troubles." She ran a business "in the public line" - probably referring to a public house or tavern - and did well enough to purchase property "in her own right for ever." Her holdings amounted to between four and five hundred pounds, a testament to her enterprise. She married Sergeant Whitaker, who by this time may have accumulated a fair amount of cash from his work for the army. In terms of prosperity, their future looked bright.

No amount of marital optimism, however, could overcome the tide of events for the British military and Loyalist citizens in America. By 1783 the war was lost. The army and a large number of inhabitants were forced to abandon the city of New York. Joseph and Mary Whitaker left their property "to the mercy of the rebels," and sailed with the 17th Regiment to Halifax, Nova Scotia. They didn't stay there long. A reduction in forces afforded Sergeant Whitaker the opportunity to be discharged. 

The couple went to England, where Joseph Whitaker went before the army pension examining board at Chelsea, near London, in February 1784, and was awarded a pension. This would afford a modest but sufficient income for them. Mary Whitaker made a claim to have her losses compensated by the British government, but hers was one of thousands of such claims. Whether she ever received any payment is not known.

Information in this installment come from the muster rolls of the 17th Regiment of Foot (WO 12), the army out-pension admission books (WO 116), and Audit Office records (AO 13), all in The National Archives of Great Britain.

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What became of Sarah McPike, 62nd Regiment?

Thomas McPike enlisted in the British army at the young age of sixteen in the year 1759. A native of Ballinderry parish in County Antrim, Ireland, he had learned no trade and as such fell under the general category of "labourer". In the army he fared well, rising to the rank of serjeant within only four years, suggesting that he was well-educated and highly capable, perhaps someone who aspired to become an officer but lacked the patronage or social standing achieve such a goal. By the beginning of 1776 he was a sergeant in the 62nd Regiment of Foot's grenadier company, the tallest, most fit men in the regiment.

The 62nd was among the regiments that sailed from Ireland to Quebec, driving off American forces that had besieged that city and chasing them all the way to Lake Champlain before the end of 1776. The following year they were in the army led by General John Burgoyne that advanced from Canada towards Albany.

Soon after landing in Quebec in 1776, the 62nd's grenadier company joined grenadier companies from nine other regiments to form a grenadier battalion. This battalion was part of the advance guard on the 1777 campaign and saw heavy fighting at the Battle of Hubbardton in July, the Battle of Freeman's Farm in September, and the Battle of Bemis Heights in October. Somewhere on the campaign, probably in one of these battles, McPike was wounded in the leg; in period parlance, this referred to the part of the leg below the knee, the upper part being called the thigh. When the British army capitulated at Saratoga in October, McPike became a prisoner of war.

The prisoners - presumably including Thomas McPike - were marched first to the Boston, Massachusetts area, then a year later to Virginia, and finally to Lancaster, Pennsylvania in 1781. In the meantime, his wife Sarah and child Samuel had found their way to Newport, Rhode Island by January 1779. How they got there has not been determined. Most likely they had stayed behind in Quebec when Burgoyne's army marched south in June 1777, and then taken a passage from Quebec to Newport. From Newport they boarded the armed victualling ship Maria on January 31 and sailed to the city of New York, disembarking there on February 9. From there Sarah and Samuel's whereabouts are unknown until June 1781, when the British prisoners of war arriving at Lancaster included "Sjt. McPike & Wife". Somehow Sarah had joined her husband in captivity. And young Samuel was now old enough to be Drummer Samuel McPike.

The prisoners were finally freed in the first half of 1783, after a peace treaty formally ended the war. From Lancaster they walked to the City of New York, still a British garrison, and in June Sergeant Thomas McPike and Drummer Samuel McPike along with about forty soldiers and fifteen of their wives boarded the British sixty-four-gun warship Lion. They boarded on June 21, and disembarked at Portsmouth, England on July 24. Thomas McPike accepted his discharge from the army after twenty-four years of service and received an army pension; Samuel continued as a drummer in the 62nd Regiment.

But Sarah was not with them on the voyage. What became of her? Nothing more has been found about her after her arrival in Lancaster in June 1781. It would be nice to hope that she survived and found her own way back to England and her family, or at least made a new life for herself in America. But probably not. She probably died in captivity, the same fate that befell many of the Saratoga prisoners, one of many whose fate is unknown.

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[Information for this article comes from the muster rolls of the 62nd Regiment of Foot, army pension admission books, and muster books of HMS Maria and HMS Lion, all in the British National Archives; and the list of prisoners sent to Lancaster, in the Peter Force Papers, Library of Congress.]

Elizabeth Willson, 26th Regiment, sells Fruit in New York

 In December 1775 the war in America was not yet a year old, but most of the 7th and 26th Regiments of Foot were already prisoners of war. They had been captured when undermanned garrisons on Lake Champlain and the Richelieu River were overrun by an American expedition bent on seizing the city of Quebec. Now housed in barracks in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, these two British regiments awaited an unknown fate, for no one knew how long the war would last or what the outcome would be.

When the garrisons of British posts fell, soldiers and their families became prisoners of war together. Among those at Lancaster was Befordshire native William Willson, a private soldier in the 26th Regiment, his wife Elizabeth, and their four children. William, a tailor by trade, had joined the army in about 1763 and probably continued to practice his trade while a soldier. When he married Elizabeth, and where she was from, are not known.

In the first half of 1777 the prisoners were finally exchanged. The soldiers and their families marched to the British-held city of New York. The soldiers soon took the field once again while Elizabeth Willson, like most army wives, worked to help support her family. She sold fruit in the city, demonstrating the resourcefulness of these women whose lives were inherently itinerant due to their husbands’ profession. She may have met acquaintances from New Jersey where the 26th had been posted in 1768, 1769 and 1770, who had fled to the city after war broke out.

The 26th remained in the New York area for a few years. But in 1779 the regiment received orders to return to Great Britain. What happened to William is not clear – he does not appear on the regiment’s rolls prepared in England in 1780, but decades later William deposed that he was discharged from the regiment in 1783. He may have remained in New York on some sort of special duty. He was certainly in England in June 1783, where he went before the pension examining board at Chelsea and was granted an out-pension for his twenty years of service.

It is also certain that Elizabeth Willson did not accompany him to Britain. In October 1783 she was still in New York, selling fruit from a stand “at the Head of Coenties Slip,” a byway that ran from Water Street to the East River. But she had become “much addicted to liquor” and was “frequently intoxicated.” A local resident who knew her “knew of no place of abode,” but had “frequently seen her lying drunk behind stoops.” In the late morning of October 21, she was found dead on the ground floor of an abandoned house, 52 Grand Dock Street “near the Royal Exchange in the South Ward.” The coroner found “no external marks of violence on her body to cause her death,” and ascribed her death to “liquor or sickness.”

Information for this article comes from the following sources:

Return Of The Prisoners Of The 26th Regiment, Taken At St. Johns And In The River St. Lawrence, And Arrived At Lancaster, Pennsylvania State Archives

Muster rolls, 26th Regiment of Foot, The National Archives of Great Britain

Out Pension Admission Books, The National Archives of Great Britain

Coroner’s report on Elizabeth Willson, British Headquarters Papers, The National Archives of Great Britain

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Mrs. Fowles, 7th Regiment of Foot, draws provisions

 Mrs. Fowles and her daughter Ann drew rations in August of 1782 along with other soldiers and wives of the 7th Regiment of Foot. This is no surprise. Wives and children of British soldiers in America were fed by the army; most British regiments included - among those who they provisioned - wives of about one in six soldiers. Documents that include the names of these women are rare; the August 1782 provisions list for the 7th Regiment is the only one for that regiment known to survive that names each man and woman. Even so, it does not give the names of the wives, listing them only as "Mrs. Fowles," "Mrs. Bright," "Mrs. Carney," etc. We've deduced that "Ann Fowles," also on the list, is Mrs. Fowles daughter, as a number of children are listed with their first and last names.

What makes Mrs. Fowles important, in terms of our understanding of how wives were treated by the army, is that her husband, Sergeant William Fowles, died on 25 April 1781. The only man on the regiment's muster rolls with that surname, he was already in the 7th Regiment when it arrived in America in 1772, landing at Quebec. A private soldier at that time, he was appointed corporal in February 1780, and sergeant exactly a year later. No details of his specific service have been found at this time; presumably he was among the men of the 7th Regiment captured in 1775 and repatriated two years later, and he was with the regiment at the siege of Charlestown, South Carolina, in 1780. Whether he died of illness in garrison or on campaign, or of wounds in one of the 7th's several battles in the Carolinas, he left his wife a widow only two months after being appointed sergeant.

It is also not known when William Fowles married. Mrs. Fowles may have accompanied the regiment from Great Britain in 1773, or met her husband in America. And her fate after August 1782 is also unknown; the provision return is the only record we have of her.

There is folklore that widows of British soldiers were required to remarry within days of their husband's death, or they would be struck off the provision rolls and turned out of the regiment no matter where it was. This has already been shown to be untrue from records of widows remarrying months or years after their husbands died. By drawing provisions seventeen months after her husband died, Mrs. Fowles provides one more example that soldiers' widows remained part of the regimental community until they could establish themselves in new circumstances.

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Andrew and Susannah Carr, 21st Regiment - separated

 "Serjeant Andrew Carr," wrote his widow Susannah, "was taken prisoner along with the army commanded by General Burgoyne in the year 1777 and conveyed to a depot in the state of Virginia in the said United States, where the said Andrew Carr died." She wrote on behalf of their son John, born in 1775, the year before the 21st Regiment of Foot said from Great Britain to Quebec.

Andrew Carr was a native of Kilmore on the Island of Skye, born in 1740. He joined the army at the age of twenty, without having learned a trade beforehand, but he must have been reasonably well-educated for he soon became a sergeant.

The 21st Regiment was sent to Florida in 1765 and remained there until 1770. Many histories of the regiment indicate that the regiment then went to Quebec, overlooking the time that they spent in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York in 1771 and 1772. It was probably in Philadelphia in 1771 that Andrew Carr met and married Susannah Stauss, daughter of an area landowner, who was in her early twenties. When the 21st did go to Quebec, and then back to Great Britain in 1773, Susannah followed her husband in her new life as an army wife.

John Carr was born in 1775, and early the following year the family set sail once again, one of nine regiments bound for Quebec to drive rebellious American military forces out of the province. The campaign was successful, and the 21st Regiment spent the winter of 1776-1777 at St. John's on the Richelieu River between Montreal and Lake Champlain. When the army marched south in June 1777, only two wives were allowed to go with each company on campaign. Susannah and young John stayed behind while Andrew Carr went on the expedition commanded by General John Burgoyne. Their destination was Albany, but the got only as far as Saratoga. Susannah never saw her husband again; he was, as she knew, taken prisoner. The captured soldiers went first to the Boston area, expecting to be sent back to Great Britain, but then were marched to Virginia, then to Pennsylvania, ultimately spending five years in captivity.

In 1782, Susannah's father, still in the Philadelphia area, died. the executor of his estate placed an advertisement in the newspaper seeking information on the whereabouts of Susannah and her three siblings:

WHEREAS BELTHASER STAUS, late of the Northern Liberties of the city of Philadelphia, yeoman, deceased, by his last Will and Testament, ordered his estate to be sold, and the money arising from the sale thereof to be equally divided between his eight children, whereof four are living in and near the city of Philadelphia, and four absent, namely two sons FRANCIS JOSEPH and DANIEL, and two daughters SARAH and SUSANNA. The shares of which said four absent children he ordered to be put out, and continued at interest for the space of seven years, to be claimed by the said children or their legal representatives in person, &c. And of his said last Will and Testament he appointed Zacharias Endres, of the said Northern Liberties, brewer, sole Executor.

Now the said Executor, in compliance with the special directions of the said Testator, given him a few days before his deceased, has thought proper to give this PUBLIC NOTICE, hereby requiring the said four absent children of the Testator, or in case of the death of any of them, the children or guardians of the children of the deceased, to make their claims to their respective shares. The said Executor is informed that the said Francis Joseph Staus is by trade a skinner, and was some time Paymaster of the British troops in East Florida; that the said Daniel Staus was a Captain of a vessel, and an inhabitant of the Island of Providence; that the said Sarah had been married to one Andrew Lytel, and is now a widow, living somewhere in North Carolina; and that the said Susanna was married to one Andrew Kehr, of the 21st regiment of Scotch Fuziliers, who, it is said, is among the prisoners of General Burgoyne’s army, now in Virginia.

All friends and acquaintances of the persons concerned, seeing this advertisement, are desired to inform them thereof. The said Executor will take particular care that the money happening to each child’s share may be recovered upon short notice.

Philad. Sept. 5. ZACHARIAS ENDRES.

[Pennsylvania Gazette, 18 September 1782]

She was not in Virginia with her husband, as the ad suggested, but was still in Canada; and by this time, she had learned that her husband died. Whether she ever got her inheritance is not known. She remarried a discharged German soldier named Conrad Bongard. They settled on 500 acres of land that he was awarded in Ontario and had several children together. It was in 1836 that she wrote her brief petition concerning her first child, John Carr, apparently seeking pension benefits or land based on her deceased first husband's service. She died on February 21, 1846 at the age of 98.

What she never learned was that Andrew Carr did not die in Virginia. He survived the years of captivity and returned to England in 1783 with the remains of the 21st Regiment. On May 21 of that year he went before the pension examining board in Chelsea and was awarded an army pension for his 23 years of service. How long he lived thereafter is not known.

Andrew and Susannah Carr were not the only couple separated by war, neither knowing the other's fate. We'll never know how may others there were.

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Mary Kiddy, 43rd Regiment, knows what is owed to her

Mary Kiddy was on her own in New York in January of 1783. Some money was owed to her, and it is because of this that we know of her existence. But the brief summary that was recorded leaves mostly questions about her life and experiences.

Mary Kiddy was married to William Kiddy, a soldier initially in the 34th Regiment of Foot and later in the 43rd Regiment of Foot. Thanks to muster rolls for these regiments, we do know a lot about him. He joined the 34th Regiment some time between 1761 and 1768 (a gap in the regiment's rolls prevent knowing when or where). In 1768 he was a private soldier in the 34th Regiment in Philadelphia. The following year, the 34th returned to Great Britain, spending the next several years at various posts in Ireland. By April of 1776 he was a corporal in the regiment's light infantry company, preparing to return once again to North America, this time part of the force bound for Quebec to dislodge American force besieging the city.

After a highly successful 1776 campaign and a winter in Canada, in the summer of 1777 the the 34th's light infantry was part of the expedition under General John Burgoyne that set out from Canada towards Albany. By the time this campaign ended in October, Kiddy was a prisoner of war, and spent the winter of 1777-1778 in a crude barracks outside Boston. From there the prisoners were moved inland to Rutland, Massachusetts. It was here that he fell ill, so much so that he was sent to New York in a cartel rather than going with other prisoners to Virginia.

In the summer of 1780 he was sufficiently recovered to return to active service. With most of the 34th Regiment still in Canada and his own company still prisoners of war, Kiddy was drafted into the 43rd Regiment of Foot. Muster rolls for the 34th Regiment's light infantry company end in early 1777, and the rolls for the 43rd record Kiddy as having "enlisted"in June 1780, with no indication that he had been in the 34th Regiment; if it were not for his wife, nothing about his time as a prisoner of war, or that the man in the 34th was the same man who joined the 43rd, would be known.

In April 1781 the 43rd Regiment sailed to Virginia, part of a reinforcement of British forces operating in the Tidewater area. Also that month William Kiddy was appointed corporal again, returning to the rank he had held for years in his previous regiment. During the summer they joined up with General Charles, Lord Cornwallis's army in Yorktown. It was there that William Kiddy died. The 43rd's muster rolls record his death as occurring on 24 October, but the 24th of the month is often used on muster rolls when an exact date is not known, so we cannot be sure exactly when he died. The cause of death is also unknown; he may have fallen ill in the deprived conditions when Cornwallis's army was besieged, been wounded during the intense artillery bombardment they endured, or fallen to some other cause.

Mary Kiddy was left a widow, which meant that she was entitled to her late husband's estate. In January 1783 a board of officers in the city of New York was hearing claims from soldiers who had been prisoners of war, escaped or been exchanged, and then joined different regiments, leaving their accounts with their previous regiments unsettled. Mary Kiddy went before the board and petitioned for her late husband's back pay and clothing due from the 34th Regiment, and she knew exactly what was owed: "three suits of Cloathing for 1776, 1777 & 1778 & a balance of 1.9.4 ½ due from the 34th Regt on the 17th Novr 1778, she also claims her husbands intermediate pay from the 17 of Novr 1778 to the 24th of June 1780, amounting at 8 per day to L19.10". Soldiers received a new suit of regimental clothing each year, and William Kiddy had not received his for the last three years that he was in the 34th; on the last day that his company's accounts were settled in 1778, he was owned one pound, nine shillings, four and a half pence; and he was also owed pay from the day of that last settlement and until the day he joined the 43rd Regiment. She computed the pay at the rate owed to a private soldier, which may be a simple error on her part, or may mean that her husband was reduced to private soldier after the last available muster roll in February 1777 and before accounts were settled in November 1778.

The brief record of Mary Kiddy's statement to the board explains that her husband was in the 34th, was left sick at Rutland, was exchanged and went to New York, that he joined the 43rd Regiment and died in Virginia. It says nothing of her experiences. When did they marry? Was she with him in Canada? Was she on the 1777 campaign, and among the prisoners in Rutland? Or did they meet and marry in New York? Did she accompany him to Virginia? Her statement reveals much about her husband, but little about her - including what became of her after January 1783.

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Thomas Swift, 37th Regiment, and his wife come to America

The village of Thurcaston in Leicestershire has a primary school that was founded in 1715. It is quite possible that Thomas Swift, born in the village in 1749, attended this school before pursuing the trade of framework knitting, making stockings in the rapidly-mechanizing British textile industry. He left the trade behind at the age of twenty to become a soldier.

He joined the 37th Regiment of Foot, probably just after its return from six years in Menorca. This afforded him several years to learn his military trade while the regiment was posted in England, Scotland and Ireland. By 1775 he was in the regiment's light infantry company, and by the time the regiment embarked for America in early 1776, he had gotten married. The couple sailed from Ireland with a fleet that aimed to open a southern theater in the American war in 1776.

By June, the 37th Regiment was encamped on Long Island, not the well-known place in New York but a sandy barrier island just north of Charleston, South Carolina. In spite of the hot weather, the army had remained healthy in the sea breezes. Late in the month the soldiers watched helplessly as British frigates futilely bombarded Fort Moultrie, the army's plans to attack foiled by the depth of the channel between Long Island and the fort's island, which they had intended to wade across. The army remained on Long Island into July, then sailed north to join the troops already on Staten Island preparing for the campaign that would capture New York City.

The light infantry companies of seven regiments that came from South Carolina to Staten Island were formed into the 3rd Battalion of Light Infantry for the campaigns that ran from August 1776 through June 1777.

For the campaign to Philadelphia in the second half of 1777 the light infantry was reorganized into two battalions, with the 37th's company in the 2nd. Thomas Swift was certainly involved in these campaigns, but nothing remarkable is known of his individual service until September 20, 1777, the date of the battle of Paoli. Swift was among the soldiers of the 2nd Battalion of Light Infantry that marched for hours through the night to surprise an American brigade in their encampment, descending with bayonets upon the sleeping American troops in the darkness.

As the mayhem subsided, a man wrapped in a blanket emerged from tall grass near a fence and surrendered himself to Thomas Swift and a fellow soldier of the 37th. The man wore a Continental Army uniform, blue with red facings. He offered his musket, pointing out that it had not been fired. And he explained that he had deserted from the 23rd Regiment of Foot in Boston back in 1774. He was now serving in the 11th Pennsylvania Regiment, and said he had tried several times to desert and return to British service. As he was pleading his case, a sergeant from another British regiment came by and wounded him with a bayonet.

McKie, who had in fact deserted from the 23rd Regiment on 9 December 1774, was tried by a general court martial a week later in Germantown, just outside of Philadelphia, where the light infantry battalions were encamped. Two sergeants of the 23rd Regiment testified at the trial, and Swift and his colleague related their capture of the man now charged with "having had correspondence with and bourne Arms in the Rebel Army." McKie was found guilty and sentenced to death.

Five days after the trial, Thomas Swift was fighting for his own life. At dawn on 4 October an onslaught of Continental soldiers routed the light infantry from their camp. During the course of a fierce battle British forces turned the tide and won the day. Somewhere in the fray Swift was wounded in the left arm. The injury was not severe enough to end his service, though; he continued on in the 37th Regiment’s light infantry.

The muster rolls prepared in Philadelphia in February 1778 record Swift as a prisoner of war; by the time of the next rolls, August 1778, he was back with his company in the New York area. No details have yet surfaced about his captivity or exchange.

In early 1781 the light infantry, now operating as a single battalion given the reduced numbers of regiments in New York, was sent on an expedition to Virginia. In the summer they joined with the army under General Cornwallis that had come to Virginia through the Carolinas, and settled in to the post at Yorktown. By October they were under siege from American and French forces.

On the night of October 15-16, British light infantry conducted a sortie into the American trenches and put several cannon out of action. It may have been during this action that Thomas Swift was wounded “in the belly,” or he may have been wounded the following day, the last day that shots were fired. A cease-fire was called on the 17th, and the British troops surrendered on the 19th.

Probably because of his wound, Swift was not among those who spent the next eighteen months imprisoned. He returned to New York, and to duty with the 37th Regiment. On June 15, 1783, after peace was negotiated and the fellow soldiers of his company were released, Swift was appointed corporal. He and his regiment returned to Great Britain later that year.

The man who had been twice wounded and spent time as a prisoner of war stayed in the army. H was reduced to a private soldier in November 1785, but at some point after that was appointed corporal again. He served until the end of 1790, taking his discharge in Canterbury on December 23. Besides his wounds, his discharge recorded that he was “rheumatic and worn out in the service.” He received two extra weeks of pay, and made his way to Chelsea where he went before the pension board and was granted a pension early in 1791. In 1798, he spent a few months in an invalid company.

Of his wife, far less is known. She was certainly with him on Staten Island in 1776. And in the New York area in late 1778, she earned four shillings eight pence for making a shirt and a pair of leggings for the 37th Regiment’s light infantry company. Her first name is not recorded.

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Francis Padlow, 37th Regiment, doesn't write to his Wife

Francis Padlow was a miller from the town of Kettlethorp in Lincolnshire. At the age of twenty-five, in 1762, he chose a new career by enlisting in the army. By the early 1770s he was in the 37th Regiment of Foot, and at the beginning of 1776 he went with that corps to join the war in America.

He left a wife behind, in the town of East Retford in Nottinghamshire. Where they met and when they married is not known; in fact, we don't even know her name. But in March of 1778 she sent a letter to the War Office asking whether her husband was still alive; she had "not heard from him since the year 1773." The office reviewed the regiment's muster rolls and was able to confirm that he was still serving in the 37th as recently as May of 1777 in Bonham Town, New Jersey, although he was "absent by leave" at that time. That was all they could offer, not bad, really, considering the challenges of communication.

The muster rolls used by the War Office in 1778 to confirm Padlow's service survive to this day in the British National Archives, and there are further volumes after those recorded in May 1777. From them we see that Francis Padlow continued for most of the remainder of the war, albeit listed as "sick" most of the time. He was discharged in early 1782 because he was "rheumatic"; he was recommended for a pension.

With other "invalided" soldiers, he sailed from New York to Great Britain, then went to Chelsea Hospital outside of London where he appeared before the pension examining board on 8 March 1783. Having served twenty-one years as a soldier, he was granted the pension. But there is no record of whether he returned to the wife he'd left behind ten years before.

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Elizabeth Morrison, Royal Artillery, has her pocket picked

In May of 1777, at the Presbyterian Church of New York, Elizabeth Driscoll married George Morrison, a matross in the Royal Regiment of Artillery. She was the widow of a soldier in an infantry regiment. The marriage record as published by the New York Historical Society in 1881 calls her a widow of the 57th Regiment, but the muster rolls of the 57th Regiment show no man of that name having died or even belonging to the regiment between 1775 and 1777; perhaps the number of the regiment was recorded incorrectly in the original record, or transcribed incorrectly in the publication.

That September, Elizabeth, now Elizabeth Morrison, was at the house of another Royal Artillery wife, Mrs. Connor. Several other men and women from the artillery were there, including a soldier named Edward Bullin. Morrison felt a hand in her pocket, and saw that it was Bullin's; he withdrew his hand, causing a guinea - a gold coin worth twenty-one shillings - to fall from her pocket to the floor. This clearly distracted her, and she picked up the coin rather than immediately question Bullin's motives.

A woman's pocket was usually a sort of pouch tied around the waist, not unlike a modern pocket except that it was a separate garment unto itself. It could be worn outside of or underneath petticoats. In this case, we assume it was underneath, for Morrison "imagined he was taking a freedom with her" rather than thinking he was trying to steal. The next morning when she counted her money, she found that she was missing a substantial sum: "six Guineas, three half Johannes’s, two Dollars, six English Shillings & an English half Crown." Six guineas was more than half a year's typical wages for a soldier's wife's job like working as a hospital nurse. We don't know Morrison's profession, but this was a lot of money for anyone of her station. That her pocket contain Portuguese Johannes, and dollar coins from an unspecified nation in addition to English coinage, shows the diverse currency in circulation in New York at a time when the value of these coins was based on the quantity of precious metal they contained. Also gone was her handkerchief.

Within the next few days, though, several people noticed that Edward Bullin seemed to have more money that was usual for him. When he bought some liquor from a woman (apparently another Royal Artillery wife), she happened to ask him if he knew whether Mrs. Morrison had gone to Staten Island, to which he gave the cryptic response, "if you see Mrs. Morrison do not tell her you saw me or know any thing of me." As word of the crime and Bullin's behavior got around, he was arrested and taken to the guard house.

Ultimately, it was the handkerchief that proved his undoing. When Elizabeth Morrison went to the guard house (presumably because she learned that Bullin was held there), she saw that Bullin had her handkerchief, the one stolen item that could be identified unequivocally. Bullin was brought before a general court martial and charged with "picking Elizabeth Morrison’s Pockets of six guineas three half Johannes and some silver;" the stolen handkerchief was not included in the charge.

At the trial, Morrison related the incident at Mrs. Connor's house and other witness told of Bullin's behavior and unexplained wealth. Bullin questioned why Morrison didn't accuse him immediately; that's when she deposed that "she imagined he was taking a freedom with her, & did not suspect him of picking her pocket until she recollected the Circumstances of his hand having been in her pocket, when she missed the money next morning." Bullin then asked "What was your reason for accusing me of picking your Pocket, more than any one else in Company?" Her reply was simple enough: "Because I found your hand in my pocket."

Edward Bullin was found guilty and sentenced to receive 600 lashes as well as being confined until the money was paid back. If he didn't still have some of the money, or other savings, it would take quite some time for him to earn this much money solely through his base pay - and, being confined, he would not be able to do any other work as soldiers often did to earn additional sums. We have no information about how long he was confined.

And we have no other information about Elizabeth Morrison. She is unusual, in fact, that we know so much about her - he marriage date, from a church record, and the events recorded in the trial proceedings. For most of the several thousand wives who accompanied British soldiers in America, we know nothing at all about them as individuals.

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Michael McLaughin's Wife Christian, 18th Regiment, Loses her Business

From the written record of his testimony, we cannot discern whether Michael McLaughlin and his wife, Christian, were angry or nervous when they answered questions from officers sitting on a general court martial. They had good reasons for both emotions. They were not on trial, but were testifying for the prosecution of their company commander, Captain Benjamin Charnock Payne, who was charged with a litany of offenses from behaving "in a Scandalous, infamous, unwarrantable manner unbecoming the character of a Gentleman and an Officer" to "entailing disgrace of the Royal Regiment of Ireland." Addressing a board of officers, and speaking out against a superior, surely must have been an intimidating experience.

But the McLaughlins may have been angry enough to overcome intimidation. Among the charges against Captain Payne was "tyrannical, cruel and oppressive treatment both of Non-Commissioned Officers and private Soldiers." So bad was the alleged treatment that several soldiers had deserted because of it. Michael McLaughlin had not done so, but, if his and his wife's testimony are to be believed, he had ample cause.

Michael McLaughlin had enlisted in the 18th (Royal Irish) Regiment of Foot in May of 1755. A dozen years later he came with his regiment to America, and by 1774 was serving in Captain Payne's company, quartered at the British army barracks in Philadelphia (a structure very much like the one that still stands in Trenton, New Jersey). Around June of that year, his wife Christian sought and obtained permission to live outside the barracks and "endeavor to get a livelihood by her industry in selling bread, beer, cheese, & etc. to the Soldiers and others," as she put it. Her husband was allowed to live with her, which was typical for married soldiers - as long as their officers knew their whereabouts, and they performed all of their duties, they were allowed to live out of the barracks. It was very common for soldiers' wives to obtain lodgings and conduct retail businesses like this, although in this case she happened to be the only wife of the regiment to reside outside the barracks. She leased a small house nearby at a rate of 14 Pounds per year where she was allowed to sell foodstuffs and beer, but nothing more intoxicating.

And sell she did, for a month or so. Sometimes, however, customers purchased spirits at a place next door to hers and brought them into her place to mix with their beer. She knew of this, but apparently thought it within the terms of her license as long as she herself wasn't selling the spirits. She also, on a couple of occasions, gave spirits to serjeants of the regiment to mix with their beer, but did not charge them for it.

Word got back to Captain Payne that soldiers had been drinking hard liquor at Christian McLaughlin's house. The captain suspected that two of his serjeants had become intoxicated there. A townsman had caused a disturbance after slipping a gill of spirits from next door into the beer he'd bought, then refusing to pay for it. Captain Payne took action by ordering that no soldier go to the house, effectively shutting down her business. He also confined Private McLaughlin to the barracks for seven weeks, and recommended to the landlord that he turn Mrs. McLaughlin out because "she kept a bad house and that he would never get his rent."

Payne paid a constable to take Christian McLaughlin before the mayor of Philadelphia on charges of illegally selling liquor. He went so far as to order the two serjeants to testify that they'd bought spirits from her. When both refused because, according to one, "his conscience would not permit him to take such an oath," the officer threatened to have them broken (reduced in rank) and flogged if they did not comply. Neither man gave in; instead, they complained to another officer of the regiment. Michael McLaughlin was also ordered to swear against his wife but refused. With no one to testify against her, Christian McLaughlin was released by the constable and the mayor. But in order to live with her husband, who was confined to the barracks, she left her house, forfeiting two weeks of rent that she'd paid in advance.

Each of these three soldiers subsequently received consistent ill-treatment from Captain Payne. One of the serjeants became so frustrated that he deserted; McLaughlin requested a transfer to another company, but none was given. And Christian McLaughlin suffered another loss from Captain Payne.

Soon after losing her house, the regiment left Philadelphia for New York. They weren't there long before being driven out by angry townspeople, inflamed by the resistance to parliamentary rule that was sweeping through the American colonies; the garrison of New York city was far too small to keep order, and the soldiers of the 18th Regiment boarded ships for Boston. It was somewhere during this embarkation process that Captain Payne gave orders for superfluous baggage to be jettisoned, since the transports were quite crowded. There was also fear that some of baggage had been exposed to smallpox. As he was inspecting one transport, he noticed a bundled up "old ugly petticoat" that had "a very indifferent kind of an appearance; the lining which was outward was broke." He asked a corporal to whom it belonged, and the corporal told him that it was McLaughlin's; Payne ordered it thrown overboard. What neither the captain nor the corporal noticed was the new petticoat bundled up within the old one, and both were soon in the sea.

After the regiment arrived in Boston, Michael McLaughlin made a complaint to the commanding officer, as did the serjeant who had been coerced to testify, and several other soldiers and officers for a variety of complaints. Even though war broke out in April and the fateful battle of Bunker Hill occurred in June, the army's administrative machinery continued to matters of military discipline. In July, Captain Benjamin Charnock Payne was brought before a general court martial, charged with a series of crimes associated with discord in the 18th Regiment of Foot.

There were five major charges, and many witness; the trial went on for three weeks, one of the longest conducted throughout the entire war. Mr. and Mrs. McLaughlin testified concerning only one of the charges, and told the story of soldiers being banned from her business, her being brought before the mayor, and of her clothing being thrown overboard. Several other soldiers and a few officers also spoke to those events. But Captain Payne had clear reasons for all of his actions. It was not him who ordered soldiers to stay away from Christian McLaughlin's house, but his commanding officer; Payne had only been enforcing those orders. As for the petticoat, it was not apparent that the bundle contained a new garment, and throwing it overboard was consistent with orders.

Many officers and soldiers testified in Captain Payne's defense. He was acquitted of all charges but one; in fact, the court found those charges, including that he had mistreated soldiers, "in General malicious, frivolous, wicked and ill grounded." The final charge, which did not concern the McLaughlin's, brought a type of reprimand.

This result may have been discouraging to Michael and Christian McLaughlin, but fate soon brought them a reprieve. The 18th Regiment, having been in America for eight years, was drafted at the end of 1775; it's able-bodied soldiers were transferred to other regiments, the unfit men were granted discharges, and the officers, non-commissioned officers and drummers returned to Great Britain to recruit. Michael McLaughlin, after over twenty years in the army, was still fit for service, so he was drafted into the 4th Regiment of Foot.

With the 4th Regiment, he, and presumably his wife as well, campaigned in New York and New Jersey in 1776 and 1777, before going on to Philadelphia in the latter part of 1777. While the regiment was quartered in Philadelphia for the winter, after a year of hard campaigning, Michael McLaughlin died of unknown causes on 15 January 1778. We have no information about what became of his wife Christian.

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Walter Whitney, 10th Regiment, leaves Catherine and Ann behind

Being married to a soldier has never been easy, especially when the soldier is deployed overseas and the spouse stays home with children. In an era when long-distance communication was rare and tenuous at best, a wife whose soldier-husband was abroad could be all but abandoned. This was Catherine Whitney's situation when she gave a deposition in early 1778.

She was born in Abbey Holme, a parish in Cumbria not far from the Scottish border. When she was born is not known, nor is the overall timeline of her life, but the pieces that we have show that she moved around a lot. By 1758 she was old enough to have gone to London and taken a job at a coffee house in the parish of St. George the Martyr just outside the city (the parish church, pictured here, still stands). She left after only eight months.

In the 1760s she was in Limerick, Ireland. There she married a soldier, Walter Whitney of the 10th Regiment of Foot. He had traveled farther to get there; the child of a soldier, he was born in Gibraltar while the 10th Regiment was posted there between 1730 and 1749.

The regiment moved north to Galway. There Walter and Catherine had a daughter, Ann. The military profession was not always conducive to a stable family life, and in 1767 the 10th Regiment sailed from Ireland for Quebec. Walter Whitney did not take his wife and child with him, either by choice or due to the limitations in shipping capacity afforded space on transports for, typically, only about 60 wives in each regiment (this limitation in shipping is often misconstrued as indicating that only six wives for each company were allowed to be present with a regiment, which was not the case).

What Catherine Whitney and her daughter did in her husband's absence is not known, nor where they lived. She heard from him in 1771, that he was in Quebec. But that was the last time. In 1774 the 10th Regiment was finally due to come home, but rising tensions in the American colonies caused it to be diverted to Boston. Perhaps she knew that.

By 1778 she was in Worcester, England, where she was brought to court at the Easter quarter-sessions. The court heard her story, at least the parts of it related above, and ordered her and her daughter to be taken by a constable to St. George the Martyr. Why this judgment was made is not stated; perhaps it was thought that she still had some obligation to her former employer there. What actually became of her is not known.

She mentioned to the court that "her husband was posted to America & she has not heard of him for 7 years when he was at Quebec." She certainly wouldn't hear from him again. The 10th Regiment had departed Boston in March 1776 and gone to Halifax, Nova Scotia. There Walter Whitney died on 20 May, as close to his wife and daughter as he had been in the last nine years.

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Edward and Eleanor Webb, Brigade of Guards, secret stolen goods

The region around the village of Sedgley in Staffordshire was a hotbed of industrial development in the second half of the eighteenth century. South of Wolverhampton and northwest of Birmingham, it was a natural place for young men seeking work to take jobs in the iron industry. For Edward Webb, that meant following the trade of a nailor, a specialized metal worker who made nails. By the time he was nineteen years old, in late 1772, he decided to change careers and enlist in the 1st Regiment of Foot Guards. At 5' 11" tall, with dark brown hair, grey eyes, and a dark complexion, he was a good specimen for a soldier, albeit with little prospect of advancement because he'd never learned to write.

Unlike the regular infantry regiments in the army, the Foot Guards had a permanent headquarters, and it was in London. In times of peace, the Guards regiments were never deployed overseas, so the young soldier may have expected to spend a long career in his nation's capital city. Things changed in early 1776, however, when the military buildup for the American war necessitated creative ways to send experienced troops overseas. As had been done in prior wars, a brigade of 1000 men was formed of volunteers from each of the three Foot Guards regiments (which were considerably larger than other infantry regiments). The Brigade of Guards arrived in America in the summer of 1776, joining the army on Staten Island.

The Brigade of Guards was at the forefront of several campaigns, including the one that captured Philadelphia in late 1777. While the army wintered in Philadelphia, duty was harsh, building and maintaining fortifications, foraging in a snowswept countryside, keeping watch during bitter cold nights. Somehow, in spite of this, soldiers found time to socialize. At the city's Gloriea Dei Church, the number of marriages more than doubled during the few months that the British army was in town; many of the brides may have been refugees from the surrounding region rather than inhabitants of the city or widows of soldiers; unfortunately, the church's marriage records record only the names of the brides, not their circumstances. Among the men who married was Edward Webb, who wed Eleanor Deley on 14 May 1778. A month later they left the city together and marched to New York with the rest of the British forces.

For the remainder of 1778 and into 1779, the Brigade of Guards stayed in the New York City area, but remained active, participating in a number of expeditions into New Jersey and Connecticut. As 1779 wound down, they moved from tent camps to huts, structures of boards or logs with thatched roofs, often built into the sides of hills. A dozen or so men and their wives might live in each one-room hut, cramped but cozy quarters for the cold season.

One night in late October, three soldiers of the Guards arrived at the door of the hut that Eleanor Webb shared with her husband and others. They asked for something to drink, an offer that she obliged. Then they asked if they might leave a bundle there for a while, which she also allowed. The next day the men returned, to open the bundled and divvy up the contents; one of the soldiers said he'd found the bundle in the street. It contained an assortment of cloth and three pairs of women's stays. They parceled out the contents, giving a pair of stays to another woman who was present, and giving Eleanor Webb a pair of stays, two pieces of calico cloth, and one piece of plain cloth. She hesitated to take them, saying she was afraid they'd been stolen, but the soldiers assured her they'd been found. Some of the goods remained in the hut, and one of the soldiers took the remainder.

A day later, more people arrived at the hut. This time it was a shopkeeper, a constable, and some men assisting them. They searched the hut and found some of the things from the bundle. Those goods had been stolen from the shopkeeper's shop, and she'd received a tip that they'd be found in the Webbs' hut. Other things had been found in the camp of a Hessian regiment, where soldiers and wives had bought them from a British soldier. A few days later the constable and his men returned, and this they dug into the ground under Edward Webb's bed. They found still more of the stolen goods. Edward and Eleanor Webb, and four other soldiers of the Guards, were put under arrest.

The Brigade of Guards held a general court martial in early December. Three soldiers were tried for breaking into the shop and stealing an assortment of goods. The key evidence was provided by another soldier who had participated in the crime and agreed to turn "King's evidence," that is, to testify on behalf of the prosecution in return for immunity. When that trial concluded, Edward and Eleanor Webb, along with one other soldier, were tried for "receiving and secreting of goods stolen" from the shopkeeper. The testimony was straightforward, about the goods being found in the hut, some buried under a bed. Soldiers described leaving the bundle in the hut, then returning and dividing up the contents. They mentioned Eleanor Webb receiving cloth and a pair of stays, and her reluctance to take them for fear of their having been stolen. The stolen goods were shown to the court, and the shopkeeper identified them.

Eleanor Webb testified honestly, about her concern that the things had been stolen, and the reassurance she'd been given that they were not. The court, however, did not accept this as an excuse. Plundering, and the distribution of stolen goods, had been a rampant problem in the British army in America, and many similar trials had been held even during the eighteen months that Mrs. Webb had been with the army. Edward and Eleanor Webb were found guilty; he was sentenced to receive 500 lashes, while she was sentenced to be "drummed out of the lines with a rope around her neck."

We don't know whether the punishment was carried out or pardoned. If Mrs. Webb was indeed drummed out of the lines, that left her in a difficult situation. She could try to return to the Philadelphia area, if she had a place there to go, but the very circumstances that led her to marry a British soldier may have also prevented her return. If she had proof of her marriage, she was entitled to reside in her husband's home town of Sedgley in England, but getting there would be profoundly difficult. Without further information, we can only guess what became of her.

Edward Webb now had two predictors of his future behavior: he had married in America, and he had been sentenced to lashes. Many soldiers who'd had either of these experiences subsequently deserted - to stay with their wives, in the former instance, and in disgruntlement, in the latter instance. If Edward Webb's wife was indeed turned out of British lines, that gave him even more incentive to abscond. He did not, however, desert. He remained a soldier in the 1st Foot Guards for a total of nineteen years and one month, taking his discharge on 4 January 1792 at Whitehall in London. Because of "the rheumatism contracted on service in America, during the whole campaign," the thirty-eight year old soldier was awarded an out pension, meaning that he could return to his place of residence and collect a semi-annual payment from the government.

Instead, he remained in London and joined the Royal Westminster Regiment of Middlesex Militia. He remained in that corps until October 1796, when he requested and received a discharge, and returned to the pension rolls.

Pensioners had an obligation to serve in garrison battalions if they were fit enough to do so, that is, capable of doing the sorts of light duty required in a fixed post, even if they were no longer able to march and encamp like they had done in the infantry. Webb was among those called up at the end of December 1802, but after only fifty-one days he was discharged again after being "found incapable of doing garrison duty;" he was then "exempted from attendence upon any further occasion when the out pensioners may be called on."

Two years later, however, he was once again in a garrison battalion in London. In spite of the medical assessment he'd previously received, he served for two years and nine months, taking his discharge on 30 November 1807 and returning to the pension rolls one final time, having "disorders contracted in the service and found unfit for garrison duty."

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Donald McCraw, 42nd Regiment, wields his broadsword

In March and April of 1780, a string of home invasions and robberies occurred in the area around the villages of Jamaica and Flushing in Long Island, New York. The farming region had been garrisoned by the British army since 1776, and was teeming with soldiers, prisoners of war, refugees, and other itinerant and displaced people. Under these conditions, crimes were bound to occur, but this early 1780 spree was particularly disturbing. Residents heard a knock on the door in the middle of the night; if they didn't answer, their doors were broken open and men with blacked faces burst in, demanding money, guns, wearing apparel, watches and other valuables. Sometimes they forced the homeowners to light candles and lead them to goods, other times they forced their victims to cower under bedding while they ransacked the home, threatening to kill those who didn't comply. Residents were tied up, knocked down, blindfolded, belittled and overpowered. No one was sure exactly how many perpetrators there were - three, four, five - with blackened faces, wrapped in greatcoats, at least one carrying a gun - but they all had the appearance of soldiers, particularly one who was seen to be wearing a light infantry cap.

On 8 May they struck again, for at least the fifth time. Their target was the farmhouse occupied by William Creed and his adult son. In the middle of the night, there was noise as people attempted to enter the front door. Failing to break it open, they went to the kitchen door. Four men, one wielding a musket with fixed bayonet, burst through and rushed on the elder Creed, demanding his watch and purse. After threatening to kill him if he didn't comply and demanding a candle, they forced him to hide in his bed under his blankets. But there was something the robbers hadn't counted on. There was another person in the house, Serjeant Donald McCraw of the 42nd Regiment of Foot, the Royal Highlanders, a seasoned veteran soldier wielding a broadsword.

McCraw, a native of the village of Dunkeld, about fifteen miles north of Perth in the Scottish highlands, had enlisted in the 42nd Royal Highland Regiment in 1756 at the age of twenty-two. In his twenty-four years as a soldier, much of it as a grenadier, he had been through some scrapes - the disastrous assault on Fort Ticonderoga during the French and Indian War that took a heavy toll on his regiment, the difficult and dangerous campaign in New York and New Jersey in 1776 and 1777, battles like Brandywine and Monmouth in which the grenadier battalion to which his company belonged was heavily engaged, as well as the dangers imposed by long sea voyages, harsh wilderness campaigns, and even civil unrest in Ireland.

By 1779, McCraw had contracted an abdominal hernia which limited his ability to march and exercise with the regiment, but he and his wife worked for his commanding officer, Captain John Peebles, procuring his provisions, cooking, handling laundry, and other chores. In December 1779, the grenadier battalion quartered in Long Island was ordered to prepare for the expedition to Charleston, South Carolina, Capt. Peebles sent McCraw to Brooklyn to sell a horse, which the serjeant dutifully did, returning with ten guineas (gold coins worth twenty-one shillings, or 1.05 Pounds Sterling). When it came time for the battalion to embark, McCraw, his wife and son remained behind in Long Island. He took quarters at the house of William Creed, whose family treated him well enough that he felt a responsibility to protect them. He wasn't about to let a band of ruffians bring them harm.

The troops of the 42nd Regiment had been issued broadswords, the traditional weapons of highland soldiers, but it's not clear whether they were routinely carried in America. McCraw had his, though, and stormed out of his room wielding it to confront the invaders. The gunman pushed at McCraw with bayonet, but the Scotsman parried the thrust with his hand, and with the other hand swung his sword at his assailant, then seized the musket from him. McCraw then turned on another of the robbers who was at the fireplace attempting to light a candle, and ran him through with his sword. The invaders attempted to regroup and seize the elder Creed, but McCraw and the younger creed rescued him, cutting one on the head in the process, upon which three of the attackers dragged their stabbed comrade out of the house and fled. McCraw himself received two wounds in the scuffle.

The following morning, McCraw and the younger Creed went outside and found a wounded man sitting by the well. He had been stabbed, not by McCraw, but by the band of robbers; he had been with them, but when he refused to help break down the Creeds' door, they ran him through.

They took the man inside, and learned that although he was wearing "a Countrymans Coat," he was a soldier in the King's American Regiment,  a Loyalist corps composed of men enlisted in America to fight with the British army. They sent word to his regiment and two officers came. To the officers, the man confessed having participated in three other robberies, and gave the names of several fellow soldiers of his regiment who had been involved including a serjeant and a corporal. Then he died.

The fight with the marauding soldiers was Serjeant McCraw's last battle. In June, the grenadier battalion returned from South Carolina and went into encampment on Long Island. In consideration of McCraw's health issues, Capt. Peebles deemed him eligible for discharge, noting in his diary on 2 July, “presented Sergt. McCraw to the board of Physicians & got him Invalided he fought well last winter in suppressing a gang of Robbers at Jamaica, he killed one & wounded two, & recd two wounds.” Being invalided meant that McCraw could return to Great Britain and stand before the pension board. On 4 July Peebles wrote, “saw Sergt. McCraw & his wife & child told them to get ready to go home in the fleet, & gave the Boy 2 guineas,” quite a generous gesture that represented over a month's worth of a serjeant's pay, a tribute to the great esteem the officer had for this long-serving soldier and his family.

Before he sailed, though, McCraw had one more piece of military business to attend to. He testified at the court martial of the several soldiers of the King's American Regiment implicated in the string of robberies a few months before. Several Jamaica and Flushing residents also testified, the dead man's confession was read, and the court deliberated: three of the perpetrators were sentenced to death, the others to lashes.

McCraw and his family sailed from New York in July 1780. The muster rolls of the 42nd Regiment of Foot indicate that he was discharged on 1 October, but this is the date through which he was paid rather than the date that he left the regiment. In typical fashion, he was given several weeks' pay to subsist him on his journey back to Great Britain. He went before the pension board in Chelsea outside of London on 10 November, forty-six years old, after twenty-four years of service in the 42nd Regiment.

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British Prisoners Marry in America: the 26th Regiment in Lancaster, PA, 1776

It's fun to be surprised by data. Even more fun is to be surprised twice. Marriage records for soldiers of the 26th Regiment of Foot held as prisoners of war in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, provide just such an interesting double surprise.

In 1775, the 26th Regiment of Foot garrisoned the British post at St. Johns, a key post on the Richelieu River that lay on the passage between Montreal and Lake Champlain. In November, the garrison was overpowered by an American force sweeping northward that would also take Chambly, Montreal, and then lay siege to Quebec. Most of the 26th Regiment was captured at St. Johns or along the river. These prisoners, along with prisoners from the 7th Regiment of Foot, were sent to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, some 400 miles away and far from any of the war's front lines.

The prisoners began to arrive in Lancaster in early December, about a month after they were captured. They soon began to get married in the town's St. James church. Comparing the maiden names of the brides to names on muster rolls and prisoner lists, we surmise that the prisoners met most, if not all, of the brides after arriving in Lancaster; the names don't indicate that they were daughters or widows from within the regiment.

It was no surprise that British prisoners of war married local women; in fact, that was completely expected. What is surprising was the number of marriages: sixteen in a one-year period from December 1775 through December 1776 (the marriage records inexplicably list one man as belonging to the 47th Regiment, but he is on the muster rolls of the 26th Regiment). An additional seven marriages involved men listed simply as "a soldier;" none of these can be correlated with certainty to men of the 26th Regiment.

There were about 300 prisoners from the 26th Regiment held in Lancaster (an exact number is not known). A list of 247 of these soldiers, take in the middle of 1776, gives the names of sixty-six wives with them. Most were probably with the regiment when it was captured, but the list includes four of the women who married in Lancaster (and, oddly, does not include some of the others who married into the regiment before the list was made). Given that many of the men were already married when captured, not all were eligible to marry local women. With this imprecise information we can estimate that between five and ten percent of the prisoners got married while in Lancaster.

Among the maiden names of the brides are a few that match up with names of other prisoners. Possibly some of these brides were daughters of couples in the regiment. We don't have enough information to know how many, if any, of the brides were already in British military families. One new bride's last name matches that of a prisoner who enlisted in the American army; did he abandon his wife, prompting her to marry another soldier of the 26th Regiment, or is it just by chance that they had the same last name?

From other sources, we know that British soldiers who married local women were liable to desert from the army when an opportunity arose, in order to stay with their wives. Also, whenever British prisoners of war were exchanged or released, some of them deserted instead of returning to the army; detailed figures have not been determined, but we estimate that about ten percent of prisoners did not return to the army. This expectation led to the second surprise about marriages in the 26th Regiment.

The prisoners from the 26th Regiment of Foot were exchanged in early 1777, after over a year in captivity. The regiment's muster rolls allow us to trace the careers of the soldiers. Several of them did not return, and are written off of the muster rolls as deserters, all on the same day. Surprisingly, though, only two of the sixteen men known to have married in Lancaster did not return to the army. Thirteen of the newlyweds duly returned to New York and continued their military duties. One man disappears from the muster rolls with no annotation, so his fate is not known.

Four of the newly married men died within a year or two of rejoining the British army in New York. One was discharged in America in 1780. Six served in the 26th regiment through September 1780 when the regiment ordered home; two of them were drafted into the 44th Regiment and were still in that corps in Canada in 1785, while the other four were probably also transferred into other regiments (a gap in the muster rolls makes it impossible to follow their careers after September). Two of the married men returned to Great Britain with the regiment, one of them serving until 1792.

But what about their wives? Wives of British soldiers had the option of following their husbands, and these American women who wed British prisoners of war were entitled to stay with the men who were exchanged and went to New York. That doesn't mean, though, that they did. Documents giving names of soldiers' wives, or even enumerating which soldiers were married, are very rare, and none are known to exist for the 26th Regiment after the 1777 exchange. Perhaps all of these women remained in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and eventually established new lives. Or perhaps they followed their husbands, taking on the roles typical of army wives in garrison and on campaign. Either way, their lives were profoundly changed by the temporary presence in their home town of British prisoners of war.

Below are the marriages of soldiers from the 26th Regiment recorded at St. James Church, Lancaster, Pennsylvania

March 5, 1776: Jonathan Haywood (of 47th Regiment) married Bridget McGuire at St. James Church in Lancaster today. (Haywood, actually in the 26th Regiment, was drafted into the 44th Regiment in 1779 and went to Canada; he was still in the 44th Regiment in 1785)

March 14, 1776: married today at St. James Church. Daniel Allen (of the 26th Regiment) and Catharine McElroy. (Allen remained in the regiment through 1779)

March 27, 1776: John Andrew Walker of the 26th Regiment married Ann Aritage at St. James Church today. (Walker rejoined the regiment but died in late 1777 or early 1778)

May 10, 1776: Joseph Abbott of the 26th Regiment and Isabella Hunter were married at St. James today. (Abbot returned to Great Britain with the 26th Regiment in 1780)

May 16, 1776: Married today at St. James Church were John Mason of the 26th Regiment and Ann Burns. (Mason deserted from captivity, presumably to remain in the Lancaster area)

May 24, 1776: At St. James Church, James Culbert (of the 26th Regiment) and Mary Justice were married. (Culbert returned to the regiment, and died on 24 October 1777)

May 28, 1776, 1776: Married at St. James Church today were: James McCarty of the 26th Regt. and Elizabeth Glover. (James McCadie remained in the regiment through 1779)

June 8, 1776: William Boddle of the 25th Regiment and Mary Hellens exchanged marriage vows at St. James Church today.(William Bodie returned to the regiment and was discharged in New York in April 1780)

June 11, 1776: Simon McKinzy of the 26th Regt. married Elizabeth Unger at St. James Church. (Simon McKenzie, a shoemaker from Logie, County Ross, Scotland,  returned to Great Britain with the 26th Regiment and was discharged in 1792 at the age of 41; he was granted a pension)

June 23, 1776: Samuel Doxey of the 26th British Regiment married Sarah Drummond at St. James.(Doxey deserted from captivity and joined the American army)

June 30, 1776: Married at St. James Church today were John Walker of the 26th Regiment to Mary Hargy (Walker rejoined the regiment but died in late 1777 or early 1778)

July 1, 1776: Married at St. James Church today were John Lloyd (a Corporal in the 26th Regiment) to Eleanor Reade. (Loyd returned to the regiment, and died on 8 February 1778)

October 27, 1776: George Hider of the British 26th Regiment married Rebecca Smith. (George Hides returned to the regiment, was drafted into the 44th Regiment in 1779 and went to Canada;he was still in the 44th Regiment in 1785)

November 30, 1776: John Smith of the British 26th Regiment and Jane Herrot were married  today at St. James (Smith remained in the regiment through 1779)

December 4, 1776: Joseph Williams of the 26th Regiment of British prisoners married Eleanor ? at St. James today. (Williams remained in the regiment through 1779)

December 7, 1776: James Lindsay (26th Regt.) and Mary Myer (Lindsay disappears from the muster rolls after returning from captivity)

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Widows who Stayed with the Army: 10th Regiment and 35th Regiment

A popular bit of mythology concerning British army wives is that they were required to remarry within a few days (24 hours, 48 hours, 72 hours, or other durations depending upon who retells the story) or they would be abandoned by the army. Not only is this illogical given the important roles that army wives held in the military infrastructure, working as nurses, washer women and sutlers, but we've shown several examples of widows who stayed with the army for months or years after their husbands died. In those cases, we used information from marriage licenses combined with information from regimental muster rolls. We have several instances where a marriage license denotes the bride-to-be as "widow" belonging to a regiment, and found on the regiment's muster rolls a man with the same last name who had died anywhere from a few months to a few years before. Although British general orders in America frequently mention opportunities for soldiers' widows to return home on ships bound for Great Britain, these marriage licenses demonstrate that some did not.

Another source of evidence has come to light. In late 1782 or early 1783 there was an opportunity for people associated with the army to sail from New York to Great Britain. This was quite common, but in this instance a list survives, found by researcher Todd W. Braisted, of the people who applied for passage. The list includes a number of army widows, each one with the regiment listed alongside the woman's name. Comparing these names to muster rolls we can determine when the husband died.

Some of them are indeterminate, such as three widows of the 76th Regiment, Margaret Hay, Ann McDonald and Ann Bissett. Only a few muster rolls for this regiment survive, leaving no way to know whether their husband's died in garrison in New York, on campaign in Virginia, or as prisoners of war after the capitulation at Yorktown. We also have no way of knowing whether these women accompanied the regiment on campaign. Similar is the case of Eleanor ("Elinor") Paget of the 24th Regiment, who sought passage to Ireland for herself and one child; not enough information has been found to reveal whether her husband died on Burgoyne's 1777 campaign, or in prison during the subsequent years. And no man corresponding to Rachel Molloy of the 27th Regiment, who sought to go to England, has been found on the muster rolls.

A few, however, can be traced, and the results are surprising. Anne Carr of the 35th Regiment was the widow of William Carr, who had died on 28 October 1776. This was the date of the battle of White Plains, in which the 35th Regiment was heavily engaged, and we can assume that Carr was killed in that battle. The 35th Regiment was sent to the West Indies in late 1778 and was still there when Anne Carr applied for passage to England in late 1782.

Widow Huston, whose first name is not given, belonged to the 10th Regiment of Foot. She was the widow of William Huston, who died on 10 September 1776 when the regiment was on Long Island preparing for the assault on Manhattan. In 1778 the fit men of the 10th Regiment were drafted into regiments bound for the West Indies, the unfit men were discharged, and the officers and non-commissioned officers were sent home. But Widow Huston remained in New York, and applied for passage to Ireland with six children.

Another widow from the 10th Regiment was Mary Smith. There were two men named Smith in the 10th Regiment who died during that regiment's service in America between 1774 and 1778. Thomas Smith died on 2 February 1777, and Joseph Smith on 30 December 1777. We don't know to which one Mary Smith was married, but we do know that she was still in New York in late 1782 when she applied for passage to England.

What were these women doing all this time? Lacking specific information, we can only guess that they were gainfully employed, perhaps supporting the army as hospital nurses or sutlers. While don't know the reasons why they stayed in America, they do provide further proof that army widows were neither abandoned nor required to remarry.

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Three Brave Army Wives

Learning about British soldiers of the American Revolution is challenging: Muster rolls give us their names, but personal information is harder to come by. It is even more difficult to learn about their wives. From documents like provision receipts and embarkation returns, we know the numbers of women who accompanied British regiments; some ten to twenty percent of British soldiers were not only married but had their wives with them in America (other wives stayed behind in Great Britain; we have no way of knowing how many). There are no lists of names of these women. From time to time we encounter stories about them, and some of those stories reveal bravery, perseverance and devotion. Here are three:

http://allthingsliberty.com/2014/10/three-brave-british-army-wives/

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Mary Jeffries, Brigade of Guards, stands trial

It should be well known to readers of this blog that soldiers’ wives were an integral part of the army; for those needing a quick refresher, see my article on the subject. These women were not, however, enlisted or attested like soldiers, and as such were not subject to charges of desertion if they absconded. They were nonetheless subject to punishment for some violations of military law, and a number of army wives were tried by general courts martial in America for an assortment of crimes. One woman who stood trial was Mary Jeffries, wife of a soldier in the Brigade of Guards named John Jeffries. She was charged not with desertion, but with persuading her husband to desert.

The British army included three regiments of Foot Guards, charged with protecting the royal family and government institutions in London. These regiments were much larger than typical infantry regiments. When the need came to increase the size of the British army in America, a composite brigade consisting of about 1000 men was created by calling for volunteers from each of the three Foot Guards regiments. The Brigade of Guards arrived in America in 1776 and served for the remainder of the war, participating in major campaigns around New York, Philadelphia, the Carolinas, and Virginia.

One of the soldiers in the Brigade of Guards was John Jeffries, a private from the 1st Regiment of Foot Guards. While the brigade was wintering in Philadelphia in late 1777 and early 1778, Jeffries met a local woman, Mary Staiger, and fell in love. He dutifully applied to his Colonel for permission to marry her, but was disappointed when the officer would not grant his consent.

The couple married anyway, in Philadelphia's Gloriea Dei Church, on 9 April 1778. When the army left Philadelphia in early June Mary accompanied her new husband. It may be that she was not among those officially allowed on the march, for John and Mary stayed at the rear of their company while the army was on the move and each time the army halted, they “made their Hut” some distance away from the rest of the company. This behavior, uncharacteristic of the soldier who had in the past always kept up with his comrades, aroused the suspicion of Jeffries’ serjeant, James Wilson. It is not clear why Wilson did not take any direct action such as ordering Jeffries to keep up and to bivouac with his company; instead, he reported to the Colonel that he suspected the couple intended to desert. The Colonel directed Wilson to “particularly to observe Jeffries.”

The army arrived at Sandy Hook in New Jersey, and there waited to board ships for the final part of their journey to New York and Staten Island. In spite of his serjeant's close observation, John Jeffries was absent from the 10 o’clock roll call on the morning of 3 July. Following the usual protocol when a man was absent a search was made for his necessaries (his shirts, stockings and shoes) and it was soon discerned that they were missing, a typical sign of desertion. Men sent in searching of him found Mary in a house a quarter mile behind the encampment at about 2 o’clock that afternoon, with all of her clothing. Serjeant Wilson determined that she did not have any of the missing necessaries. She said that she knew nothing of John Jeffries’ whereabouts or intentions, but nonetheless she was confined on suspicion of having “advised and persuaded” him to desert. With the rest of the army, she boarded transports and proceeded to posts around New York city.

She was brought to trial by a general court martial in Brooklyn three weeks later. Serjeant Wilson testified that, besides the circumstances related above, he had heard her say that she intended to return to Philadelphia where her father lived. In her defence, Mary repeated that she knew nothing of her husband’s desertion. She said not only that she had gone to the house in the rear of the encampment to wash her clothing, but that she had informed Serjeant Wilson of her intentions before doing so. While the serjeant claimed to have found her at the house with her clothing packed up, she related that another soldier had found her there while her clothes were hanging out to dry, and that she then packed them up and went herself to the serjeant. Responding to the claim that she had said she would return to Philadelphia, she explained that many of the soldiers’ wives had heard that they might not be allowed on the transports that were to carry the army from New Jersey to posts around New York. Some had decided that they would return to Philadelphia only if they were so refused, but that she herself had planned to see her husband on board ship before returning.

The court acquitted her, probably because Serjeant Wilson was the only witness against her and her explanations were reasonable enough. It is interesting that in the trial proceedings she was introduced as a “follower of the army” rather than as the wife of a soldier or a member of the Brigade of Guards (in many other trials, wives are explicitly referred to as, for example, “of the 22nd Regiment”). Throughout the serjeant’s testimony neither the term “husband” nor “wife” is used, but she is nonetheless referred to by John Jeffries’ surname. Her own testimony, on the other hand, refers to Jeffries directly as her husband.

Although the serjeant mentioned in his testimony that he had “heard since Jeffries’s Desertion that he has been seen” in Philadelphia, we have no information on his actual fate, nor the life pursued by Mary Jeffries after the trial.

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Michael Wright, 43rd Regiment, makes a bad connection

Before war broke out in America, there were already British troops on the continent. It was part of the British empire, and there were many places where local tensions required military presence to maintain order. In addition to frontier posts along the Ohio river and in Canada, there were the valuable islands in the West Indies where local natives resisted British colonial expansion. The most recent uprising had occurred fighting had occurred on the island of St. Vincent between 1769 and 1773, a conflict that came to be called the First Carib War. After a peace agreement was signed, British troops remained on the island including the 6th Regiment of Foot.

The outbreak of war in the thirteen mainland American colonies necessitated an immediate buildup of troops there. The 6th Regiment, along with others in the Caribbean, were sent to New York in 1776 to bolster the strength of Sir William Howe's army that was preparing for a campaign that, it was hoped, would put an end to the rebellion. Not long after their arrival, though, it became clear that the 6th wasn't up for campaigning in America after having spent a few years in the harsh Caribbean climate. In December 1776, orders were given that the regiment was to transfer all of its able-bodied soldiers into other regiment in America. The remainder, including the officers and non-commissioned officers, would return to Great Britain where worn out men would be discharged and new soldiers would be recruited.

Among the men drafted from the 6th Regiment was Michael Wright, who joined the 43rd Regiment of Foot. We know nothing of his background, including how long he had been in the 6th Regiment (no muster rolls survived for the regiment during this time period); he may have been a long serving soldier or a recently arrived recruit. Regardless, he was sent with other drafts from New York to Rhode Island where the 43rd was stationed. Initially, like the other drafts, he continued to wear his uniform from the 6th Regiment. Both the 6th and the 43rd had just received new uniforms for the year 1776, but it would take all winter for the clothing to be fitted properly to the men. Each regiment had tailors to do this work (Great Britain's thriving textile industry insured that there were plenty of skilled tailors among the men who enlisted in the army). When spring came, it is not known which newly-tailored uniform Wright donned - the one he'd recently received from his old regiment, or a new one from the 43rd Regiment.

Regardless, he didn't wear it long. The muster rolls show us that he died on 5 July 1777. There was no fighting on that day; although minor engagements occurred frequently in Rhode Island throughout that year, none correlate with Wright's demise. Muster rolls provide a record of many such unascribed deaths, and ordinarily we attribute them to illness for want of additional information. But in Wright's case, an officer of the Rhode Island garrison recorded the cause:

A Soldier of the 43rd Regt shot himself last night in the rear of the Camp. The discovery of a Connection he had with a married woman of the same Regiment, appears to have been the cause of this rash action.

Nothing else is known about the incident. All we know of this untold story is the tragic ending.

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