USA > Pennsylvania > Montgomery County > Historical sketches : a collection of papers prepared for the Historical Society of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, 1921-1925, Volume VII > Part 12
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And however little the British accounts make of the affair at Cooch's Bridge, something serious enough had hap- pened to keep them in their lines for nearly a week, and to give Cornwallis a fine home for that length of time, at least. The beautiful Cooch country-place as it is seen today, however, hardly suggests the thought of the two sanguinary armies that once sparred for positions for letting the most of each other's blood there. An interesting bit of local color is given the stories of the times by the report that General Knyphausen had so far taken and brought in five hundred and nine head of horned cattle, one thousand sheep, and one hundred horses, not over forty of which were fit for draught. There does not appear to be any record of what the musicians had collected.
Delawareans are very proud of the claim that the new flag received its first baptism of fire at Cooch's Bridge.
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Neither Stedman nor Montresor-nor any contemporaneous British annalist, so far as known-has seen fit to admit any special terror at the sight of the new flag, which, as is well known, was legally created on June 14, 1777, when Con- gress agreed upon the design of thirteen alternate stripes of red and white, with a "union of thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new constellation." A hastily improvised flag, made from the red petticoat of a soldier's wife, a white shirt, and an old blue jacket, was flung to the breeze after the battle of Oriskany, on August 6th, above the captured British standards, and that was doubtless "Old Glory's" first appearance in the danger zone. But Cooch's Bridge marker stands for the debut of the stars and stripes at the head of fighting columns.
To meet the advance of Howe upon the capital, Wash- ington had marched south, passing through Philadelphia on August 24th, drums and fifes playing tunes for the quick-step; and was now strongly intrenched, his left wing near the village of Newport, where the breastworks are still preserved, just opposite Kiamansi Mills, on Red Clay creek, and his right on White Clay creek, west of Stanton. He had about 11,000 men with which to oppose the 17,000 splendidly equipped followers of Howe, and his purpose was to guard the principal highway that Howe would reas- onably use in going to the north. Washington expected fully that the decisive battle would be fought here, but at 4 o'clock on the morning of September 9th, Howe's purpose of cutting around Washington to the northward was so apparent, that orders were given for the march to the Brandywine, there to interpose resistance to Howe's progress.
And so, the 11th of September finds the militant Amer- icans on the north side of the Brandywine, their centre at Chadd's Ford, a place named for Francis Chadd, whose ancient house has long been a landmark there. This division was commanded by Wayne, the left by Armstrong, and the extreme right-a division nearly two miles in extent- by Sullivan; while other troops under Greene were in re- serve upon high ground farther north. Scientifically, the
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disposition was admirable, and it even secured the com- mendation of the foreign experts. Some fifty yards south of the Chadd house an American battery of three guns was located, and in the somewhat precipitate abandonment of the position later on, one of the guns, a howitzer, was over- looked. Colonel Chambers, of the First Pennsylvania Line, was detailed to get it, which he did, and his modest report of the scrimmage is a model. "I brought all the brigade artillery safely off, and I hope to see them again fired at the scoundrels." Howe mentions his capture of the guns, but overlooks the more important enterprise of Colonel Chambers.
The quaint old meeting-house of the Birmingham Friends was not expected to be the real point of the battle. While Knyphausen was making a demonstration at Chadd's Ford, and his men were recognizing an old friend in "Devil Pete" Mühlenberg, on the north side of the creek, Corn- wallis made a long swing on the south side with another division, crossed Jeffrey's Ford further up, and stopped to reconnoitre at Osborne Hill, a mile west of the meeting- house. Its remoteness from the most likely point of attack had recommended it to the surgeons for hospital purposes, and the mangled Continentals, wounded in the early part of the action, were taken there in great numbers for treat- ment by the boiling oil and broadaxe methods then in vogue. After the bloody day's work, the British used it for the same purpose; their invalids filled one hundred and twelve wagons when they were transferred to Wilmington, a few days later. The curious tale of the death of Lord Percy, who is said to be buried somewhere beneath the long grass which carpets the God's Acre there, is told in connection with the action at the meeting-house. He had seen the place in a dream before he left England, and handing his purse and watch to his servant, said, "I know I shall fall here."
Like all the Friends' meeting-houses of that time, Bir- mingham was plainly furnished, and its oaken floors and benches retain to this day the dark gray stains left by the bleeding bodies of wounded men. Vandals who could not get patriotic blood in any other way, have chipped and
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LAFAYETTE'S HEADQUARTERS AT BRANDYWINE (Photo by William H. Richardson.)
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splintered the wood with knives, but fortunately Birming- ham oak and fighting blood are both rather too enduring for complete destruction. Another strange story told of the meeting-house is of a time, years before the battle, when one of the speakers from the "preachers' bench," under the stress of inspiration, poured forth a prophecy of the awful carnage and bloodshed the peaceful community was destined to witness. This meeting-house dates back to about 1765, although the congregation, which first met at William Brinton's, is mentioned as early as 1690.
Lafayette, then a boy of twenty, was wounded in the action about a half-mile east of the meeting-house. A tablet, nailed to a tree alongside the road upon which Sullivan re- treated, points out the spot definitely. A picturesque house, known as LaFayette's headquarters, is still seen about a mile from the ford, on the road to Chester. LaFayette is something more than a tradition in the Brandywine coun- try, for I remember talking, several years ago, to a gentle- man, Joseph Seal by name, then seventy-nine years young, who was lifted up by a colored mammy to see the distin- guished Frenchman on the occasion of his second visit to this country, in 1825. T. Miles Frame was another local resident who was able to give me some personal reminis- cences of this same occasion.
Washington, whose headquarters were in a house some- what nearer Chadd's Ford than LaFayette's, seems to have lost the day through the blundering reports of Cornwallis' flanking movement. The Americans were upon the point of crossing Chadd's Ford, where they could have crushed Knyphausen, but delayed doing so, to ascertain the truth about Cornwallis. Scouts had reported that the flanking movement was on; then came word that it was not; and when Washington finally learned that it was so, he could scarcely credit it. His informant sketched the movement in the sand of the road, and pledged the truth of it with his life. And so the battle which, from Washington's standpoint, was a military necessity, for the sake of the impression it would make on the country, was fought, and, in a sense, lost.
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Another one of the ancient landmarks is the old Brinton Mill, which stood close to the Brandywine, about a mile and a half above Chadd's Ford, near the end of Sullivan's line. Its produce was doubtless a welcome addition to the commissariat of both armies in the periods of their brief stay. John Fiske says, "nothing could be more absurd than the careless statements that the Americans were routed at the Brandywine. (Joseph Reed puts it that way.) Their organization was as ready for fight as ever. They had exacted a round price for victory. The American loss was a little over one thousand, incurred chiefly in Sullivan's gal- lant struggle; rolls, afterward captured at Germantown, showed that the British loss considerably exceeded that figure."
After the Americans left the field, the British moved over into their positions; Howe making his headquarters in the big stone house known as the Gilpin place, built in 1754 by George and Ruth Gilpin. Washington moved his army that night, and camped "behind Chester." On the 12th they marched through Darby, crossed the Schuylkill on the floating bridge at the Middle Ferry and went into camp by "Schuylkill Falls." There they refurnished their ammunition, and got their breath for more adventure. There, too, the army was complimented by the Comman- der-in-Chief upon its gallant behavior at Brandywine, and the pleasant announcement was made that Congress had voted the substantial testimonial of thirty hogsheads of rum, to be distributed among them in such manner as the Commander-in-Chief shall direct, who in turn instructs "the Commissary-General of Issues to deliver one gill per day to every officer and man while it lasts."
Five days later, September 19th, finds the British army in the vicinity of Matthias Pennypacker's mill, on the Pick- ering creek, an establishment they at once made famous by looting all its grain and flour, breaking its machinery and ripping up its bolting-cloths. Their camp was three miles long, and extended from Fatland ford to beyond Moore Hall. The Americans had a very busy week, too; Baker, in his "Itinerary," giving Washington a new post-
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office address every day, in the difficult task of keeping apace with Howe's uncertainties. An opportunity to give battle had come two days after leaving the Falls-of-Schuyl- kill camp-but a tremendous rain storm wet the ammuni- tion, and so the serious battle expected at the Warren Tavern did not take place, although one hundred men were engaged. Then the Americans moved up to the cross- ing at Parker's Ford, and down, on the east side of the Schuylkill, to the mouth of the Perkiomen, to resist the expected forward movement of Howe into Philadelphia. On the 20th, the affair at Paoli added another leaf to the book of reverses or misfortunes of war-although the color of that was rather overdone. Wayne really lost but sixty-one out of twelve hundred in his division.
Near the mill on the Pickering is the famous Bull Tav- ern, associated with the British strategy of the day as the headquarters of Cornwallis. Stedman disposes of practically everything between Brandywine and Philadelphia with very short phraseology, and describes his chief's manœuvering around this section of the country as "making slight move- ments which could not by any possibility produce any im- portant benefit to the British cause." But Howe really seems to have mystified Washington, this time, when he turned his back on Philadelphia, with a threatened move upon the Continental supplies in Reading, and drew Washington up along the river again as far as Pott's Grove, and then slipped across the Schuylkill at Fatland, and other fords in its neighborhood, on September 23rd. On the 26th, Howe's march to Philadelphia from Elkton, the course of which might be likened to the line of a long, reversed interroga- tion mark, came to an end. Washington reported the facts to Congress at the time, and tells the President of Congress of his thousand barefooted men who had performed the marches over those hard hills in that condition.
But we may be sure that when Washington arrived at Pennypacker's Mills he was welcomed by a host who would find it difficult to be more hospitable than his descendant. Among the wealth of historic incidents in these few days was the issuing of the order in Washington's own hand,
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impressing "all the Blankets, shoes, stockings and other Articles of clothing that can be spared by the Inhabitants of the County of Lancaster for the Use of the Continental Army, paying for the same at Reasonable rates or giving certificates"; there was the arrival of substantial reinforce- ments-the thousand Marylanders under General Small- wood; then the news of the engagement between Burgoyne and Gates was received here, and Burgoyne's surrender served the southern army a good turn, too, by earning for it the allowance of a gill of rum per man-a familiar pre- scription then, that has since been supplanted by applejack.
And yet another most important reminiscence of the camp at Pennypacker's Mill was the momentous council of war attended by various generals to the number of fifteen, on the 28th, at which the decision was reached that men with fighting blood were too far from their work there. So it turned out that the soldiers, on the 29th of September, were gotten upon the march again, to try conclusions once more with the enemy. Washington gives the world a pleas- ant acknowledgment of his stay there, in his Governor Trumbull letter, in this fashion: "Our Army had the rest and refreshment it stood in need of, and our soldiers are in very good spirits"-and then they moved on to the south, camping the day before Germantown on Methatchen Hill, whence, on the evening of October 3d, the dispositions were made for the next day's tragedy.
One's thought of the battle of Germantown has always a sub-conscious association with the Chew house, that classic monument of one of the great days in our history. Howe's main army still lay at Germantown, Cornwallis having led his advance corps into the city proper; and, with his lines extended for several miles across the village to the Schuyl- kill, was quietly and comfortably assuring himself of the pacification of the Americans. Washington had put his whole army into this adventure, and in four columns they marched down into Germantown that foggy October morn- ing; Sullivan, in command of the right wing, advancing on the Germantown road, and Armstrong's militia on the road nearer the river. Greene had command of the left wing,
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that officer being in personal charge of the division coming in on the Lime Kiln road, and Smallwood and Forman coming in on the York road, to flank the British right.1
The story is a much-told one: how the British outposts at Mount Airy curled up under the fury and suddenness of Wayne's attack; how Colonel Musgrave and his men sought shelter behind the great doors and stout walls of the Chew house, and how the fortunes of the day were decided by the unavailing attempts of the Americans to dislodge them. The book rule was that an intrenched enemy should not be allowed in the rear. The half hour spent in the hot dis- cussion, cost the junction that was vital to the success of the plan; hearing the heavy firing at the house, the be- fuddled Stephen swung his brigade out of its prescribed course, and in the dark and fog had mistaken Wayne's column for the enemy, and attacked it; and then the panic grew great, and the confusion spread into a general re- treat. Another scalp was at Howe's belt.
That the fortunes of battle were so strangely disposed, seems hard to understand now. When it was all over, Howe took up his headquarters at the Morris house, then in the midst of the tumult, doubtless to superintend the unpacking and re-arrangement of the baggage, which an American officer hints was of the choicest description. Wayne writes how Fortune had "smiled upon us for full three hours. The enemy were broken, dispersed, flying in all quarters; we were in possession of their whole encampment, together with all their artillery we ran away from the arms of victory spread open to us." And Washington reports to Congress that "the tumult and discord and even despair
1 "A mill, fed by a branch of the Windehocking creek, was located about a mile west of the main street in Germantown, on a lane called Mill lane, afterward Church lane, and now Mill street. It was near the intersection of Mill lane and Lime Kiln road. At the time of the battle of Germantown the mill was known as Luchte, or Lukin's mill. The British right wing under Major-General Grant and Brigadier General Matthews was posted at this mill and upon the road leading to it. This mill, at a later day, was called Robert's mill, and was so known for fully half a century later." (The Townsend Memoirs, MSS, p. 11.)-Ed.
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which it seemed had taken place in the British army, was scarcely to be parallelled; and, it is said, so thoroughly did the idea of retreat prevail, that Chester had been fixed upon for their rendezvous." But Washington, the great optimist, could not forecast the profound impression made upon the nations of Europe who were watching the war in America, nor the influence Germantown had in settling an alliance that was not an entangling one.
The retreat from Germantown carried many of the sol- diers back over the same roads they had so hopefully pur- sued the night before, their wounded and dying populating many a Montgomery county barn and country church-yard. The old Norriton Presbyterian burying-ground has its quota, too; and besides the illustrious dead who were gathered in then, this historic plot contains the body of Colonel Archi- bald Thomson. He died in 1779, and in his life was con- spicuous enough as a rebel to have his public house, now Jeffersonville Inn, burned by Howe, as he came in from Fatland Ford. This bit of sport cost the State 807 pounds, this amount being paid his widow in 1782.
The burying-ground of Towamencin Mennonite Meeting at Kulpsville contains the graves of many more who were wounded at Germantown. On October 9th, Brigadier Gen- eral Nash, who, with several other wounded officers, had been carried as far as a farm house near the meeting-house, was buried. His grave is at the foot of a plain shaft there, and southward from his body, in the order named, were interred the remains of Colonel Boyd, Major White, and Lieutenant Smith. It seems a strange irony that the re- ligious houses of the non-resistant and peace-loving people should be so lastingly associated with the bloody days of the war. And one gets a new reading of patriotism when he reflects upon these men who gave up their lives in these old churches, barns and farm houses, with no fond hands to smooth the furrows of final agony as they passed into the beyond, without even the Mosaic glimpse of the glory of the land we have realized because of their devotion.
On the night of the battle, some of the soldiers were back in their former camp at Pennypacker's Mill, and there
NORRITON PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
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they remained until the 8th. How any comfort could be abstracted from the situation is most difficult to understand, but some of the men of that day had enough bigness of soul to find it. General Knox wrote from here that the troops were in the highest spirits, and ardently desired another trial at arms. Another correspondent tells how the men seemed to grow fonder of fighting "the more they have of it." More recruits came in, too, to add their weight to the impetus of the always-hoped-for "next time." It was from here that the official reports of the battle were dated; and here also that the committee of Friends from the Philadel- phia Yearly Meeting came to present their testimony against war to George Washington, General of the American Army.
After Pennypacker's Mill, the army moved over into Towamencin for a while longer, "to rest and refresh the men and recover them from the still remaining effects of that disorder naturally attendant on a retreat." Thence it drifted over into Worcester township, Washington making his headquarters at the Peter Wentz, or Schultz, house, as it is known in later times. When Peter and his wife Rosa started their lives together in that substantial home, they set a stone over the doorway, with their initials and a "haus- segen" engraved upon it. It contains a prayer that every blessing should come to those who entered. Washington's fulfilment was the further confirmation of the glad news of Burgoyne's surrender, which was announced to the army on Saturday, October 18th, from this place, the period of his stay being from the 16th to the 20th.
While in this historic neighborhood, it will not be amiss to refer to another landmark, Wentz's Reformed Church, on the Skippack road, south of Kulpsville, the congregation of which has been served by such illustrious men as George Michael Weiss and Michael Schlatter. In early revolution- ary times the pastor was Rev. John H. Weikel, and the story goes that he got himself disliked by the civil authorities for preaching a sermon from the 13th verse of the 4th chapter of Ecclesiastes: "Better is a poor and wise child, than an old and foolish king, who will no more be admonished." One
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may imagine the sensation that might be founded in those troublous days upon such a text. Another peculiarity of the good dominie was to drill his old saddle-horse for the times that were at hand, by firing a pistol about the animal's ears.
Whilst the decision was against an attack on Philadel- phia, still it was thought best to move a little closer to the city, and the whole army accordingly drew down the valley of the Wissahickon into Whitemarsh, about three miles nearer the present city line. The old fortifications are still plainly discernible in the woods to the north-east of the Van Rensselaer mansion. A curious memento of the camp at Whitemarsh is preserved in the shape of a letter written by the Chevalier du Portail, on November 12th, to the French Minister of War. He had tramped around a good deal with these slow-witted, phlegmatic Americans, and he ought to know them: "Such are these people that they move without spring or energy, without passion for a cause in which they are engaged, and which they follow only as the impulse of the hand which first put them in motion directs. There is a hundred times more enthusiasm in any one coffee-house in Paris than in all the thirteen provinces united"; etc., etc.
From November 2d to December 11th, Washington's headquarters were in the home of George Emlen, a wealthy Quaker, a place that must have been a marvel in its day. The east front is pierced by seventeen windows and two doors; and some fifty years ago, an "L" that was quite as large as that now standing, was torn down. An old mantel is one of the fine survivals, too. It is made of cedar, the center panel being made from a single sheet of wood at least two and a half feet wide, but a modern stove had to be inserted to take the place of the hearth that toasted some great American shins, and so the thirty-inch plank was bored to let through the pipe. The restless Wayne was at Whitemarsh, too, and he dates a letter from there, in which which he agonizes for a fight, believing they could safely inflict such loss upon the British as would oblige them to seek for winter quarters in a less hostile place than Phila- delphia. But there was not enough Wayne spirit among the
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majority of generals, and so they waited for something to turn up, which it did.
"From a variety of intelligence," Washington writes, "I had reason to expect that Howe was preparing to give us a general action. Accordingly, on Thursday night, (Dec. 4) he moved from the city with all his force, except a very inconsiderable part left in his lines and redoubts, and appeared the next morning on Chestnut Hill in front of, and about three miles distant from, our right wing." Skirmishing parties engaged the British, but they continued their advance, failing, however, to offer battle. On Friday night they were on the left wing, and about a mile away from the American line, and on Sunday they were still farther over to the left, and apparently getting ready to fight.
Any one who has ever climbed up the steep slopes of Fort Hill, or Camp Hill, will get a fairly good idea of why Howe's attack did not get very far beyond the threatening stage; and the redoubt on the hill at Fort Washington is one answer to the question, "Why didn't Howe drive Washing- ton and his already ragged and hungry Continentals over the Blue mountains as he had boasted ?" Colonel Morgan's corps and Colonel Gist's Maryland militia, with the cus- tomary Morgan action, will doubtless explain why Sted- man wrote in his book the bland statement that Howe "did not think it advisable to attack Washington in his present strong position, and returned on the 8th with the army to Philadelphia." At any rate, the Americans had subtracted at least three hundred men from the crowd that had to go back to Philadelphia from the fruitless expedition. One of the great historians of the war refers to these days at Whitemarsh, on the edge of winter, with the army to be held together, and Washington's refusal to fight except on a certainty, as something wonderfully fine in military annals.
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