PREFACE
In Camp Hill, Cumberland County, stands a marker erected by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission commemorating the Hendricks Riflemen, who earned their glory at the very outset of the Revolutionary War. Six months before the year of independence began the riflemen had marched a thousand miles, fought, and disappeared into a haze of oblivion which never has really cleared. Except for the marker and an occasional word in a reference book, the tale of their valor is forgotten. \
Yet Hendricks ‘men were among the first half dozen military units from beyond the Hudson to join the Continental Army, and the Hendricks Company was the first of these whose captain led it into an attack on the enemy. They have been neglected because the first year of the War in general was a Yankee affair recorded principally by New England historians. So thoroughly have those regional authors done their national histories that the common impressionist hat the events of 1775 were exclusively Yankee affairs provoked by improper Bostonians and won by farmer-fighters living within range of Paul Revere’s voice.
Illustrative of this misleading New England emphasis is a footnote in “The March to Quebec,” a collection of journals which Kenneth Roberts edited as a by-product of his research for “Arundel,” the fictional version of the American invasion of Canada. Roberts, working with New England manuscripts to the neglect of Pennsylvania source materials, states: “Nothing is known of the career of Captain Matthew Smith [whose company raised in Paxton, Pennsylvania, participated at the side of Hendricks’] after the retreat from Canada. “The fact of the matter is, however, that reference works as ubiquitous as the printed “Pennsylvania Archives” trace Smith to the State’s Supreme Executive Council two years after the retreat, to the prothonotary post in Northumberland County in 1780, and to arousing military funeral in 1794, with several stops in between these events.
William Hendricks was not always forgotten. In February, 1776, the most famous men in America listened to accounts of his bravery. They heard the Reverend Doctor William Smith, founder and president of the College of Philadelphia, eulogize him in an address before a joint gathering representing the General Assembly of Pennsylvania and the Congress of the United Colonies. This was Dr. Smith’s statement:
“Captain Hendricks was known to me from his infancy. No fatigue or duty ever discouraged him. He paid the strictest attention to his company and was ambitious that they should excel indiscipline, sobriety and order.”
Here is the story of that brave captain and his eighty-four riflemen.
CHAPTER ONE
It was a time for great rejoicing that first week of Fall 1776. In the capital on the Delaware the good people of Philadelphia, still exhilarated from the wine of national independence first sipped only two months before were sampling another heavy draught—life under a new and radically democratic State government which had just replaced an oft times unpopular proprietorship. One in congruous event diluted the pure air of celebration.
Into the festive city shuffled a short column of ragged weary men. After debarking at Elizabeth and giving parole they had headed for home across the Susquehanna by way of the capital to collect back pay and a word of news. As they limped along beneath the curious glance of well-dressed Quaker City burghers they craned thin necks about in search of two men they knew there—old neighbors and delegates of Cumberland County in the Assembly, Jonathan Hogue and Robert Whitehall.
When the twenty-one parolees finally encountered their representatives the exchange began of fourteen months of news. For neighbor Hogue the ex-soldiers could bring word from Lieutenant John Hogue, a prisoner in Quebec. They could give Whitehill firsthand accounts of the death of his nephew John Harris and of William Hendricks who was Whitehill’s nearest neighbor back in Lowther Manor. For thirty-seven other homes they bore the information that their men-folk as British-born subjects, had been impressed into the service of the King under threat of trial for the treason of rebellion. For five other homes they could tell only of death.
Their captivity had dated from the last day of the year 1775, when the alert commander of the fortress of Quebec, Sir Guy Carleton ordered a sally from the Palace Gate upon the rear of the American assault force. Catching the overextended line of attacker sat its tail, the British sortie had methodically rolled up the column. At the head seething with anger stood the acting commander Captain Daniel Morgan. Some of his Frederick County, Virginia wrath presumably fell on the absent ones. In this case these were another column New Yorkers who had failed to fight to the rendezvous point. Unknown to Morgan, the commander of the other column General Richard Montgomery, had been killed just at the moment he launched his attack. Montgomery marched straight to Valhalla, but his column without him had retreated forth with.
In addition to Morgan 424 besiegers were captured that day, including eighty-six from Pennsylvania. The latter numbered 60 from Hendricks’ Company and 26 from Matthew Smith’s. Thirty-seven of Hendricks’ men were impressed into British service and the remaining 23 who as second generation Americans were less vulnerable to threats oft reason trials, become prisoners of war. Two of these, Thomas Gibson and John Blair, escaped. Their departure left the twenty-one who exchanged life in prison for a promise not to “do or say anything contrary to the interests of his Majesty or his government.”
Before their parole the men had fared better than might have been expected in an age not noted for its humanity. Sir Guy Carleton, for example, issued them rations comparable to the food given his own garrison. In January one of his first acts waste arrange a decent burial for Montgomery Hendricks and three other officers. In August his last act was to send gifts of wine and sheep to the departing prison transports. Boredom and disease were the enemies. Accentuated by the continuing siege of the city the food shortage reduced the resistance of the captives to various illnesses. The lack of green vegetables brought on nutritional diseases until the rhubarb was gathered in May. Respiratory troubles added to the misery as snow drifted twenty feet deep and thermometers showed sixty degrees of frost.
Of all ailments scurvy was the most awesome. A diarist recalled: “limbs contracted, large blue and black blotches appeared on bodies...gums became black ...morbid flesh fell away ...teeth loosened and in several instances fell away.”
The Church in several instances lightened the burdens of the good Presbyterian prisoners. Lieutenant Francis Nichols, who had been second in command in Hendricks’ Company, contracted scarlet fever and was sent to the Hotel-Dieu to be cared for by the Nursing Sisters. Afterward he confided: “IfeignedmyselfsickafterIrecovered forfearofbeingsentback.”
One of the Teaching Sisters, having been persuaded that Gibson’s bright cheeks were as he pretended the results of a fever, gavehim a shilling to purchase medicine. He used the money tobuygunpowderto blow hiscelldoorin an abortive escape attempt.
A final act of charity came from the Bishop himself when the captives were preparing to sail home. From the episcopalstorescame several gifts including a quantity of tea. With what must have been painful recollection they remembered a pledge taken months before “not to use it during the contest” and returned the tea. With goodwillHisExcellency sentcoffeeasasubstitute.
For their twenty-one constituents Hogue and Whitehill could recount firsthand knowledge of many great events occurring between their departure in July 1775, and their return in September of the following year. In July 1776, one year after the eighty-five men had marched away the other 300 Pennsylvanians finally heard their delegates in Congress vote them independence from Great Britain. To demonstrate its determination to preserve that freedom the former Quaker Colony was placing 4,824“regulars”in the Continental Service that year, of whom no less than 2,178weremen in regiments commanded by colonels who lived in Carlisle, the seat of Cumberland County. When those 84 had marched with Hendricks Cumberland had not exhausted its patriotism. Since then support had continued to grow for a new government, a new relation with the other counties in Pennsylvania, and anew independent nation in America.
These ragged survivors were dissonance in a new symphony, symbols of a major failure in a campaign now abandoned. The invasion had been recalled and the plan to woo the “Fourteenth Colony” replaced. A new war was at hand.
“Every man in Cumberland County is a rioter at heart,” lamented Governor John Penn the year he ordered his family’s land in Lower Manor subdivided and sold. The concurrence of his remark and his order to sell may have been mere chance, but young Penn in this instance established himself as seer and prophet. When he used the word “rioter” he spoke of the seething Scotch-Irish, who were virtually the only group then living in the County.