Thomas Hartley to the Pennsylvania Delegates in Congress, 3 July 1776: résumé
Thomas Hartley to the Pennsylvania Delegates in Congress
ALS: American Philosophical Society
<Crown Point, July 3, 1776: In the engagements near Three Rivers on June 8 the sixth Pennsylvania battalion, of which I have the honor to be lieutenant colonel, lost Colonel Irvine, Lieutenant Edie, and almost eighty privates, most of whom are prisoners.9 On June 21 Captains McLean, Adams, and Rippie, Lieutenants McKerran, McCallister, and Hogg, Ensigns Lusk and Culbertson, and four privates crossed from Isle aux Noix to the west shore to fish in sight of the camp; they carried no arms. When they went to a house on the shore they were surrounded by Indians. Adams, Culbertson, and two privates were killed and scalped; McLean, McKerran, McCallister, Hogg, and two privates were captured; Rippie and Lusk escaped when a party of our men arrived.10
The battalion has suffered much from these accidents. The officers captured are the best we have, and we need their immediate release. The ones most recently seized were undoubtedly “carried directly to the Regulars at Montreal,” and I beg you to make some arrangement for their prompt exchange.
P.S. It is the army’s wish that General Thompson should be restored to us at once.>
9. For William Irvine see Wayne to BF above, June 13, 1776, and for Edie the letter from the York committee above, Jan. 29.
10. For McLean see the letter from the York committee above, Dec. 23. Brief notices of Robert Adams, William Rippey, Samuel McFerran, Abdiel Mc-Allister, John Hoge, William Lusk, and Joseph Culbertson may be found in Heitman, Register of Officers, pp. 58, 141, 223, 271, 273, 277, 347, and in John B. Linn and William H. Egle, Pennsylvania in the War of the Revolution . . . (2 vols., Harrisburg, 1880), I, 167, 179, 182, 186, 188, 403, 602.