John Armstrong has rightly been labeled "the First Citizen of Carlisle. "He was a justice of the peace, the principal official of local government in the British dominions; a county judge, chief land surveyor of Cumberland County, assemblyman, colonel of the colonial Pennsylvania Regiment, an original member of the Pennsylvania revolutionary committee of safety; brigadier general of the Continental Army, major general of the Pennsylvania militia, delegate to the Continental Congress, and an original trustee of Dickinson College. For such a prominent person, it is unfortunate that much relevant detail about his life is unknown or incorrect.1 This essay concentrates on his military history.
It is correct to state that he was Scots-Irish, from County Fermanagh, of the Province of Ulster in the north of Ireland. He was presumably the son of James, but his date of birth has been confused. His gravestone in the Carlisle Public Cemetery is not original and has false information. He was not a delegate to the Congress in 1788 and 1789‑‑that was his son John Jr. His wife was not Rebecca Lyon; her maiden name was Armstrong. According to him he was born about February 1717 "Old Style" which began a year on "Lady Day"‑‑ March 25, so his year of birth was 1718 in the modern New Style in effect in the British Dominions since 1752. When and how he came to America is unknown. A John Armstrong married a Rebecca Armstrong in Pennsylvania in 1746, but those were the most common Christian names selected by Armstrong parents. A John Armstrong was the chief engineer of the British army in America circa 1750, but that is not him. Everywhere you look are Armstrongs. He was not the JA who lived near Parnell's Knob in the western part of then-Cumberland County.2
Armstrong first came to York County, and according to the authoritative
Lawmaking and Legislators project was the assemblyman for that county in 1749.3 This writer is not persuaded, because of yet another John Armstrong in the Irish settlement there. Be it as it may, he appears as the deputy surveyor [i.e. chief surveyor] of Cumberland County laying out Carlisle in 1752. Twice he was elected to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives from Cumberland. In 1754, he did not run again because he was occupied in surveying the Juniata country in the New Purchase above the North Mountain, a swindle on the Delaware Indians, perpetrated at the famous Albany Congress of 1754.
Armstrong was involved in the efforts to support the 1755 force of the unfortunate General Braddock. After Braddock's defeat and death, the previously pro‑British Indians in the Ohio country fell on the defenseless Pennsylvania back country. Armstrong was not in the original force raised over the winter of 1755‑56 but took over command of the western defenses in May of 1756. Immediately he headed a task force that attacked a major Indian base at Kittanning, which was the only British victory of that year, and gave Armstrong a flurry of trans‑Atlantic fame.4
Unfortunately, Armstrong's papers were destroyed in a fire at his house and office in 1761, so we know little about the tactical operations in western Pennsylvania. His troops manned crude forts at Carlisle, Shippensburg, and elsewhere. There is evidence that he ordered deep sweeps with large units, hoping to catch Indian war parties before they could reach the white settlements. In 1757 he came under the command of the regular army’s Colonel John Stanwix who sensibly left him alone.
In 1758 Armstrong was the senior Pennsylvania officer in the task force that General John Forbes successfully led against Fort Duquesne on the Ohio River, but he did not command any Pennsylvanians other than his own battalion. The assertion that he personally raised the British flag over the ruins of the French fort seems to derive from his drunkard grandson Kosciuszko Armstrong more than a half‑century later.5
His command in 1759 was uneventful, save for the festering of the enmity of the regular army Colonel Henry Bouquet:
"I am incumbered with Col Armstrong, and all these P‑‑‑‑ off‑‑‑ without knowledge & experiences since I would not trust a Sergeant's guard. I recall that Col here under pretence of your wanting to speak to him. They are all a cruel Incumbrance upon us, and Mr. [Governor] Denny could have spared his refusal of ranks."6 Armstrong resigned his commission effective March 1760, and did not serve again until the unexpected western Indian revolt of 1763. Armstrong was appointed "commander" of the western defenses of Pennsylvania‑‑an easier task than in 1756 because thousands of Pennsylvania men had garnered military experience in the nonse.
As did almost all of his civilian and military colleagues, he joined the insurrection against the Crown in 1775, and was one of the many provincial officers who were made generals in the Continental Army. Armstrong was present at the successful defense of Charleston, South Carolina, playing a minor role. He was not allowed to obtain a command, so a quarrel over precedence led to his resignation in 1777. In the meantime, Pennsylvania had shaken off the Quaker yoke, and created a real militia, with Armstrong in the top post. He commanded militia on the left wing of the unsuccessful rebel defense of Brandywine Creek, and Armstrong led Pennsylvania militiamen at the right wing of the attack on the British at Germantown, but there is no notice of this action having any effect on the enemy.7 By this time, the general was 60 years old, rather senior for campaigning, and he left the active military and became a delegate to the Continental Congress, where he concentrated attention on the fiscal collapse of the rebel government. His last years were notable mostly as a trustee of the infant Dickinson College, and for the frequent gratuitous advices offered to George Washington, peppered with pious sentiments, because John Armstrong was one of the very few of the Founding Fathers who broadcast his Christian devotion.
Also much muddled and disregarded is the support of his family. To begin with, John Armstrong had two sons, Dr. James Armstrong and Major General John Armstrong, Jr.
His obituary of 8 May 1828 reports him aged 86. But the obit says he died in Carlisle in the house he was born in. 1828 minus 86 gives 1742, when there was no Carlisle. However, in 1756 James Armstrong was entered by John Armstrong in the Philadelphia Academy, the prep school for the College of Philadelphia; age 14 was a proper age for a young scholar. He studied medicine at the College in 1769, and subsequently tried to make a living as a doctor, without much success, despite efforts of his father to further his career with supplications to George Washington, among others. Contrary to what has been written, James was not a surgeon of the Continental Army.8
He is certainly the James Armstrong who lived in Mifflin County in the 1780s and '90s and was elected to the U.S. Congress for a term. After the deaths of his parents, he took over the house at the corner of High and Bedford Streets, and also had a country seat. He was active in politics, including agitation for the "Constitutionalist Party" which seems a front for the Federalists who were fading fast in their political influence. Like his father, he was on the board of Dickinson College. He married a daughter of George Stevenson, an influential citizen in York County. James was appointed a local judge in 1808 and served on the bench for the rest of his life.9
His son J Wilkens Armstrong was also a doctor, but evidently without a lucrative practice. In the 1850s, he apparently was selling papers of General Armstrong, Senior. Fortunately many were bought by the heirs of General Armstrong, Junior. James Armstrong was not a major figure yet deserves a pamphlet biography by someone familiar with the politics of the early 18th century.
John, Jr. was sufficiently distinguished to earn entries in the Dictionary of American Biography and in a workmanlike academic biography he dropped out of the College of New Jersey (Princeton) to become a staff officer to his father’s sometime comrades-in-arms Hugh Mercer and Horatio Gates, and was with his chief at Gates' great victory [more likely Benedict Arnold's victory] at Saratoga. He is best known as the key figure of the Newburgh Addresses threatening a coup d'etat against the Continental government in 1783. Nonetheless, he was secretary of Pennsylvania, major general of the Pennsylvania militia in the mini‑war with Connecticut, delegate to the last of the Continental Congresses, married a Livingston of the most aristocratic family of America (his father was overjoyed), relocated to New York’s Dutchess County, United States Senator, U.S. minister to France, Brigadier General U.S. Army, and Secretary of War, who sought to be the generalissimo of the American army in the War of 1812, but when the capital was captured and burned by the British, he was purged by President Madison. His daughter married an Astor, and all of John Jr's offspring are counted among the upper class of New York.10
OTHER ARMSTRONG RELATIVES
John senior's brother Joseph was another Scots-Irishman, who settled in Hamilton Township in then‑western Cumberland County, was elected to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, was a leader of the western defenses at the beginning of the Seven Years War, resigned or was pushed out of the provincial service at the end of 1757 (He may have been unhappy at the prospect of further service subordinate to his brother John, who was probably younger.) He was a member of the Rocky Spring Presbyterian Church. His date of birth is not found, nor is his exact date of death known. His will was proved in 1760.11
Among Captain Joseph's children was Joseph, Jr. (1739‑1811), another soldier, whose first commission as ensign in the Pennsylvania Regiment was dated in February 1757, and he subsequently served in five campaigns, finishing as a captain in 1764. Early in the Revolution he was colonel of the 5th Cumberland battalion of Pennsylvania Associators, a volunteer force substituting for a militia, but he disappears from the likely sources when a real militia was established under General John A in 1777. Like his father, he was a stalwart of the Rocky Spring Presbyterian Church.12
James, a younger son of Joseph, Senior, joined the rebellion early, became a swashbuckling cavalryman, and distinguished himself in Henry Lee's Legion in the South. Because of his exploits we know of the relationship of the Franklin County Armstrongs to the Carlisle Armstrongs. John, Jr in his old age reported hunting with his future‑ cavalry cousin near Chambersburg circa 1770; John Sr. boasted of his cavalry nephew's fame in a 1781 letter. After the war, James settled in Georgia, commanded state troops in the 1780s, became a politician and held several offices. He must be the man of that name who got a vote for vice president from the Electoral College in 1788. He was deemed sufficiently reliable by the Federalists to be appointed a major in the Emergency Army which was raised in 1798 to crush Jefferson's Republicans. It was disbanded before any blood was shed, and James died in 1804.13
George was another brother of General John, Senior. Nothing about his background has been discovered. In 1758, he is described as "a young man." He is first found as a surveyor of the New Purchase in 1755. He joined the Pennsylvania forces as a captain in his brother's battalion in May 1756, and also served in 1757. For the 1758 campaign he was promoted to major and took an active part in the capture of Ft Duquesne, but not without incurring the wrath of the regular army colonel Henry Bouquet: George volunteered for a scout, which failed; Bouquet: "the Major void of all shame came to my Tent with a free and disengaged air to tell me that he had had no success: I examined him step by step, and have convinced him by his own account that he had behaved infamously, I handled him as he deserves. Such are the gentlemen that you have to command your troops."
"The behaviour of Major A‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑ is so Extraordinary that he has cast a Cloud over all the Provincial Troops. If the picked officers and men act in that Scandalous manner, what can I expect of the Rest?"14
Nevertheless, he was promoted to lieutenant colonel for the uneventful 1760 campaign and left the service when the bulk of the Pennsylvania Regiment was disbanded at the end of 1760.
In 1762, he went to Europe on business with the Indian agent George Croghan, and survived a shipwreck on the French coast. His business was assembling a cargo of contracted servants to ship to America and presumably to sell to Pennsylvanians. How successful he was has not been discovered. He did meet several times with Thomas Penn, principal proprietor and governor of Pennsylvania. Upon his return home he seems deep in land speculation near Bedford. The late 1760s county records tell a tale of fiscal disaster. George Armstrong and his wife Martha mortgaged numerous properties, only to lose them via sheriff's sales. Mr. and Mrs. George Armstrong disappear from the face of the earth.15
The only sign of them is General John Armstrong, Sr. in 1788 announcing that he was the administrator of the George Armstrong estate. Therefore George, his wife, and any children had been declared dead.16
William is another brother of General Armstrong I. His origins are unknown, save by assuming migration from Ireland. He first appears to history surveying the New Purchase in 1755 and was fortunate to save his scalp. He joined the Pennsylvania Regiment as a lieutenant in May 1756 when Colonel John took charge and served as an officer until the end of 1760. In the 1758 campaign he was in a troop of light horse. In the 1760 campaign he commanded the rear echelon at Carlisle. For the Western Indian revolt William was appointed a major of Asher Clayton’s Pennsylvania battalion, but is dropped from the roster before the unit headed west.17
William was briefly a householder in Carlisle until he relocated to then- Derry Township on the Juniata where he lived in or near McVeytown until his death in 1804. He can be traced through tax records as "Captain..”… and holding a warrant for 200 acres. There is no sign that he participated in the Revolution. [The Pennsylvania Major William Armstrong was a mill-owner near Germantown.] He left wife Mary and sons William (who succeeded him) and Plunkett, evidently named for his comrade in arms Doctor/ Lieutenant William Plunkett.18
The next brother of General Armstrong Sr was James. His service in the Pennsylvania Regiment was at lower ranks than his brothers, and he should be assumed to be younger than they. He first appears as an ensign in early 1758. In 1759 he raised a company in Newcastle County in later Delaware [surely by the influence of the Armstrongs thereabouts.] He had a piece of property in Huntington Township, York County, on the Bermudan Creek in modern Adams County. One cannot but suspect this was where John Armstrong I lived ten years earlier. He was prosperous enough to own a slave. He died in 1763. The inventory of his estate survives, including a blue regimental coat and a gilded] sword, valued at £6. His wife abjured administering his estate. When he died he had two minor sons, William and Maxwell. The former relocated to Winchester, Virginia. Maxwell has not been traced.19
Lieutenant Edward Armstrong was killed in action at the fall of Fort Granville on the Juniata in August 1756. He has been identified as a brother of Colonel John Sr. Not so. He was the brother, or brother‑in‑law of Mrs. John Armstrong, neé Armstrong. Before the war, he was surveying for his kinsman.20
William Lyon's life (1729‑1808) is intertwined with that of General Armstrong Senior. They were among the first surveyors of Cumberland County, were next door neighbors on High Street, Lyon was active in Revolutionary politics, surely as a proxy for the general, and their remains are side by side in the Carlisle Public Cemetery. Of course, Lyon joined Armstrong as an officer of the Pennsylvania Regiment in late 1756. This harmony was briefly interrupted by Lyon marrying John's sister (or sister‑in‑law, or half‑sister, or step‑sister). Worse, the pair were not married by a proper Presbyterian minister, who would likely not approve of crossing the powerful and pious John A, but by the Reverend Thomas Barton, Church of England missionary. Armstrong could be very nasty, and expressed himself to the provincial secretary:
With respect to Lyon, as he is against my inclination marryed to my sister, and the Governor may have conceived some objection to him, I shall advise him to resign, his true character is as follows, he is but small of stature, not personable nor sightly, but does not want the spirit of a soldier, has a tolerable good under- standing, careful, and a pretty good clerk, a thing much wanted in every garrison. in those respects he exceeds several in the government's service, yet as I know he may do better by attending some garrison with goods.21
Armstrong thought better of the matter, and Lyon did not leave the Pennsylvania Regiment until his brother‑in‑law did.
The former Ann Armstrong had died by the time the Carlisle Public Cemetery was dedicated in 1767, and Lyon remarried the former Alice Finley who is buried beside him. Seventy-five years later, the Armstrong‑Lyon relationship became muddled: the first Mrs. Lyon was lost to history; Mrs. John Armstrong was converted to a former Lyon.22
Lyon became a justice of the peace, a court officer, and served on the Executive Council of Pennsylvania [a collective governorship] early in the Revolution. This writer believes Lyon was present at the drafting of the dying general's last will in 1795.23
It has been written that John Armstrong left a brother Andrew in Ireland (not traced) and that he was the brother‑in‑law of William Graham of Cumberland County (who had no military service and thus has not been traced), and that he named a daughter Rebeccah Turner in his will. Rebeccah Turner of Chester County is so named, but not identified as any kin of the general. John Junior's autobiographical essay specifically says that he was "the younger of two sons the only children of Major General John Armstrong." However, in the 1780s the old general was corresponding on personal terms with James and Rebeckah/Becky Turner of Faggs Manor, Chester County. They appear to be husband and wife, and the general assumes she is interested in the Armstrong relations in Ireland. She may have been his sister, or the product of an illicit liason.24
1 Pennsylvania Archives, 2nd Series [PA2], IX, 788; his biography in Lawmaking and Legislators in Pennsylvania [,]ed. C.W.Horle et al. III (Harrisburg, 2005), 280‑300, has detail errors. All other Armstrong biographies and genealogies are without value.
2 Horle, Lawmaking and Legislators, III, 297n1.
3 Pennsylvania Archives, 3rd Series, I, 336; Horle, Lawmaking and Legislators, III, 281.
4 Armstrong is listed as a captain in January 1756, but in the British service a field grade officer was also a captain of a company, and commissions were often post‑dated to establish seniority. He and his comrades were "troops in the pay of the province"/"provincials"/full- time paid soldiers, not militia, which was blocked in Pennsylvania by Quaker politicians.
5 George Bancroft, The History of the United States (New York, D. Appleton 1885) II, 495; Information on "Kosci" from Armstrong descendants in New York State.
6 To General Forbes, 31 Aug 1758. S. K. Stevens et al., eds., The Papers of Henry Bouquet II, (Harrisburg, Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 1951), p. 450. Bouquet wanted to award Pennsylvania provincial commissions to cadets and sergeants of his Royal American Regiment; Armstrong had his own patronage that needed to be satisfied.
7 Thomas J. McGuire, The Philadelphia Campaign I (Mechanicsburg, Pa., 2006), 171, 281; same, II (2007), 49, 78, 80, 118.
8 American Volunteer 8 May 1828: U. of Pennsylvania archives; Dr A is not a military surgeon in standard sources, nor in biographies of chiefs of the medical department of the Continental Army. His entry in the Second Edition of the Encyclopedia of the American Revolution (Detroit, 2006) offers no sources and was written by the notorious fraud Michael Bellesiles.
9 Cumberland Register, 5 and 26 October 1808.
10 Dictionary of American Biography; C.E. Skeen, John Armstrong, Jr. (Syracuse, 1981).
11 PA1, II, 320, 385, 392; PA2, II, 695; Lawmaking and Legislators in Pennsylvania, ed. C.W.Horle et al. II (Harrisburg, 1997), pp. 199‑201. The L&L project did not notice that Joseph was a brother of Colonel John.
12 Cumberland County wills Abstracts A‑79: J.F.W. Pflueger, “Tombstone Inscriptions of Franklin County v 14. Rocky Spring” (Chambersburg, 1988), p. 14‑112; S.S.Wylie and A.N. Pomeroy, eds., History of the Rocky Spring Church (Chambersburg, Pa. 1895), 114; PA2, XIV, 369 and 373.
13 John Jr autobiographical fragment, Rokeby Papers, Red Hook, N.Y.; John Sr to George Washington, 27 Dec 1781, in Library of Congress microfilm of Washington Papers, reel 83; John Dwight Kilbourne, Virtutis Praemium: The Men Who Founded the State Society of the Cincinnati of Pennsylvania (Rockport, Me., 1998) I, 240.
14 Bouquet Papers, II, 290, 450, 459.
15 Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography ( October 1949), pp. 87‑91; George A married Martha Turner 7 Apr 1766- PA2, II, 18; George A to T Penn 30 Oct 64. Penn Official Correspondence. 9, 284. Historical Society of Pennsylvania; Thomas Penn to John Armstrong 16 June 64. Thomas Penn Letterbook, HSP; PA2, VII, 280.
16 Carlisle Gazette 31 Dec 1788.
17 PA2,II, 535 and 546; Bouquet Papers, VI, 560, 571.
18 Merri Lou Scriber Schaumann, "A History and Genealogy of Carlisle"
Hamilton Library, 1996, lot 243. [William's house is still there on the northeast corner of Bedford and Pomfret Streets]; Mifflin County Wills Index, #122.
19 York County Orphans Court Docket B‑28 27 March 64; York County Deeds 2C 223, 2G 219, 2G 488; Pennsylvania Herald and York General Advertiser, 2 February and 22 June 1791.
20 William A. Hunter, "Edward Armstrong; Hero of Fort Granville" Typescript of 26 June 1978 lecture for Mifflin County H.S., Hunter Papers, Penna. archives.
21 Letter of 19 June 1757 in "Manuscript Papers on the Indian and Military Affairs of...Pennsylvania, 1737‑1775," p. 455. American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia; Ensign William Lyons married Alice Armstrong 23 Aug 1756. Typescript of St. James Church list of Barton marriages 1755‑78. Adams County Historical Society, Gettysburg. Another version is in the Hamilton Library; an on‑line version has no military rank of Lyon.
22 Sarah Woods Parkinson, Memories of Carlisle's Old Graveyard (Carlisle, printed by the Sentinel, 1930), 15.
23 Pennsylvania Colonial Records, X, 756; XI, 173.
24 Autobiographical fragment, cited note 12 above; Valley Forge Journal 5 (1990), 117‑128. Cumberland County Register of Wills, vol F, 76‑77 [from photocopy].
AIthough the record of John Armstrong, Senior, is fairly complete, and biographies of his sons James and John are available because, like their father, they both served as Congressman, that of his wife and her family, his father, brothers and sisters are sketchy. This paper undertakes an examination of the family with emphasis on those members.