Germantown and the Roads to Valley Forge Page 8

  The Maryland and New Jersey militias under Smallwood and Forman were the first to move out of camp down the Skippack Road, ahead of Greene's column. After passing Whitemarsh Church they turned left and headed over the Whitemarsh Church Road and past the Lime Kiln Road. They had the farthest to go, nearly fifteen miles of night marching to bring them to the Old York Road, and another three or four miles down that road to a lane that would take them around Howe's right flank and into the center of Germantown at the market house.

  Shortly after Smallwood's force set out, Armstrong's Pennsylvania Militia left Norriton and headed down the Ridge, or Manatawny Road, six miles west of the Skippack Road. The day before, these militiamen had departed from Trappe, leaving it a shambles. “It looks as if a swarm of locusts had been here,” a war-weary and utterly disgusted Rev. Henry Muhlenberg wrote after surveying the damage.29 Dunlap's “Partizan” Regiment was now back with the main body of Pennsylvania Militia after Maxwell's Corps of Light Infantry was disbanded at the end of September. The officers and men alike of this unit had occupied Augustus Lutheran Church and not only desecrated it, some of them mocked Reverend Muhlenberg when he entered by shouting, “Play a Hessian march!” to a soldier who was pounding on the organ.30

  Pvt. James Patten of Dunlap's Regiment recalled “that before the troops marched to Germantown & fought the battle there that Genl. Armstrong came to ‘The Trapp’ and made a speech to the troops requesting the militia to volunteer a little longer as they now had some experience and as more confidence could be placed in them than in raw troops.” Secrecy was crucial for the surprise attack, so “where they were going or what particular service he disired them to perform he did not at that time disclose.” Patten decided to remain, “and he was then marched to Germantown & was in the battle at that place.”31 This column's march was nearly fifteen miles to Vanderin's Mill. There, they would take on the Jägers posted on the British left at the Falls of Schuylkill.

  Sullivan's column, with Conway's 3rd Pennsylvania Brigade in the lead, followed by the Maryland Division and Wayne's Division bringing up the rear, was supposed to move over the “Monatany Road,” but there was some confusion of road names. When these troops left camp about 8 PM, they marched on the Skippack Road, which Greene had been assigned to use. At Whitemarsh Church, they continued straight over the Bethlehem Road to get onto the Germantown High Road at Chestnut Hill, three miles ahead.

  Greene's column, the bulk of the attack, was supposed to have moved over Skippack Road, but instead their guide marched them down the Morris Road, a mile or so to the left. This caused a delay, which played a significant role in the outcome of the battle. Greene's men reached the Bethlehem Road about two miles above Whitemarsh Church, moved past the church and turned left onto Whitemarsh Church Road, heading for the Lime Kiln Road a little more than three miles farther on. This movement separated Greene and Sullivan by two or more miles.

  McDougall's Brigade, comprising of the 2nd, 4th, 5th, and 7th Connecticut Regiments, the only New England infantry units with Washington, marched at the head of Greene's column. These troops had spent the previous two weeks marching down from Peekskill on the Hudson and had joined the main army at the end of September. “After A Fatiguing March of 13 days We Ariv'd at about 21 Miles distant from Philadelphia where we Lay in the woods one Night,” Ens. Jonathan Todd, Surgeon's Mate of the 7th Connecticut Regiment, told his father. “Next day was order'd 4 Further on Towards Philadelphia, where we Lay 2 days in the Woods.” That evening, October 3, “we were order'd (about 6 oclock PM) to advance & attack the Enemy, at Germantown, 7 Miles from Philadelphia. The Whole Army March'd About 10 Miles in the Night without so Much as speaking A Loud word.”32

  One of the 4th Connecticut's soldiers, sixteen-year-old Pvt. Joseph Plumb Martin of Milford, Connecticut, who had enlisted at age fifteen and was a combat infantry veteran of the 1776 campaign, had come down from Bethlehem after being sent there along with the baggage. Martin had twisted his ankle badly a few weeks earlier by jumping into a boat below Fort Montgomery on the Hudson, and the “medical attention” he received from well-meaning comrades made the injury worse. Unable to march, he was assigned to baggage guard duty, but did not like it. “Soldiers always like to be under the command of their own officers; they are generally bad enough,” he wrote with a soldier's wry humor, “but strangers are worse.” He spent a day and a half traveling from Bethlehem, and not wanting to be sent away again, pretended to be well. “When I arrived at camp it was just dark, the troops were all preparing for a march. Their provisions (what they had) were all cooked, and their arms and ammunition strictly inspected and all deficiencies supplied. Early in the evening we marched in the direction of Philadelphia. We naturally concluded something serious was in the wind. We marched slowly all night.”33

  Behind McDougall were Weedon's Brigade [2nd, 6th, 10th, 14th Virginia Regiments and the Pennsylvania State Regiment] and Muhlenberg's Brigade [1st, 5th, 9th, 13th Virginia Regiments] in Greene's Division.34 They were led by a contingent of the Pennsylvania State Regiment, most of whose men were on their home ground. “We passed White Marsh meeting house, where Major J[ohn] Murray, Capt. [John] Nice and I were ordered at the head of 80 men to feel their advance pickets,” Lt. James McMichael of the PSR wrote, “and if we conveniently could, to attack them.” Thirty-eight-year-old Capt. John Nice was from an old Germantown family (de Neus was how the name was spelled originally); the hamlet of Nicetown near Stenton was named after them. John had served in the 1776 New York Campaign and was taken prisoner at the Battle of Long Island; he was exchanged four months later. Now he was leading a column over familiar roads to drive the enemy out of his neighborhood. “Owing to the picket being within a mile of their main body,” McMichael wrote, “we were unsuccessful, and rejoined our regiment at daybreak.”35

  In the day or two before the attack, several warnings came into the British camp that Washington was moving towards them. “Mr. Washington by the accounts of some come in to day is Eighteen miles distant with his main Body,” Lt. Richard St. George of the 2nd Light Infantry Battalion wrote at midnight on October 2. “They say He intends to move nearer us to try the Event of another Battle—He has been reinforced.”36

  A remarkable warning came to Capt. Johann Ewald of the Hessian Jägers at the picket post on Ridge Road above Vanderin's Mill, where Wissahickon Creek empties into the Schuylkill. The main Jäger camp was across the Wissahickon below the mill, but their picket was a mile out near the Octagon, the country villa of Rev. Dr. William Smith, an Anglican minister and the provost of the Academy and College of Philadelphia.

  Reverend Smith's loyalties and motives during the Revolution were somewhat questionable as he jockeyed with the political disruption. Before the opening of the First Continental Congress in 1774, Benjamin Rush warned John Adams about Smith; Adams wrote in his diary that the minister “is looking up to Government for an American Episcopate and a Pair of lawn sleeves.” He described Smith as “Soft, polite, insinuating, adulating, sensible, learned, industrious, indefatigable” and said that the clergyman “has Art enough and Refinement upon Art to make Impressions even on Mr. Dickinson and Mr. Reed.”37

  Early in the evening of October 3, Dr. Smith approached Captain Ewald and asked to take a walk with him. When they were out of sight behind the Jäger picket, Smith said to Ewald, “My friend, I confess to you that I am a friend of the States and no friend of the English government, but you have rendered me a friendly turn. You have shown me that humanity which each soldier should not lose sight of. You have protected my property. I will show you that I am grateful.” The minister then warned the Hessian officer, “You stand in a corps which is hourly threatened by the danger of the first attack when the enemy approaches. Friend, God bless your person! The success of your arms I cannot wish.—Friend! General Washington has marched up to Norriton today!—Adieu! Adieu!” With that, “this grateful man took the road to Philadelphia without saying one word more,” leaving the Jäger captain speechless.


  “I stood for quite a while as if turned to stone,” Ewald stated. “I thought over this man's entire conversation, hurried into camp, and reported it to Colonel Wurmb,” commander of the Jäger Corps. Colonel von Wurmb passed the information to General von Knyphausen, “who took his precautionary measures at once,” but when von Wurmb reported the information at headquarters, Ewald was shocked to learn that “General Howe answered this news with a ‘That cannot be!’” quoting the commander in chief in both German and English.38

  Strangely enough, Howe did pass a warning on to Sir George Osborn at the Guards camp on Wingohocking Creek near the Old York Road, a few hundred yards northeast of Stenton. Later, when questioned by the House of Commons about Howe's conduct, “Colonel Sir George Osborne testified that on the day before the action, Sir W. Howe ordered him a little before sunset to move in front with the grenadiers and light infantry of the Guards, acquainting him that he might expect the enemy the next morning.” When asked, “Notwithstanding the information from the Commander-in-chief, do you conceive that our army was surprised at Germantown, or otherwise?” Osborn replied very carefully, “After the information, I was not in any danger of being surprised.” When pressed to reveal if any other part of the army was surprised, Sir George hedged the question, and then declined to answer.39

  “We imagined that the defeat of Brandywine had dispirited the enemy to such a degree that it would be utterly impossible for Washington to give us any further trouble, for some time at least,” Osborn's friend Capt. Richard Fitzpatrick wrote. “In consequence of which I Believe we had not much considered the strength of the Position we took at Germantown.” The Guards captain admitted, “In this notion however we found ourselves egregiously mistaken for on the 4th of October a week after we had been there & about 3 weeks after the defeat of Brandywine we were surprized by their Army coming down upon us & making a most desperate attack,” emphasizing that Washington's move was “surprizing indeed in every sense of the word, for we had not above two hours notice of their advancing, & then gave no credit to it.”40

  The two Light Infantry battalions formed the main outposts of the camp. The 1st Battalion, commanded by Lt. Col. Sir Robert Abercromby of the 37th Regiment, was positioned on high ground above the heavily wooded Wingohocking Creek about 300 yards to the right of the main camp; their picket post was more than half a mile to the northeast at Luken's Mill on the Lime Kiln Road. On the Germantown High Road two miles north of the main camp, the 2nd Battalion, led by Maj. John Maitland of the Marines, was camped on a small hill called Mount Pleasant at the northern end of Beggarstown, with their outpost at the Allen house, Mount Airy, about 400 yards above Mount Pleasant.

  One mile behind the 2nd Battalion was the 40th Regiment, 300 men commanded by Lt. Col. Thomas Musgrave, camped in the back of Benjamin Chew's country house Cliveden. This force was positioned to support the 2nd Battalion in case of attack. Among the three outpost camps, two other picket posts were established nearly a mile northeast of the Germantown High Road: one on the Abington Road (now Washington Lane), the other on the Bristol Road (now Haines Street).

  The 40th Regiment functioned like a light infantry unit during much of the Philadelphia Campaign. Lt. Col. Thomas Musgrave was a light infantry veteran who had commanded the 64th Light Company during part of the 1776 New York Campaign. Shortly before the Battle of White Plains, he was shot in the face during a skirmish and badly wounded. The injury disfigured him for life, leaving a hole in his left cheek. After recovering, he took command of the 40th. Two other officers noted for their light infantry skills, Capt. James Wemyss and Capt. John Graves Simcoe, also belonged to the 40th. These men successively commanded the Queen's Rangers, the most famous Loyalist unit of the war. Wemyss led the Queen's Rangers at Brandywine, where it fought well at Chads's Ford but lost nearly one-third of its strength, suffering the highest losses of any unit in Howe's army. Simcoe was captain of the 40th Grenadier Company at Brandywine and was wounded in the arm during the fighting near Birmingham Meeting. He was still recovering when the Battle of Germantown occurred; less than two weeks later, on October 15, he was placed in command of the Queen's Rangers and served with distinction.

  Over on the right, the 1st Light Infantry Battalion's camp was “taken up during rain, and not on ground originally intended, the army by mistake not having been halted soon enough,” Capt. William Scott, commander of the 17th Light Company, revealed. “The men having made themselves comfortable during the two, or three days rain, out of consideration camp of wigwams not altered.” The twenty-five-year-old Scott and his company had served as Cornwallis's vanguard at Brandywine in conjunction with Ewald's Jägers. Now, on outpost duty at Germantown, he noted, “Rumours of general attack; Officers seen in front of advanced posts as if to reconnoitre; partial attack thought likely; army in the fullest confidence.”41

  Cornet Baylor Hill of the 1st Continental Light Dragoons confirmed Scott's observations about Americans on reconnaissance. He and fifteen men accompanied Col. Joseph Reed on a scouting mission in front of the British positions between Chestnut Hill and the Delaware River on October 2. The next day, they headed to Jenkintown in Abington Township, three miles above Luken's Mill. “Set out in the morning to Jinkin's Town, then down on the Enemys lines to…Frankford Town 5 miles from Phila.,” then making a wide circuit “from there to Jno. Hollowells on Skippack Road at night” in Whitemarsh Township. Cornet Hill added, “This night our army at 8 oClock began to march by this place towards the Enemy lines.”42

  Back over at Mount Airy, the men of the 2nd Light Infantry Battalion were well aware that serious trouble was in the offing for them after the “nocturnal bloody scene” of Paoli. “The Americans ever after Wayne's affair called us ‘The Bloodhounds,’” Lt. Martin Hunter of the 52nd Light Company had written. “I don’ think that our battalion slept very soundly after that night for a long time.”43

  “They threaten retaliation, vow that they will give no quarter to any of our Battalion,” Hunter's friend Lieutenant St. George wrote to his sweetheart Imperial from “Camp Near Beggars Town seven Miles distant from Philadelphia…Octobr 2nd 12 midnight in my Tent.” He and his light bobs (British nickname for light infantrymen) endured night after sleepless night while American scouts lurked in the dark, taking potshots, hissing threats—anything to keep the British pickets on edge. “There has been firing this Night all around the Centrys—which seems as if they endeavour to feel our situation,” St. George scribbled with anxiety. The constant tension was taking its toll, as it was meant to. “I am fatigued & must sleep—Coudst Thou sleep thus?” he asked his girl. “Nor I at first (entre nous).”44

  Starting with his name—Richard St. George Mansergh St. George—the young lieutenant was quite a character. “St. George and I were great friends,” Martin Hunter fondly remembered, for both were in their late teens at the time. “He was a fine, high-spirited, gentleman-like young man, but uncommonly passionate.” Being a gentleman of fashion, St. George was able to afford several servants, including his “man,” Harvey, “a little Irishman,” and two escaped Africans. “St. George was quite military mad, and the man copied the master in everything,” Hunter recalled with a smile, “a most laughable figure as ever was seen. He wore one of his master's old regimental jackets, a set of American accoutrements, a long rifle and sword, with a brace of horse pistols, and was attended by two runaway negroes equipped in the same way.”45

  St. George's letter to Imperial is filled with vivid descriptions of Brandywine and Paoli and allusions to popular plays in the great London theaters, Drury Lane and Covent Garden. When he asked her rhetorically, “Coudst Thou sleep thus?” he answered, “No more than I coud act Sir Henry Wildain in A Ship on Fire.” And yet, Hunter wrote, “I often thought that St. George wished to be wounded, as he frequently said, ‘It is very extraordinary that I don't get a clink, for I am certain I go as much in the way of it as anybody.’”

  On September 11, the passionate subaltern got his wish somewhe
re near Birmingham Meeting. “He received a shot through the heel at Brandywine,” Hunter revealed, though St. George was not listed among the wounded officers. Being shot in the heel often suggested that someone was running away, but the Light Infantry continuously ran forward and backward and sideways in battle, taking cover as necessary, moving in open order and close order. They also threw themselves facedown on the ground, which exposed their heels and hindquarters to gunfire. The light bobs had standing orders to advance and withdraw as circumstances and common sense dictated. “A ball glanced against my ancle & contused it,” St. George told Imperial. “For some Days I was Lifted off & on Horseback in Mens’ arms.” Like many young soldiers, he did not want to miss any of the action, though now, on outpost duty at Beggarstown, “my rest is interrupted—I wake once or twice…my Ear is susceptible to the least noise.”46

  The warnings that Howe received on the evening of October 3 did not go entirely unheeded. “After orders 8 at Night 3rd Octor. 1777. The 55th, 57th, 63rd, 64th, 71st, 37th, and 40th Companys to parade with arms & accoutrements at Major Maitland's Quarters immediately.”47 These eight companies (the 71st Highlanders had two light companies) represented half of the 2nd Light Infantry Battalion and were about to go out on patrol. The orders, written at the top of a clean page in Capt. Thomas Armstrong's 64th Light Company Orderly Book, were the last entry made in the book.

  “Commander in chief judging the enemy had a partial attack in contemplation had ordered Brig. Genl. Sir W. Erskine with 2nd Light Infy. to advance some miles on the main road in the night,” Captain Scott wrote, noting that the “Troops returned without making any discovery.”48 One of his company officers, Lt. Frederick Wetherall, stated in his journal that “the 2nd L. I. having made a patrol in the Night discover'd nothing but some Fires at Whitemarsh, of course had little Reason to expect a general Attack.”49