The Revolutionary War was a bloody, frightening and difficult time for the families who lived through it, as one soldier's story well illustrates.
Butler's Rangers was a corps of mainly German-speaking settlers who were rallied to the British cause in the Revolutionary War in 1777 by Lieutenant-Colonel John Butler. (E.A. Cruikshank’s introduction to the Register of St. Paul’s Church at Fort Erie, 1836-1844 states of the early Niagara settlers mustered out of Butler’s Rangers that "Their surnames show that they were nearly all of German Origin, for example, Anger, Anguish, Benner, Berger, Creger, House, Huffman, Lutes, Maybee, Putman, Sypes, Windecker, and Wintermute.") Some idea of the living conditions during that time can be gleaned from the story of a single member of the corps, Jacob Anguish, born about 1720.
Jacob Anguish was a farmer of German heritage whose descendants ended up settling in Canada in the late 1700s. In 1777 he left his home near the Susquehanna to join Butler’s Rangers for the attack upon Fort Stanwix (near Rome, New York). A body of Indians fighters, including Mohawks under Joseph Brant, had joined the British there when they learned that the Tryon Militia under General Herkimer was on its way to assist the fort. At the Battle of Oriskany (also called Oriska Field), there was a particularly bloody encounter, with many casualties on both sides. The British allies were ultimately forced to withdraw without taking the fort.
After the rangers withdrew from Fort Stanwix, Anguish obtained permission to return home to collect his family; but was taken prisoner on the way and imprisoned in a dungeon at Hartford, Connecticut for nine months. There, his health deteriorated rapidly. "As he lay on the ground, his clothes were sometimes frozen to it, and (...) one morning his Heel was frozen so fast in the mud that he was obliged to get one of his fellow Prisoners to disengage it – being himself so reduced by sickness that he was incapable of making any effort." He was eventually released due to his ill health, but when he finally managed to return home, he found that "a Party of Indians had plundered his House & carried off his wife and children Prisoners".
The story of Jacob Anguish continues here and here.
Sources:
- An Annotated Nominal Roll of Butler's Rangers 1777-1784 with Documentary Sources by Lt-Col William A. Smy (2004) by E.A. Cruikshank (Lundy’s Lane Historical Society, 1893)
- Butler’s Rangers, The Revolutionary Period (Ontario Genealogical Society)
- Early Settlers in Niagara (No 99 in the collection of MSS "Susquehanna Settlers" at Hartford, Connecticut. Copy in the archives of the Niagara Historical Society Museum at Niagara-On-The-Lake, Ontario)
- Petition of Jacob Anguish to Lt-Col. De Peyster (Ontario Historical Society Papers and Records, Vol. 27, 1931)
- Register of St. Paul’s Church at Fort Erie, 1836-1844
