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North and South
Stories and Genealogy of Theodore Charles Anderson and Sara Carlene Shuttleworth
Valley Forge
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Washington Crossing the Delaware
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The French & Indian War 1756
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Major George Washington during the French & Indian War
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The seeds of the American Revolution were really sown by the first "Peace of Paris", which ended the so-called French & Indian War on February 10, 1763.
The French & Indian War was the world’s first truly "World War". British, French, American Colonists, French Canadians, American Indians, Prussians, Austrians, Russians, Spaniards and East Indian Moguls all fought it. Conflicts were waged on land and sea in North America, the Caribbean Islands, West Africa, India, and all over Europe.
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The savage forest fighting in North America allowed no safety for noncombatants, no pity for the wounded, and no mercy for prisoners. The tale of "The Last of the Mohicans" came from this era.
Even more cruel was the war in central Europe, where absolute monarchs hurled huge armies at one another, heedless of the human cost.
For more than half a century, Britain, France and Spain had been competing for domination in North America. Then, with the Peace of Paris in 1763, the British had won. It has been written that with “The Scratch of a Pen” more land changed hands in that treaty than at any other time in history, before or since.
Prior to 1763, the English controlled the 13 American Colonies along the Atlantic seaboard, as far west as the Allegheny Mountains. The French controlled all the land west of the Allegheny’s to the Mississippi and all of Canada except for Hudson’s Bay, which was British. The Spanish controlled Florida, everything west of the Mississippi all the way to the Pacific Ocean, the Caribbean, and all of South America (except for Brazil).
After the Peace of Pairs, the French had lost almost everything. They kept a few islands in the Caribbean, but the British now controlled North America, including Florida as far west as the Mississippi and all of Canada, from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
The Spanish didn’t come out too badly. Although they lost Florida and most of the Caribbean, they still controlled Cuba and all of the territory west of the Mississippi all the way to the Pacific. And they still retained Central and South America, which wasn’t involved in the fighting anyway.
The only big problem was that nobody bothered to consult the Indians! They continued to fight.
The British had won but they had incurred huge debts, which they tried to pay off by heavily taxing the American Colonies, to which the Americans did not take very well. Of course, many things lead up to the American Revolution, but a root cause was that the British just couldn’t pay for the war nor govern the huge lands they had just acquired.
The American Revolution really began on April 23, 1775 when King George III of Great Britain declared, "The Colonies are in open and avowed rebellion. The die is now cast. The Colonies must either submit or triumph."
The War lasted until September 3, 1783, when a treaty was formally signed in a second “Peace of Paris” between Great Britain and the United States officially ending it, only 20 years after the first “Peace of Paris”.
The population of the 13 Colonies in 1775 was pretty much of Protestant English decent. There were some Dutch in New York and Germans in Pennsylvania, but for the most part, almost all of the revolutionaries or their recent ancestors had come over from Great Britain, Scotland or Northern Ireland. On the other side of the Atlantic, the British thought of the War as a rebellion by their wayward and misguided cousins in the Colonies.
There were 2 major theaters (departments) of the war. The Northern Department involved New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. The Southern Department involved Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, North and South Carolina and Georgia.
In the North, General George Washington commanded the Continental Army facing the British General Thomas Gage and later General William Howe and General Henry Clinton.
First, General Horatio Gates was in command of the Southern Department facing the British General Cornwallis. General Nathanael Greene later replaced him.
At the time of the Revolution, most of Sara’s Northern Families had been in New England for over 100 years. They took part in the Revolution, but not always on the same side.
Even though they hadn’t been here as long, all of Ted’s Southern Families, the Blacks, the Irbys and the Tribbles, were well established and took part in the Revolution too. Sara’s Southern families, the Sandefurs and the Washburns, were also involved.
We couldn’t find any Shuttleworths who were involved.
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The Battle of Quebec 1775
 Ezekiel Wilson (1745-1830)
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Early in the fall of 1775 General George Washington had taken command of the rag-tag, bobtail state's militia camped around Boston, and was endeavoring to turn the "rabble" into an army. He and the Continental Congress made the decision on June 27 to try to wrest Quebec and the St. Lawrence River from the British.
They erroneously assumed that the tens of thousands of French-Canadians would gladly join the thirteen colonies in rebellion. Out of this momentous decision came one of the most amazing military expeditions of all time: Colonel Benedict Arnold's birch bark canoe invasion of Canada, the first amphibious military assault in our nation's history.
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Benedict Arnold
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Arnold lead 1,100 soldiers from Massachusetts to Maine, then up the Kennebec and Dead Rivers into Canada by way of the Chaudiere River to Quebec City. Another army under Generals Phillip Schuyler and Richard Montgomery was to invade from New York, take Montreal, then meet Colonel Arnold at Quebec.
This all came about, but ended in defeat for the Americans inasmuch as the British were well-positioned at Quebec, and Arnold's small army had been reduced by half by desertions. The French-Canadians did not rally to the American flag. Montgomery, replacing an ill Schuyler, was killed early in the attack; Arnold was wounded; and the campaign dissolved into disaster and retreat for the dejected remnants of the invading army.
Ezekiel Wilson (Sara’s 5th Great Grandfather) enlisted in the expedition to Montreal and Quebec in 1775 and served under General Montgomery. He was also in the Battle of Bennington in 1777.
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The Battle of Bergen Woods, NJ, December 19, 1776
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1776 was not a good year for the Patriots. In the spring of that year, General George Washington and his Continental Army of 18,000 troops had marched from Boston through Connecticut to New York City and setup camp in western Long Island.
The following are only a few of Sara’s ancestors who were among the troops:
Sergeant Solomon Case (1735–1811),
Private Benajah Case (1738–1818),
James Case (1753–?),
Colonel Nathan Fuller (1750–1851),
Private Dayton Fuller (1758–1833),
Private Samuel Fuller, Sr. (1737–?),
Private Samuel Fuller, Jr. (1758–?),
Private Isaac Tuller, Jr. (1749–1776),
Colonel Seth Washburn (1723-1794),
Lieutenant Ebenezer Washburn (1734-1795),
Private Hosea Washburn (1762-?),
Private Japheth Washburn (1746-1828),
Private John13 Washburn (1753-1811),
Private William9 Washburn (1767–1851)
We also know that at least 1 of Ted's ancestors was there too:
Private William Carter Irby (1760–1828)
Unfortunately for Washington, a British fleet arrived in New York harbor in late June with 30,000 troops under General William Howe. By the end of August, General Howe had moved to western Long Island where he surrounded the Continentals and soundly defeated them.
Washington managed to escape at night with what was left of his army and crossed the East River into Manhattan.
The British pushed the Continentals out of Manhattan and up into Westchester County through September and October.
Washington decided to move the main body of his troops across the Hudson River at Kings Ferry on November 12 and setup defenses at Hackensack, NJ.
The British crossed the Hudson on November 20, 1776.
On the 21st, Washington saw that the situation was hopeless so he abandoned New Jersey and crossed the Delaware River into Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.
The British set up military posts all across New Jersey, thus spreading out their forces.
This set the stage for Washington to conduct gorilla raids across the Delaware on the now much-reduced size of the British garrisons.
It was during one of these raids at Bergen Woods, NJ that Sara’s distant cousin Isaac Tuller, Jr. was killed on December 19, 1776 at the age of 27.
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The Battle of Bennington, August 16, 1777
Ezekiel Wilson (1745-1830)
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The Battle of Bennington
(Collections of The Bennington Museum)
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The Battle of Bennington took place on August 16, 1777 in a village now called Walloomsac, New York. This village is several miles west of Bennington, Vermont. The parties to this battle were a British raiding party vs. American militiamen. The purpose for the Americans was to defend the colonial military stores in Bennington.
The Commander of the British army was General John Burgoyne. In this battle he had two major goals. One was to capture as much of the supplies his army needed for survival as he could. The other was to impress the New Englanders by sending out a well-equipped regiment to conquer Bennington. This regiment was under the command of a German (Hessian mercenary) colonel named Friedrich Baum.
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Baum was given a force of 800 British, Germans, Loyalists, and Indians. On the sixteenth, the British soldiers were ambushed by New England militiamen, led by General John Stark, who were trying to forage for some supplies for their own army.
The militiamen were made up of approximately 1600 colonial troops, included among them was Sara’s 5th Great Grandfather, Ezekiel Wilson. These troops were gathered from the neighboring militia groups from all around. Ethan Allen and Seth Warner were recognized for being the two men who gathered all of these men together.
Reinforcements for both sides arrived too late to have an impact on the battle. By the time the battle ended, about 700 British soldiers were taken prisoner and around 200 of them were killed. This battle had a tremendous influence on the Americans and greatly enhanced American morale.
The Battle of Bennington is commemorated by two things: a historical park near Walloomsac (where the battle took place) and by a 306-foot obelisk at the village of Old Bennington located in Vermont.
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They were not all Patriots
Ebenezer Washburn (1746-1786)
David Washburn (1750-?)
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With the outbreak of hostilities in 1775, colonists quickly divided between Whigs and Tories. Although some tried to remain neutral, most sided with the rebels (the Whigs) but others stayed loyal to the Crown and backed the British (the Tories). The enmity between these competing factions was great. They hated each other.
Ebenezer Washburn (1746-1786), the 2nd Great Grandson of Mary Chilton of the Mayflower and Sara’s 4th cousin, 6 times removed, was a loyalist. Born in Kent, CT, he married and settled on the Phillips Patent in Dutchess County, New York.
He joined the British Army in 1777.
Ebenezer’s younger brother, David Washburn, was also a Loyalist. During the war he was imprisoned for High Treason.
As the war dragged on, Ebenezer Washburn and his Loyalist compatriots became increasing frustrated. They had expected the war to be a short, decisive, and victorious campaign in which Great Britain won a swift and easy victory. Instead, as the war dragged on, they watched the British and their colonial allies bungle or loose one campaign after another.
The Loyalists had assumed that following the expected quick British victory that they would be offered high-ranking positions suitable to their background, training and support of the King. Instead, with the Whig triumph, they were treated very badly by the Americans. Most had their houses burned to the ground and their property confiscated. The only way for them to get British protection was to go back to England or to one of its remaining colonies in Canada.
After the new American Government rejected his claim for war relief, Ebenezer Washburn fled to Nova Scotia where he died sometime around 1786. As near as can be determined, he had 8 children but neither the name of his wife nor any of his children are known because the Patriots destroyed all of his records.
David Washburn was released from prison about 1784 and apparently also fled to Canada. His records have never been found and were all probably destroyed by the Patriots.
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Tune "Yankee Doodle"
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The introductory tune used on this page is "Yankee Doodle".
Why did Yankee Doodle stick a feather in his hat and call it macaroni?
Back in Pre-Revolutionary America when the song "Yankee Doodle" was first popular, the singer was not referring to the pasta "macaroni" in the line that reads "stuck a feather in his hat and called it macaroni". "Macaroni" was a fancy ("dandy") style of Italian dress widely imitated in England at the time. So by just sticking a feather in his cap and calling himself a "Macaroni" (a "dandy"), Yankee Doodle was proudly proclaiming himself to be a country bumpkin, because that was how the English regarded most colonials at that time.
Click here to hear a complete version of Yankee Doodle.
Lyrics:
Yankee Doodle went to town
A-riding on a pony
Stuck a feather in his hat
And called it macaroni.
Chorus:
Yankee Doodle, keep it up
Yankee Doodle dandy
Mind the music and the step
And with the girls be handy.
Father and I went down to camp
Along with Captain Gooding
And there we saw the men and boys
As thick as hasty pudding.
There was Captain Washington
Upon a slapping stallion
A-giving orders to his men
I guess there was a million.
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This page and all genealogical data contained on it are Copyrighted © 2007
by Theodore C. Anderson
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