Asians in the Continental Army

The Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia just shared a blog post about evidence of Asian soldiers in the Revolutionary War.

This doesn’t mean the thousands of soldiers who fought battles in India when the British, the French, and their local allies went to war there. That’s another seldom-told story.

Rather, interpreter Daniel Sieh quoted two sources showing how Continental Army officers identified certain enlisted men as from South Asia:

• “Charles Peters…is an East-India Indian, formerly the property of Mr. Thomlinson in Newbern.” —advertisement for deserters, North-Carolina Gazette, 15 May 1778.
• John Newton, a barber from “Bengaul, yellow complexion, talks good English” —size roll of Capt. Matthias Ogden’s company in the First New Jersey Regiment, 1779-82.

It’s intriguing to note that on 13 July 1776 Dixon and Hunter’s Virginia Gazette included this advertisement for a man named John Newton of the same age and skills as the “Bengaul” in Ogden’s company:

a Servant Man named JOHN NEWTON, about 20 Years of Age, 5 Feet 5 or 6 Inches high, slender made, is an Isiatic Indian by Birth, has been about twelve Months in Virginia, but lived ten Years (as he says) in England, in the Service of Sir Charles Whitworth.

He wears long black Hair, which inclines to curl, tied behind, and pinned up at the Sides; has a very sour Look, and his Lips project remarkably forward. He left his Master on the Road from Williamsburg, between King William Courthouse and Todd’s Bridge, where he was left behind to come on slowly with a tired Horse (which I have been informed is since dead) but has never made his Appearance at Home. . . .

He has been at Richmond, Williamsburg, and in other Parts of the Country, in the Service of Mr. George Rootes of Frederick, and Colonel [Thomas?] Blackburn of Prince William, of whom I had him; and as he is a good Barber and Hair-Dresser, it is possible he may endeavour to follow those Occupations as a free man.

The same notice appeared in other Williamsburg newspapers through September, some referring to Newton as simply “an Indian by birth.” (I first learned of that first ad through Ned Hector’s webpage.)

Sir Charles Whitworth was a Member of Parliament remembered for his use of statistics.

As for Charles Peters, Sieh writes:

Historian Justin Clement has done extensive research into Peters’s years of servitude, court battle for freedom, and subsequent military service. At his querying, historian Todd Braisted discovered that Charles Peters was born around 1757 in Madras (present-day Chennai, India). We can posit that he was born in territory controlled by the British East India Company, and that he was sent as an enslaved person to the Carolinas, where he joined the Continental Army and gained his freedom.

Unfortunately, Peters’s story gets a bit murky after his desertion, and while he occasionally appears in later records, we are still researching what happened to him next. He may have rejoined the Revolutionary forces in time for the reorganization of the North Carolina Line in the spring of 1778. We have tantalizing evidence that Peters participated in the Siege of Charleston, became a prisoner-of-war, and even joined a Loyalist regiment, after which time he died in Kingston, Jamaica.

I must note that, according to the 7 Aug 1783 Pennsylvania Packet, a “pioneer” in the Duke of Cumberland’s regiment named Charles Peters was killed on Jamaica; his murderer, Pvt. John Griffin, was hanged in June 1783.

As Sieh says, both Peters and Newton came to America enslaved. Both had been assigned British names that don’t indicate Asian origin; we need other sources to learn where they came from. And both made multiple moves to gain their freedom.

(It’s a delight to see so many familiar names contributing to the research on these two men: John U. Rees, Don N. Hagist, Robert A. Selig, and Todd W. Braisted.)

His Royal Highness, the Teen-Aged Midshipman

The English Historical Fiction Authors blog just reran the late M. M. Bennetts’s article about Prince William Henry, third son of George III and Queen Charlotte, and his adventures in the American War:

In 1778, when he was twelve, Prince William’s concerned parents conceived the idea that he should be educated at sea in the service of the Royal Navy, as a sort of royal “leading from the front” kind of exercise. As a dutiful parent, King George visited Portsmouth and boarded the 90-gun flagship, Prince George, to see for himself the accommodation; he “visited the three Decks to see the Men exercise as in action…” and decided firmly that the Navy was an ideal environment for the education of this starting-to-be-dangerously-wild third son.

Coincidentally, Prince William’s embarkation on a naval career would also have the effect of stirring up patriotic support for the Navy during this awkward period of war with the American colonies. A win-win situation in the king’s mind.

Thus on 15 June 1779, Prince William Henry boarded the Prince George to begin his new life at sea. He’d been kitted out with the finest naval uniform by his father—including some 3 dozen shirts and stocks, a mattress, bolster and pillows, pens, ink powder and paper, log books and journal books and a number of weighty tomes on navigation and mathematics—and a special tutor, a Cantabrigian, by the name of Mr. Majendie. Both the Prince and his tutor were given the rank of Midshipman.

Prince William Henry was at the 1780 Battle of the Cape of St. Vincent, a significant British victory over the Spanish, though he saw only a little bit of the action.

By September 1781, the prince was a teenager who had spent years with other naval officers—not the sort of experience likely to make him less wild. In that month the Prince George and its fleet arrived in New York harbor. “Prince William Henry was the first member of the royal family ever to visit North America and the loyalists received him with rapturous delight, and indeed—just as the king had hoped—rallied to the royal banner.”

Outside New York, Lt. Col. Matthias Ogden of the Continental Army had a different response to news of the royal midshipman. He proposed to Gen. George Washington to kidnap the prince in order to force the Crown to speed up peace negotiations. Christian M. McBurney finished that story at the Journal of the American Revolution.

Though you might well guess the outcome when I report that the prince survived to become King William IV of Great Britain.