Recruiting at Samuel Gettys’s Tavern

Yesterday I visited Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. What, you might ask, does that city have to do with Boston 1775?

After all, the boundaries of Gettysburg weren’t drawn until 1786, and it wasn’t incorporated as a borough for another twenty years after that.

Way back in 1761 a man from Ireland named Samuel Gettys settled at the intersection of roads between Philadelphia and Fort Pitt and between Shippensburg and Baltimore. He opened a tavern for soldiers, traders, hunters, and others traveling in that part of western York County.

When the Continental Congress resolved to recruit companies of riflemen to join the New England army besieging Boston, Gettys’s tavern was where most of the men of Capt. Michael Doudel’s company signed up, on 24 June 1775.

Those men marched out of York on 1 July, arriving in Cambridge twenty-four days later.

On 29 July, a letter back home to Pennsylvania reported, Doudel’s company was ordered “to march down to our advanced post, on Charlestown Neck, to endeavor to surround the enemy’s advanced guard, and bring off some prisoners, from whom we expected to learn the enemy’s design in throwing up the abattis in the Neck.”

Doudel led thirty-men to the right of the British position on Bunker’s Hill. By “creeping on their hands and knees, [they] got into the rear of the enemies sentries without being discovered.”

Meanwhile, Lt. Henry Miller led an equal number “in getting behind the sentries on the left.” The two lines of riflemen got to “within a few yards of joining” and surrounding the British advance guard.

But then “a party of regulars came down the hill to relieve their guard” and spotted Doudel’s riflemen. They fired from a distance of twenty yards. The Pennsylvanians fired back.

Then, it appears, almost all the soldiers dashed back to their own lines. The Continentals claimed “two prisoners and their muskets.” The British captured Cpl. Walter Cruise; there were soon rumors he was dead or executed, and it took well over a year before he made it back to the American side, as I’ve discussed elsewhere.

Shortly after that, Capt. Doudel fell ill, resigned, and returned home. Lt. Miller took command of the company for the rest of the siege of Boston.

After the war, the people of western York County started to agitate for their own governmental structure. In 1800 the state of Pennsylvania set off Adams County, named after President John Adams, and established the county seat as Gettysburg, named after the late tavern owner.

(The historical marker shown above is in York, where the Doudel’s company mustered before marching north. Fortunately, the area around where Samuel Gettys’s tavern stood has plenty of other historical markers and monuments.)

“The rifle company divided and executed their plan”

Here’s a description of one of the Pennsylvania riflemen’s first actions in the Revolutionary War, as described in a letter written from Cambridge on 31 July 1775.

Indeed, there’s reason to believe this letter was written from the commander-in-chief’s headquarters, where I’ll speak about the riflemen tonight, by either Joseph Reed or Thomas Mifflin.

This letter was extracted along with others in the 9 August Pennsylvania Journal:

In the evening orders were given to the York county rifle company, to march down to our advanced post on Charlestown Neck, to endeavour to surround the enemy’s advanced guard, and to bring off some prisoners; from whom we expected to learn the enemies design in throwing up the abbates on the Neck.

The rifle company divided and executed their plan in the following manner: Capt. [Michael] Dowdle with 39 men filed off to the right of Bunker’s Hill, and creeping on their hands and knees, got into the rear of the enemies centries, without being discovered.—

The other division of 40 men, under Lieut. [Henry] Miller, were equally successful in getting behind the centries on the left, and were within a few yards of joining the division on the right, when a party of regulars came down the hill to relieve their guard, and crossed our rifle men under Capt. Dowdle, as they were lying on the ground in an Indian file.

The regulars were within 20 yards of our rifle men before they saw them, and immediately fired. The rifle men returned the salute; killed several, and brought off two prisoners and their musquets, with the loss of Corporal Crouse, who is supposed to be killed as he has not been heard of since the affair.

Cpl. Walter Cruise had actually been taken alive. He was locked up in the Boston jail, then taken to Halifax when the British evacuated, and kept prisoner until early 1777. For his trouble Cruise got a promotion in the Continentals, eventually becoming a captain.

The photo above, from Waymarking, shows a plaque in York, Pennsylvania, commemorating the muster of Capt. Doudel’s rifle company before they set out for Boston.

“Hung! Up by the Neck!”

A few days back I quoted Lt. Col. Stephen Kemble’s diary entry for 8 Sept 1775 about an American soldier who deserted into Boston:

another Rifle Man came in, a fine fellow, an Irishman, from Kings County, says…that a report has been spread that one of their Deserters, a Rifle Man, had been Hanged, which checked the spirit of their People coming over to us.

That report of a hanging body appears in the diary of Pvt. Samuel Bixby, stationed in Roxbury, on 2 August:

One of Genl. [George] Washington’s riflemen was killed by the regulars to day & then hung! up by the neck! His comrades seeing this were much enraged, & immediately asked leave of the Genl. to go down and attack them. He gave them permission to go and do as they pleased. The Riflemen marched immediately & began operations. The regulars fired at them from all parts with cannon and swivels, but the Riflemen skulked about, and kept up their sharp shooting all day. Many of the regulars fell, but the riflemen lost only one man.

Some authors, most notably David McCullough in 1776, have treated this report as true.

However, Bixby appears to be the only diarist or letter-writer on either side of the siege lines who reported a rifleman or his body being strung up this way. In fact, Lt. Paul Lunt wrote that the British “killed none upon our side” in skirmishing that day.

Most telling, less than two weeks later Washington complained to Gen. Thomas Gage about the treatment of American prisoners of war but said nothing of a man being hanged or a corpse displayed.

It therefore seems likely that Bixby heard an unfounded rumor. Americans may have deliberately spread the story to incite resentment against the British, or to discourage defections, or both. Or the report could have been a natural exaggeration of the Pennsylvania riflemen’s concern about a comrade captured on 29 July, Cpl. Walter Cruise.

Kemble wrote that the American soldier taken that evening was “an Irish Man from Virginia; says he was forced into the service.” But claiming coercion got Cruise nowhere. The royal authorities put him into the Boston jail, where on 1 August fellow prisoner Peter Edes wrote, “the rifle corporal, Cruise, kept close confined, and allowed nothing but bread and water.”

Cruise was shipped to Nova Scotia as a prisoner during the evacuation and not released until around the start of 1777 in New York. (The rest of his military career mentioned here.) But at least he wasn’t hanged.

“Do something for one of my old Jail Mates”

After Boston barber Richard Carpenter and Pennsylvania rifleman Walter Cruise got out of British custody around the turn of the year 1777, they went to Baltimore.

Why Baltimore? Because, with the British army cutting rapidly through New Jersey in the fall of 1776, the Continental Congress had moved south from Philadelphia. The political leaders didn’t realize, as so many American schoolchildren have learned since, that Gen. George Washington would win a battle at Trenton and decide the war. (At least that’s how it appears in capsule histories that skip rapidly through the battles from early 1777 through late 1781.)

On 13 Jan 1777 the Congress passed a special resolution about those two men:

That 100 dollars be paid to Walter Cruise, and 100 dollars to Richard Carpenter, who have been long detained prisoners by the enemy, and cruelly treated by them; and that they be recommended to General Washington to be employed in the service of the United States, in such way as he shall think proper.

John Hancock as president of the Congress sent that resolution to Washington in a brief note on 15 January. Nine days later, Washington wrote a couple of lines to Col. John Patton asking him to appoint Cruse to a position in the Sixth Pennsylvania Regiment. Cruse retired in June 1778 at the rank of captain.

As for Carpenter, he asked to serve in a Massachusetts regiment, so Washington wrote a letter about him to the Massachusetts Committee of Safety. He apparently carried it home to Boston in February 1777, and then became a second lieutenant in the 15th Massachusetts with his appointment back-dated to 1 January.

Unfortunately, Carpenter seems to have been unsuited for the position. On 5 Oct 1777 James Lovell, by then a Congress delegate, wrote to Gen. Horatio Gates about the man:

I wish for the Sake of a most deserving Woman & lovely young Children, you could contrive to do something for one of my old Jail Mates, now a Lieutenant in yr. Army—Richard Carpenter.

He is bold as a Lion in our Cause; but I have only my Wife's Assertion that he is intirely altered from what he appeared in the days of his Confinement, when non procul atrita pendebat Cantharus ansa [“not far away his flagon hung by its worn handle,” a quote from Virgil about being a heavy drinker—Lovell was a former Latin teacher, after all].

His Orthography is by no means his greatest Recommendation, as you will See by the inclosed. I have given you the only two unfavourable Hints I knew respecting him. If he proves my Wife's account true he is worthy of yr Notice, and I will own myself his Friend.

Evidently Carpenter had visited Mary Lovell to ask a favor from her husband for old time’s sake. But the barber ended up resigning from the Continental Army on 26 October.

TOMORROW: I wish I could say this ends happily.

Richard Carpenter “Returned from his Captivity”

Yesterday we left the barber Richard Carpenter “still confined in one room at Halifax” with many other American prisoners in September 1776.

A year earlier, his wife Elizabeth had been confined another way, giving birth to their third child, Samuel. I assume she was also confined in army-occupied Boston because the baby was baptized by the Rev. Andrew Eliot, the only Patriot-leaning Congregationalist minister who stayed in town through the siege.

The Carpenters’ previous two children, Richard, Jr., and Elizabeth, had been baptized in Boston’s Presbyterian meeting by the Rev. John Morehead (shown above, courtesy of the Presbyterian Heritage Center), but that society went into abeyance after Morehead died and the war began.

The 15 January 1777 New England Chronicle brought that family good news:

Mr. Richard Carpenter, of this Town, who was under Sentence of Death in this Metropolis last Winter, by Order of General Gage, and ever since detained a Prisoner, and treated in the most barbarous Manner, is it said, made his Escape from the Enemy, at New-York, about a Fortnight since.

Shortly afterward that same column of the newspaper said that Consider Howland had arrived in Boston from New York, having been freed on parole. Since Howland was one of the prisoners being held with Carpenter the previous September, I suspect he brought the news of the barber’s freedom.

Carpenter may not have escaped, however. He may have been released in a prisoner exchange. The 27 February New England Chronicle ran this story from Baltimore, where the Continental Congess was meeting:

On the first instant, Mr. Walter Cruise, belonging to Captain Dowdle’s Virginia Rifle Company, who was taken at Charlestown neck (near Boston) the 29th of June [actually July], 1775, arrived in this city, being exchanged, after a tedious and cruel imprisonment of 17 months; Mr. Richard Carpenter, came with him.

The integrity of these BRAVE and unfortunate MEN, who, though Europeans, treated with disdain, during their confinement, the promises of persons sent to intice them into the British service, will, it is hoped, recommned them to the attention of those in power.

Maybe other documents will surface to confirm how Richard Carpenter became free. For him and his family, the manner of his release probably didn’t matter. On the Carpenter family records page (now owned by the New England Historic Genealogical Society) is this notice:

Richard Carpenter Senior Returned from his Captivity in Feby 1777—after being Nineteen Months absent from his family During which time he was under sentance of Death for Fritning the Generals Gage How Burgoin & Clinton and twenty two British Regiments in the town of Boston but through the goodness of Almighty God I am now Clear of them all

But there was still a war on.

TOMORROW: “The attention of those in power.”

Richard Carpenter “apprehended and confined in irons”

Two hundred thirty-five years ago today, the British fleet pulled away from Boston’s wharves, carrying several thousand soldiers, about a thousand Loyalist refugees, and a few prisoners that Gen. William Howe deemed too valuable to leave behind.

The most prominent of those was James Lovell, former assistant teacher at the South Latin School. Letters from him were apparently found in Dr. Joseph Warren’s pockets after the battle of Bunker Hill. Lovell had been locked up since the summer of 1775, and had unsuccessfully pleaded with Gen. Washington to exchange him.

Another prisoner on the fleet was Richard Carpenter, the barber who swam from Boston to Dorchester and back in late July 1775.

Boston newspapers tried to keep track of men known to be prisoners (see the examples at Rag Linen), and they spread more news of Carpenter in late July 1776. Here’s the version that appeared in the Boston Gazette on the 29th:

Last Tuesday Evening came to town from Halifax, Lieut. Scott of Peterborough, in New Hampshire Government, who was wounded and taken Prisoner at the memorable Battle of Bunker Hill the 17th of June, 1775, and has been a Prisoner ever since.

He informed, That he with 13 others broke Goal about 5 Weeks ago, and betook themselves to the Woods where they separated; that Captain [Sion] Martindale and his first and second Lieutenants, John Brown, Rifleman, Leonard Briggs of Ware, and himself arrived at Truro at the head of the Cobbecut river, after a travel of 3 days, where they procured a boat and got to the Eastward;

that Richard Carpenter formerly Barber in this town, Philip Johnson Peak, David Kemp of Groton, and Corporal [Walter] Cruse of Virginia, and two others took the road to Windsor where they were apprehended and confined in irons;

that Benjamin Willson of Billerica, one of the Bunker Hill Prisoners died lately in goal; and that he left Master James Lovell still confin’d, in high health and spirits

On 18 September the Connecticut Journal had a long report on prisoners of war “still confined in one room at Halifax, among felons, thieves, robbers, negroes, soldiers, &c.” At the top of that long list were “James Lovil & Richard Carpenter of Boston.” Further down was “Col. Ethan Allen, of Bennington.”

The report concluded, “All in the goal but [Bunker Hill prisoner Daniel] Sessions, are well and in good spirits; but wishing greatly for an exchange.”

TOMORROW: Richard Carpenter free at last.