“The Poor, frozen in their Houses”

Like every American, I grew up hearing stories about the Continental Army’s hard winter at Valley Forge.

In fact, my most viral tweet was a snarky comment on Valley Forge National Historical Park having to close for winter weather. More than 2,000 “likes” showed how many people got that little joke.

However, Revolutionary War history buffs know that the winter of 1779-1780, when the Continentals camped in Morristown, was much harsher. Colder temperatures, more snow. But fewer deaths in camp because the army had learned more about building warm cabins and preserving public health.

Not until I read this essay by Blake McGready from the Gotham Center for New York City History did I think about how people experienced that same harsh weather inside British-held New York. Already reliant on ships to bring in food and firewood, how did the Crown authorities manage when the harbor was blocked up with ice?

Here’s a bitter taste of McGready’s article:

The winter’s fuel shortage, in particular, underscored the city’s geographic isolation, shaped British military and political strategy, and caused environmental transformations. In order to provide New Yorkers sufficient fuel, the British relied on their military outposts at Staten Island and Paulus Hook. But the unprecedented ice blocked the city’s access to timberlands beyond Manhattan.

New York required six hundred cords to warm the city a week, and at times, the British only counted seventy in their reserves. “We often hear of the Deaths of the Poor, frozen in their Houses,” [William] Smith reported. A rebel newspaper claimed that New Yorkers “are so necessitated for fuel, that near 100 of them have perished during this inclement season for want thereof.”

In order to sustain the meager supply, soldiers saw their fuel rations reduced multiple times. The commandant restricted the operations of distilleries for lack of wood. Military officials purchased old ships and hulks to distribute the wood to soldiers and the poor. Profiteering abounded in timber-rich areas. Staten Islanders reportedly hoarded fuel in order to raise the price, a practice that ended when authorities seized roughly 1000 cords.

An environmental historian, McGready also explores how the weather affected food supplies, sanitation, and even animal hunting grounds. 

Somehow a detailed article about dealing with rough winter weather seemed appropriate today.

(Wilson Freeman captured the photograph above during a reenactment at Princeton a few years back and shared it on his Daily Reenactor page. Also well worth a look.)

Making Clothing for the Army

Another of Alex Burns’s recent postings on eighteenth-century soldiers at Kabinettskriege was on the impracticality of soldiers’ uniforms.

To fill out that topic, I can also point to John U. Rees’s article "’The taylors of the regiment’: Insights on Soldiers Making and Mending Clothing, and Continental Army Clothing Supply, 1776 to 1783,” published in Military Collector & Historian in 2011 and now available through Scribd.

Armies relied on tailors in their own ranks to alter garments received in bulk from suppliers, and in some cases to make that clothing from cloth.

Rees quotes a 25 Jan 1780 letter from Lt. Erkuries Beatty of the 4th Pennsylvania Regiment to one of his brothers about the clothing workshop near Morristown:

…when we join’d the [main] Army I found I had to do the Duty of Regiment[al] Clothier to[o], which is the Cause of all my trouble, for I have lately drew Cloathing for the Regt. & it is almost all to make up from the Cloth all which I must oversee, which keeps me very Close confined–

If you was just now to step into my Hutt (which is only a very small Room if it ever got finished) I will tell you just how you would find me. . . . You’ll find me sitting on a Chest, in the Center of Six or Eight Taylors, with my Book Pen & Ink on one side and the Buttons and thread on the other–the Taylors yo’ll find some A Cutting out, others sewing, outside of the taylors you will see maybe half Dozen Men naked as Lazarus, begging for Cloathing, and about the Room you will see nothing but Cloth & Cloathing, on the floor you’ll find it about knee deep with Snips of Cloth & Dirt–

If you stay any time you’ll hear every Minute knock–knock at the door & I calling walk in, others going out, which makes a Continual Bussle–presently I begin to swear, sometimes have to jump up blundering over two or three taylors to whip somebody out of the house–othertimes [Capt. George] Tudor and my Mess Mates they begin to swear, & with our Swearing, and the taylors singing (as you know they must), and the Men a grumbling…makes pretty Music for your Ear, and thats the way from morning to night, & from Weeks End to weeks end, & I am sure I need not complain for want of Company…

Lt. Beatty (1759-1823, shown above) was only twenty years old at the time, but he had years of military experience. He had enlisted in 1775 as a sixteen-year-old private nicknamed “Arky.” A minister’s son, he was promoted into the officer‘s ranks at the start of 1777. By the winter of 1780 Beatty was serving as his regiment’s paymaster, which was no doubt why he got to oversee the uniform shop as well.

Surviving Morristown

Tonight at 10:30 P.M., WGBH in Boston will broadcast the documentary Morristown: Where America Survived. Other public broadcasting stations are airing the show at various times.

While Valley Forge has become part of most Americans’ understanding of the Revolutionary War, the Continental Army encampment at Morristown, New Jersey, in 1779-80 faced worse weather and equally desperate political straits.

The documentary’s website offers background information and some educational materials for teachers to use in conjunction with the show.