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.

Learn more about British soldiers in America

[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.]

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.

Learn more about British soldiers in the American Revolution!

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.

Learn more about British soldiers in America!

Robert Mason, 23rd Regiment of Foot, born a Fusilier

Most British soldiers enlisted in their early twenties, after they were fully grown and had tried their hands at other professions. There were exceptions both younger and older; among the former were those "born in the regiment" who could be put on the muster rolls as soon as they were old enough to perform useful service for the army. An extreme - and rare - example is Robert Mason who was put onto the muster rolls of the 23rd Regiment of Foot as a drummer on 5 September 1767. Two unrelated documents prepared in 1786 list his age as twenty-six; if that's correct, then he began playing the drum (or the fife - muster rolls often list both drummers and fifers as "drummers") at the age of just seven years.

There was a serjeant John Mason in the regiment at the time Robert Mason joined, making it safe to conclude that the young drummer was the serjeant's son. The boy must have been accomplished in his endeavors, for not only did he begin at this extraordinarily young age, but he remained a drummer for the next nineteen years at least. This was not an unusual career path; while not all British drummers began their careers at a young age, most served as drummers for their entire careers.

The 23rd Regiment, the Royal Welch Fusiliers, came to America in 1773, disembarking in New York and moving to Boston the following year. The regiment, or portions of it, served in many of the war's most famous battles and campaigns, from Lexington and Concord in April 1775 to Yorktown in October 1781. In America during the war, he grew up, reaching a slender five feet eight inches. In May 1776, when the British army under General Howe was reorganizing in Halifax, Nova Scotia, he was put into the regiment's light infantry company, where he almost certainly used a hunting horn rather than a drum to signal advances, retreats and other movements. The light infantry company joined similar companies from other regiments to form the 1st Battalion of Light Infantry, a corps that was at the forefront of the campaigns in New York and New Jersey in 1776 and 1777, and the marches to and from Philadelphia in 1777 and 1778. In August 1778 the 23rd's light infantry company was put on board the warship HMS Isis as part of the intended relief of Rhode Island; after the fleet was scattered by a storm, Isis fell in with a larger French warship, and the soldiers of the 23rd, Mason among them, participated the battle in which the British ship bested its larger French foe. Somewhere in the course of these years of fighting Mason was wounded by a musket ball in his left upper arm. And he acquired an interest in women, which began to affect his performance as a soldier.

On 28 July 1779, Mason and two fellow soldiers were absent from the light infantry battalion's encampment near New York City. The next morning, following standard procedure, a serjeant examined their knapsacks to see what they had taken with them: men who planned to desert often took spare clothing with them. The knapsacks were empty, so the men were reported as deserters and light infantrymen on horseback were sent to search for them.

In the mean time, around one o’clock in the morning, before their knapsacks were examined, the three missing men knocked at the door of a house in Throg's Neck, New York, which the British referred to as Frog's Neck. The woman of the house answered the door, and the men asked how to find the road to East Chester, farther away from British lines than they already were. The woman directed them, and the three travelers went on their way. The man of the house, however, was suspicious; he got out of bed, took up his gun, and followed the strangers into the night. The three soldiers stopped at another house, this time asking "if there were not any Rebels near at hand." Once again they were sent on their way. Then the first homeowner, gun in hand, arrived at the second home and told the owner, whom he knew, that he suspected the other men were deserters. The two local residents, both with guns, went off together in pursuit.

The two parties soon encountered each other, and the soldiers submitted to being taken to a nearby military post. The officer there determined to take them to the British lines at Kingsbridge, and off they went, the officer, the two local inhabitants, and the three soldiers of the 23rd Regiment. About two miles short of Kingsbridge, however, the soldiers turned on their escorts, wielding bayonets that they'd had concealed in spare clothing slung over their shoulders. In the ensuing scuffle, the soldiers managed with some difficulty to seize both of the guns. But when the officer severely wounded one of the soldiers, the other two backed down.

The party continued their trek towards Kingsbridge, leaving the wounded man behind. The next person they met was the captain of the 23rd Regiment's light infantry company, the soldiers' own commanding officer. He asked the two remaining soldiers what induced them to desert, to which Mason gave no reply, but his colleague attributed it to liquor. The third soldier, who had been left on the road, died of his wounds.

The two men were brought before a general court martial on 16 August. When the 19-year-old Mason asked the captain to provide a character reference (bearing in mind that the officer had known Mason for most of the young man's life), the officer replied, "you have lately been rather inattentive, owing to an attachment to two Women of the Regiment." In their defense, the two accused soldiers tried to explain their absence and why they’d taken clothing with them, claiming that "they had no intention to Desert, but that they had left the Camp, the preceeding Evening to wash their Necessaries, and in the night they went to gather some Vegetables, and lost their way. The reason that they took the Arms from the Refugees, is, that they on their March to Kingsbridge had used them ill." The court found them guilty, and sentenced them "to suffer death, by being hanged by the Neck, until they are Dead."

This sentence was never carried out. Robert Mason was instead discharged from the regiment in February 1780. This may have been some sort of plea bargain, for Mason enlisted again the very next day and became a private soldier in the 23rd Regiment. He apparently was not with the portion of the regiment that was captured at Yorktown in 1781, and his behavior must have improved, for he was appointed corporal in 1782. At the close of the war, he returned to Great Britain with the regiment, where he continued to advance. His skill with martial music was again recognized when he was appointed drum major in January 1785.

But Mason's mind was still not fully focused on military discipline. For reasons not known, he disappeared from the regiment's quarters at Tynemouth Barracks in Northumberland on 23 July 1786. A month later, he was advertised in the Newcastle Courant:

Deserted, on Sunday the 23rd July last, from his Majesty's 23d Regiment of Foot, or Royal Welsh Fusileers, now quartered in Tynemouth Barracks, Northumberland, ROBERT MASON, Drum Major, aged 26 years, five feet eight inches high, fair complexion, long visage, light brown hair, grey eyes, born in the parish of Oundle, in the country of Northampton, and by trade a labourer. The said Robert Mason had on when he went away a scarlet jacket, with silver lace down the breast, no lappels, blue cuffs and collar, with wings and silver fringe upon each shoulder, white linen waistcoat and breeches, regimental hat with three white feathers, regimental sword and belt, black stock and half gaiters; he slender made and walks very upright, has been wounded in the left arm a little above the elbow, by a musquet ball.

Another drummer, also a veteran of the American war, absconded at the same time. It is not currently know whether either of them returned, or what became of them.

Learn more about British soldiers in America!

James Hamilton, child in the 82nd Regiment of Foot

James Hamilton was a forward-thinking young man. He had come to America as a child, son of a serjeant in the 82nd Regiment of Foot. When his father, "a well-behaved soldier," was reported killed, his mother remarried. At the close of hostilities, young James went with his mother and step-father to Nova Scotia along with hundreds of other discharged soldiers and displaced loyalists.

We don't know his age, but by April 1788 James Hamilton was old enough, and well-enough educated, to write a well-worded memorial to the governor of Nova Scotia explaining that, although he was under the "tuition" of his mother's new husband, that man had a large family dependent upon him; it is not clear whether these dependents were James's sisters, children that his step-father had brought to the marriage, or a combination thereof. Regardless, James saw that he'd need to plan for his future and could not expect to be supported by his family indefinitely.

He petitioned the governor for 100 acres of land, the amount given to private soldiers with no wives or families. James Hamilton reasoned that, as his father's only surviving son, he might be granted this amount of land; his father, had he survived, would have received substantially more than that based on the size of his family. James had even identified a likely tract of land, a plot among lands allocated for soldiers discharged from the 82nd Regiment that remained unoccupied.

In January 1789 James Hamilton was granted the land. His name is a quite common one, to the extent that we've been unable, with a cursory search, to determine whether he settled and thrived on his tract. There is, however, an interesting twist to the story.

The muster rolls of the 82nd Regiment, although incomplete, reveal that Serjeant James Hamilton was not, in fact, killed. He was taken prisoner, and spent much of the war in captivity. At the close of hostilities he was repatriated; he returned to Great Britain with his regiment and was discharged when that temporary corps was disbanded in June 1784. We know nothing of whether he learned of his wife's remarriage, whether their paths crossed in New York in 1783 when freed prisoners were pouring in and displaced refugees pouring out. It is certainly not the only case of a woman remarrying when she believed her soldier-husband was dead, victims of the limits of communication in their age. The younger James Hamilton's good sense and initiative, on the other hand, is a timeless example of a positive response to adversity.

Learn more about British soldiers in America!