Last week, on the 239th anniversary of "Paul Revere's" ride, I wrote about the experiences of three ancestors from Massachusetts who fought in the American Revolution. This week I'll tell the story of two more, from New Hampshire, who participated as well.
A common sight in Massachusetts and New Hampshire: a marker denoting the grave of a Revolutionary War soldier.
The first is Nathan Caswell, my 5x-great-grandfather. As I wrote in this diary, in 1770 Nathan Caswell and his young family were the first English settlers in what became Littleton, New Hampshire. His son Apthorp, also my ancestor, was born there the very first night they arrived, with no other English colonists in sight. The family had to flee downriver in a hollowed pine trunk the next day to avoid being attacked by the Abenaki. They returned to their new town two months later, with other families.
In 1775, after Lexington and Concord, Col. Timothy Bedel raised a ranger corps to protect the northern frontier in upper New Hampshire. This was important because Britain had controlled all of Canada to the north since 1763, and the revolutionary sentiment of the future United States was not shared there. Bedel’s rangers soon went on the offensive, pushing north into Canada and initiating the successful siege of Montréal, which fell to the Continentals on November 13, 1775. Bedel headed back to New Hampshire to raise additional companies. Nathan Caswell signed up for one of those companies, under Captain Samuel Young, who had been a sergeant in the original ranger corps.
A record of Nathan Caswell's appearance on the pay rolls of Bedel's Regiment
Col. Bedel’s regiment was an “extra” regiment, beyond New Hampshire’s quota as set by the Continental Congress, and intended to put pressure on the British by holding Montréal while the Continentals sought victories elsewhere. So it was that Nathan went back up to Québec with his new company. Gen. Benedict Arnold (who had not yet betrayed the Americans) deployed Bedel’s regiment to Les Cèdres (The Cedars) west of Montréal, to protect against a rumored attack by a small British force aided by a larger party of Iroquois, Somehow, in May 1776, despite being outnumbered 2-to-1, the British (aided by over 200 Iroquois) retook Les Cèdres in a startling display of American ineptitude.
A map of the area west of Montréal, with the city of Montréal off the map to the right. The red arrow denotes Les Cèdres (Rapide du coteau des Cèdres), which Col. Bedel's regiment managed to lose through inattention in May 1776.
Nathan may have been among the many taken prisoner. If so, he was not held long. Benedict Arnold, who had come north to deal with the situation, negotiated a prisoner exchange with the lead British officer, Captain George Forster. The American prisoners were freed on May 30, twelve days after the battle, but the Continental Congress in Philadelphia never honored Arnold's pledge to release British prisoners at Fort Anne, citing wildly exaggerated rumors of atrocities by the Iroquois who composed most of the British force. In fact, only five or six Americans were killed in the fighting, and no prisoners were harmed.
Col. Bedel, who should have been at Les Cèdres but was absent, was court-martialed and discharged by Gen. Arnold. Thus the whole Bedel regiment, Nathan included, went home to New Hampshire. Immediately upon arriving at home, Nathan joined the company of rangers led by Captain Jeremiah Eames, in which he served for nine months. They rode around northern New Hampshire, scouting and attempting to protect settlers near Northumberland and Lancaster, north of Nathan’s home. Meanwhile, the disgraced Col. Bedel enlisted as a volunteer in the Saratoga campaign and distinguished himself sufficiently to receive another colonel’s commission in late 1777. He raised another regiment, which Nathan joined.
Nathan served in this regiment for another year and a half, still protecting the northern New Hampshire settlements, until Bedel once again got into hot water and the regiment was discharged by Congress in April 1779. In brief, Bedel was accused of stealing his men’s pay and rations for himself, and of pushing another invasion of Canada to promote his pet project of creating a new state out of Vermont, northern New Hampshire, and southern Québec. Bedel had never gotten along with the authorities in New Hampshire, and wished to be free of them. Congress didn’t share this vision and sent him home again.
Nathan Caswell's household is the third one listed in Littleton, New Hampshire, the town he founded, in the 1790 United States census, the first census taken by the new nation he helped to create.
When Bedel’s second regiment disbanded, a small number of men remained at Northumberland to continue protecting the area under Lieutenant Chapman. Nathan Caswell was one of them. He was named a Captain and assigned responsibility for three towns. He served for several more months, until his military service ended for good in October 1779. Except for his brief foray into Québec in 1776, Nathan spent his wartime service not far from his family’s farm. It is clear that Nathan made it home from time to time; his wife Hannah had three more children during the years of his military service.
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The last ancestor whose story I'll share was my only ancestor to die in the American Revolution, my 5x-great-grandfather Richard Holden.
Richard Holden was born in Groton, Massachusetts in 1734. His great-grandfather, also named Richard Holden, a founder of Concord, Massachusetts, had settled in Groton in the mid-1600s. In 1757 Richard married Dorothy Adams of nearby Westford, and they had a number of children in Groton. In the late 1760s they moved to Charlestown, New Hampshire, along the Connecticut River separating New Hampshire and Vermont. The town was home to Old No. 4, the fourth and northernmost of a series of forts and trading posts the Massachusetts colony built along the river north of Massachusetts in the 1730s. The goal was to protect western Massachusetts towns from frequent raids by Native Americans coming down from New Hampshire, Vermont and Québec.
Old Fort No. 4 in Charlestown, New Hampshire. "No. 4" appears on the town's seal to this day.
Not surprisingly Old No. 4, as the first line of resistance, had been the scene of much action during the French and Indian War. Despite being outnumbered 13 to 1, the English under the leadership of Captain Phineas Stevens held the fort. The fort-cum-village was soon named Charlestown, but it was not named for a King Charles, as Charlestown, Massachusetts was. It was named in honor of British Admiral Charles Knowles, who had sent Captain Stevens a sword in congratulations for resisting the French attack.
Charlestown, located in what today is called New Hampshire’s “Quiet Corner,” still is not a very populous place. In the late 1760s it was at the edge of the northern frontier, but growing quickly. Richard and Dorothy Holden had a couple more children in Charlestown before he answered the call to join the Continental Army. Their son Timothy, only 15, also joined as a fife boy.
Richard Holden, who returned to his native Groton, Mass., in 1775 to enlist in the 18th Massachusetts (24th Continental), is listed among Groton's Revolutionary War soldiers.
After the Battle of Lexington and Concord, which we commemorate this week, the Continental Congress in Philadelphia called upon Massachusetts to raise 27 regiments. Richard Holden (then 41) returned to Massachusetts and enlisted in Col. Mansfield’s unit, the 7th Massachusetts. He joined this regiment because his first cousin, Benjamin Holden of Princeton, Massachusetts, was its lieutenant colonel. Richard was assigned to Capt. Addison Richardson’s company; long after the Revolution ended, Capt. Addison would marry Lt. Col. Benjamin Holden’s daughter Lucy.
Richard Holden’s unit fought at Bunker Hill and participated in the Siege of Boston at Dorchester and Winter Hill in Cambridge (now Somerville), until it re-organized as the 27th Continental of foot, under Col. Israel Hutchinson, for the 1776 establishment. On July 11, 1776, a week after the Declaration of Independence was signed, the 27th Continental was sent to join Washington’s general army in New York (Washington had left the Boston area after the British evacuated Boston on March 17, 1776).
There it participated in the Battle of Long Island in late August 1776. This battle was most famous for Washington’s success, having seen that holding Brooklyn Heights was impossible, in evacuating his army across the East River to Manhattan under cover of night. Through this logistical triumph, Washington preserved his army to fight another day.
Washington overseeing the retreat from Brooklyn to Manhattan in August 1776. In future centuries this route wold be followed each morning by millions of commuters.
Unfortunately for Richard Holden, that day came about three months later. Following a British victory at the Battle of White Plains (in Westchester County, just north of New York City) on October 28, 1776, British General Howe moved southward with a plan to capture Fort Washington in upper Manhattan, the last colonial stronghold in New York City. Fort Washington sits atop the Palisades in today’s Washington Heights neighborhood, just north of the George Washington Bridge. Directly across the Hudson River is the equally elevated Fort Lee, New Jersey. Now a town (and famous for its role in Chris Christie's "Bridge-Gate"), it then was a twin fortification erected by the Continental Army to control the river.
An artist's rendering of the Battle of Fort Washington, November 1776
The New Jersey palisades north of Fort Lee, seen from upper Manhattan, look largely the same today as they did in 1776: They are part of the Palisades Interstate Park.
Washington first sent reinforcements, including much of Richard Holden’s 27th Continental, to Fort Washington, raising the number of soldiers there from 2,000 to about 3,000. He then divided his army in three: he took 2,000 soldiers to Fort Lee himself, sent 3,000 north to protect the Hudson Highlands against British movement further north, and left 7,000 under General Charles Lee (namesake of Fort Lee) in Westchester County to prevent a British invasion of New England.
The George Washington Bridge, seen here from the Jersey side north of Fort Lee, is at the site of one of Washington's worst days as a general
Early on November 16, 1776, the British and their hired Hessians attacked Fort Washington from the north, south and east. Before the day was out the Americans were routed as Washington watched from across the river, and the fort’s commander, Col. Robert Magaw, surrendered, leaving New York City in British hands for the the next seven years. The same Col. Magaw had, only days before, uttered the quote in the title of this post, surely among the last times New York City was referred to as an "outpost." The Americans suffered 59 killed and 96 wounded. The remainder of the force, some 2,837 men, surrendered and were taken prisoner. Their number included my ancestor Richard Holden, his cousin Benjamin, and Richard’s captain, Addison Richardson.
A memorial erected in 1901 in Bennett Park on the site of Fort Washington in Upper Manhattan. It reads:
THIS MEMORIAL MARKS THE SITE OF / FORT WASHINGTON / CONSTRUCTED BY THE CONTINENTAL TROOPS / IN THE SUMMER OF 1776 / TAKEN BY THE BRITISH AFTER A HEROIC DEFENSE / NOVEMBER 16, 1776 / REPOSSESSED BY THE AMERICANS UPON THEIR / TRIUMPHAL ENTRY INTO THE CITY OF NEW YORK / NOVEMBER 25, 1783. / ERECTED THROUGH THE GENEROSITY OF / JAMES GORDON BENNETT / BY THE EMPIRE STATE SOCIETY OF THE / SONS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION / NOVEMBER 16, 1901. James Gordon Bennett, Sr. for whom the park is named, was the father of the Bennett who donated the memorial. The elder Bennett founded the New York Herald, namesake of Herald Square, in 1835. The Herald sponsored Stanley's expedition to track Dr. Livingstone down in Africa. The younger Bennett took over the paper when Bennett, Sr. died in 1872. in 1924, after Bennett Jr.'s death, it merged with a rival to become the New York Herald-Tribune, well known to Godard fans. The Herald-Tribune folded in 1966.
They all were sent to British prison ships in the North River, as the Hudson in the New York City area was then known. With the onset of winter and crowded conditions, disease was rampant. On January 1, 1777, the sickest 200 of the American prisoners were deposited on the beach in Milford, Connecticut, by the British and left to fend for themselves in the dead of winter.
Richard Holden, of "No. 4," is the eighth name listed on the Soldier's Monument in Milford Cemetery, Milford, Ct. 46 prisoners infected with smallpox were left by the British to die on the Milford shoreline on the first day of 1777.
There in Milford Richard Holden died of smallpox within days. His cousin and Captain Richardson both survived their imprisonment, being freed after a year and a half in captivity, and lived for many years thereafter. Richard’s widow Dorothy also continued to live in Charlestown, New Hampshire, where she died in 1805 and is buried.
Three days after Fort Washington fell, George Washington fled with the rest of his army across all of New Jersey, and across the Delaware River into Pennsylvania. On Christmas night, 1776, he launched his famous re-crossing of the Delaware, resulting in a successful sneak attack on the British encamped at Trenton and a later victory at Princeton. Just as Richard Holden lay dying on the prison ship, the tide was turning in the American Revolution.