Saturday, June 7, 2014

Royalton Raid


Colonel Jonathan Chase commanded the Cornish, New Hampshire regiment in the Revolutionary War. His troops were in the Battle of Saratoga, and witnessed the surrender. When he was gone, his wife Sarah was busy at home running the farm, a tavern, a ferry, and raising seven children.

Jonathan married his first wife, Thankful Sherman, when he was 22 and she was 20. She had three daughters, and died in 1768, at age 28, when her daughter Prudence was 8, Mary was 5 and Elizabeth was 3. Jonathan remarried 2 years later. Sarah Hall was 28 at the time and Jonathan was 38.

Sarah married Jonathan, became an instant mother to three young girls, and soon had a baby son, Jonathan Jr, born in 1771. Jonathan soon had a brother, David, born in 1773, and a sister, Sarah, born in 1775. Thus when Jonathan led his troops on the way to Saratoga in 1777, she was left with two teenage girls, a twelve year old, and three little ones, the youngest being 2. The Chases had a farm, kept a tavern, and ran the ferry across the Connecticut River, between Cornish and Windsor. That in itself had to have been really tough to handle, in addition to the worries about the possibility of her husband being killed or injured in a war.

Jonathan came home from Saratoga and settled down to running the many family businesses and raising his family, which soon expanded with the birth of Lebbeus, Pamela, and Gratia. After the Saratoga campaign, the war moved out of New England into the Middle Atlantic colonies and then into the south. Although the war had moved south, New England men still had to be ready at a minute's notice, in case hostilities broke out again. The militia held drills on town commons throughout New England, and each member of the militia was expected to have all the necessary equipment on hand and ready to go should the need arise.

Albert Stillman Batchellor, in his address to the New Hampshire Society of the Sons of the American Revolution, in 1900 said that , “each officer and private soldier had to have a firearm, a ramrod, a worm, priming wire and brush, bayonet, scabbard and belt, sword, tomahawk or hatchet, a pouch for a cartridge box holding at least 100 buckshot, a jackknife and tow for wadding, six flints, one pound powder, forty lead balls, a knapsack, a blanket, and a canteen or wooden bottle that held one quart of water”. This amount of equipment posed a serious economic challenge for many men in a community that did not see much money. Towns were required to pay for equipment for men who couldn't afford it, and they did so by asking for donations. Most of the wealthier men equipped several others besides themselves. I'm sure Jonathan Chase donated money or equipment to a good number of the soldiers in his command, and probably several others were equipped by his father and uncle. Often if a man was too old to serve in the militia, if he had enough money he would help provide the equipment for someone younger but not as well off.

Three years after Saratoga, Jonathan's regiment did get the call to march again. This time it really was on a minute's notice, in response to the raid on Royalton on October 16,1780. Although the war had moved south, the Connecticut River and Lake George and Champlain were still important thoroughfares during those days of using waterways for transportation, and in late 1780 the British thought that since the war had moved out of the area, they could make a surprise attack on some northern settlements and regain control of these northern waterways. Many Indian tribes were allies of the British because they felt the British were more fair than the colonials when it came to respecting native property rights. As a result, British troops combined with a war party of Mohawks and Abenakis to attack the town of Newbury on the Connecticut River. When they decided that Newbury was too well defended, they went to the very young and virtually undefended village of Royalton on the White River instead.

Royalton at that time was just a bunch of cabins along the White River. Many of the cabins were inhabited by young families or single young men, who were easily overwhelmed by a combined Indian and British war party of 265. Most of the town's residents were captured and taken to Canada as captives, where they were held as prisoners of war until they either died of disease or were released at the end of the war. Some men were killed when they resisted being captured or tried to fight back, and a few people managed to escape capture by running or hiding. The attackers burned all of the buildings killed the livestock and destroyed the crops, leaving the little village of Royalton in smoking ruins.

Some soldiers from New Hampshire did arrive in the vicinity of Royalton and engage the enemy, but not very successfully. After an exchange of gunfire, the enemy managed to escape without being damaged, and continued northward, with captives in tow. By the time Jonathan and his men made it to Royalton, they were found the fledgling town reduced to smoke and ash, with its inhabitants either taken prisoner or having fled for safety.


Until the British surrendered at Yorktown, the Royalton raid, and similar raids on Sharon and Tunbridge, left people in the Northern Connecticut River Valley in a state of heightened alert. Town militias stepped up their muster days and were even more prepared to defend themselves and their neighbors at a moment's notice. Certainly Jonathan and Sarah, with their brood of children to protect and care for, kept their eyes and ears open and their children close by during those dangerous times.  
 
If you are interested in reading more about the Royalton Raid, Vermont history.org has an article on George Avery, taken captive during the Royalton Raid and brought to Canada, where he survived, had plenty of adventures, made it back to his family on Cape Cod and eventually moved back to the Upper Valley and settled in Plainfield.  It's a great story.  It took me much longer than it should have to write this post because I read that whole story.
 
  I also ordered a book on the Royalton Raid from Amazon.com - "We Go as Captives" by Neil Goodwin.  It hasn't come yet, so I can't give a recommendation - but it has gotten good reviews and it should be great summer reading.

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