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,
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