THE PENNSYLVANIA . COMPANIES By ELMO SCOTT WATSON _ T WAS the summer of 1775. On the benches outside a tavern in the little Pennsylvania town of Sunbury a group of villagers lounged in the warm sun- shine and gossiped idly about the news from the north. At Concord and Lex- ington in Massachusetts some farmers had “fit the reg'lars” and there had been blood-letting a-plenty. Away up in New York a leader of the Green Mountain Boys, named Ethan Align, had thundered at the gates of “Old Ti” on the shores of Lake Champlain and demanded the surrender of the fort “in the name of the Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress.” The king and his ministers had sent three more gen- erals, Burgoyne and Clinton and Howe, to Bos- ton to help General Gage “hang as rebels and traitors all who continued to resist His Majesty's Government,” Stirring events, these! But in this sleepy lit- tle village the possibility of war still seemed far, away and unlikely. Then suddenly its ealm was broken. A horseman, galloping in haste and: shouting: “Express, ho! Dispatches from Phila. delphia!” as he rode, drew up In a swirl of dust before the inn. And this was the news he brought: On June 14 the Second Continental congress had passed a resolution that “six companies of expert riflemen be immediately raised in the Colony of Pennsylvania, two in the Colony of Maryland and two in the Colony of Virginia, and that each company as soon as completed shall march to join the army near Boston, to be there employed as light infantry under the com- mand of the chief officer of that army.” This chief officer had just been appointed. He was a, Virginian named George Washington—the same Washington who had distinguished himself at that “bloody business of Braddock” on the Mon ongahela twenty years before and who was even now riding north to “throw Tommy Gage: out of Boston." So it was to be war! Farmers jogging along the country roads on their way to the grist mill, stopped to talk of it over stake-and-rivet fences with thelr neighbors, Packhorse men, setting out on trading expedi-’ tions to the west, carried word of it to every backwoods settlement throug which they passed. And at once in many a cabin in the clearing, a lanky frontiersman reached up to the pegs above the fireplace and took down his long rifle. In his swift, sure hands it had barked’ deflance at Pontiac's warriors: it had brought many & squirrel tumbling down from the highest’ branch of a tree; and it had stopped short the, bounding flight of more than one buck deer. But there was bigger game afleld now, game which offered a target that no rifleman, be he “expert” or not, was likely to miss—the British Redcoats! So from their cabins In Buffalo Valley and the other settlements along the west branch of the Susquehanna these backwoodsmen hastened to Sunbury to enroll In the company which their neighbor, John Lowdon, was forming. Lowdon had been born of Quaker parents but apparently he was apostate to the doctrines of the Society of Friends for he had fought as an ensign in the French and Indian war. He was an inn. keeper at Lancaster for a time, then moved to Buffalo Valley where he was a leading member of the committee of correspondence, On June 25 Lowdon’s commission as eaptaln of a rifle company was signed by President John Hancock and Secretary Charles Thomson of the Continental congress. Four days later he was leading his company across the river to Nor thumberland to be sworn into the Continental service. There they remained until one day early’ in July when young Dick Grosvenor, the com pany drummer, beat the long roll to summon CAPT. SAM BRADY them to take up the march to Reading and Easton and from there start on the long Journey to Boston, In the meantime congress had passed another resolution, directing the Colony of Pennsylvania to raise two more companies, which, with the six a'ready authorized, were to be formed into a battalion and to be commanded by such of, ficers as the colonial asseinbly or convention should recommend. Even before this word came’ out of Philadelphia the rifle companies were be! ing fiked to the overflowing. At Samuel Getty's tavern (later the historic town of Gettysburg), the York county men were rallying to the lead- ership of Capt, Michael Doudel. In Berks county Ahey were swarming into Readiug to enroll under Capt. George Nagel. In Northampton county recruiting for Capt. Abraham Miller's company rag poling forward swiftly and from Bedford county in the west came word that Capt. Robert’ Cluggage's men were almost ready to march, Cnmberland county was providing two compa. nles, commanded by Capt. James Chambers and Capt. William Hendricks. In fact, so prompt had been the response of the Pennsylvania backwoodsmen to the eall, that on July 11 congress was notified that two companies instead of one had been enlisted in Lancaster county by Capt. James Ross and Capt. Matthew Smith and that the Battalion of Rifle. men, “raised for the defense of American lb erty and for repelling any hostile invasion thereof” would consist of nine companies. They were to be commanded by Col. William Thomp- son of Carlisle with Edward Hand of Lancaster as lieutenanteolonel and Robert Magaw as: major, all “men whose courage we have the highest opinion of." Each company consisted of one captaln, three lieutenants, four sergeants, four corporals, a drummer or trumpeter, and 68 privates. The cap, tain received £20 a month, the leutenants $134, the sergeants $8, the corporals and the drummer or trumpeter $714, and the privates $684, These riflemen were a miscellaneous jot. The majority of them were Irish, German or Welsh, the second generation of some of the thousands of Immigrants who, In the early years of the] Eighteenth century bad settled in Willan Penn's colony. Then, too, there were many de- scendants of the Scots who had been driven by, religious persecution from thelr native high lands in the Seventeenth century. They had sought temporary refuge in the province of Ulster, Ireland, whence "between the years 1720 and 1740, thousands of them migrated to Amer ica and peopled the hills of Pennsylvania's fron. tier with a sturdy, rugged race that was destined to play an important part in the formation of our national character.” Besides these, there were others of pure English stock and, to make! the cosmopolitan nature of the battalion more complete, the rolls of Captain Lowdon's come pany carried the name of John Shawnee, a' Skawanese Indian warrior. On these same rolls were three other names which should have made Lowdon's company fore: ever famous. One of them was a German, Peter Bentz, Pennsylvania would later hall him, under the name of Peter Pence, as one of her great.’ est Indian fighters. Another was a seventeen. year-old boy, a red-headed Irish lad named Sam- uel Brady, The future would see him making the name of “Capt. Sam Brady, Chief of Rangers”! a household word along the Pennsylvania-Oblo border. It would know him as the hero of’ “Brady's Leap” across the chasm of the Cuyas hoga river in northern Ohio. But this wonld be only one of many of his hairbreadth escapes from the red men, The third was another Irishman, a rollicking, dark-eyed Celt named Timothy Murphy. Two years later the sharp crack of his long rifle would sound the doom of a British army as his bullet punctuated the death sentence of Gen.’ Simon Fraser at Saratoga. Another year would add to his fame as “the most redoubtedly notoris ous marksman in North America and, as the “Scout of the Schoharie,” he would become the terror of his Iroquois and Tory enemies in New York. No less notable than the eagerness of such men as these to enlist In the fight for liberty was their speed In reaching the theater of war.’ “Between the 25th. of July and the 2d. Instant, the rifle men under the command of Captains Smith, Lowdon, Doudel, Chambers, Nagel, Miller and Hendricks passed through New Windsor (a few miles north of West Point) in the New York government on thelr way to Boston,” sald a New York item in the Philadelphia Evening' Post of August 17, 1775. But it was evidently: incorrect, so far as two of the companies Nagel's and Doudel's—were concerned. A letter, dated from Cambridge July 24, 1775, says: “The though there Is no record of the date of arrival of the companies commanded by Captains Smith, Cloggage and Miller, It was evidently prior to Aungust 18. An army return from Washington's headquarters of that date shows that the Penn gyivania riflemen had three field officers, nine captains, 27 lieutenants, the adjutant, quarter. master, surgeon and mate, 20 sergeants, 13 drummers and fifers and 718 privates present and fit for duty. Besides these regularly enlisted men there were several “gentlemen who had accompanied the riflemen on thelr march, Among them were Edward Burd, Jesse Lukens, Matthew Duncan, and John Joseph Henry, who later rose to prominence in the history of their state. But more important than these was a young doctor named James Wilkinson, A native of Tidewater, Md, he had studied medicine in Philadelphia and made the acquaintance of officers of a British regiment, the Royal Irish, His association with them, as he later wrote, “inspired in me love of things military ever after the guiding star of my life™ Bo he accompanied Colonel Thomp- son's riflemen to Cambridge where began that amazing career which carried him eventually to the high position of commander in chief of the Army of the United States despite the fact that he was, In the words of one historian, “venal, cowardous, treacherous, a bribetaker from Spain, a traitor to the Unlted States, and faith. less in all relations, public and private.” Soon after the arrival of the Pennsylvania companies at Cambridge, the battalion became the “Second Regiment of the Army of the United Colonies,” thus losing their identity as “riflemen” volunteers” there $n that GEN. EDWARD HAND ing qualities, for, as one of their captains wrote home, “the riflemen go where they please and keep the regulars In continual hot water.” Early in Beptember Captain Hendricks’ and Captain Smith's companies accompanied Arnold and Montgomery on their ill-fated expedition against Quebec where Hendricks was killed and most of the riflemen taken prisoners. In the meantime the other companies were giving thélr On January 1, 1770, the army was reorganized and these riflemen became members of the First Regiment of the Continental Army. In March Thompson became a brigadier-general and Hand leadership TRIBAL TERMS TWISTED Careful revision of translations of American Indian texts in the Mo- nual report of the bureau of Amer. fean ethnology, that many historical deductions previously made from these writings are incorrect, In writings of many historians of constant occurrence of the terms These phrases, Hewitt points out, tribal or racial descent of one Iro- quols tribe or people from another, But Hewitt was able to demonstrate that the eldership or junlorship of tribes or nations or political broth. ers among the Iroquois peoples has quite a different signification, these terms belug courteous forms of ad- dress of an institutional nature, which bars completely the historical inferences or deductions so fre quently made from them, IT HAS NO cheer, too! 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Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers