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~ Old Northern Dutchess Life

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Tag Archives: revolutionary war

Captain William Stewart, 1738-1788

04 Saturday Jul 2015

Posted by SKH in Genealogy, Revolutionary War

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

milan, revolutionary war, Rowe, Stewart

Stewart-William-d-1788-2This 4th of July I thought I’d share something I wrote a little while back about one of my DAR Patriot Ancestors – William Stewart.

William Stewart was born in Scotland 23 June 1738[1]. He came to Dutchess County with his mother Isabela (who died in 1793) and at least two brothers, James and Henry.[2]

He married 3 December 1771 in New York State[3] Catherine Rowe, daughter of John Rowe and Catherine Lasher of North East Precinct, Dutchess County. They had eight children, John Stewart 1773-a.1836, Catherine Stewart 1774-1848 who married William Hermans of Ulster County, Col. Henry W. 1776-1840 who married Phebe Sherrill, William W. 1778-1859 who married Elizabeth Pitcher, Isabella Stewart who married Dr. Uri Judd and removed to Yates County, James W. Stewart a.1782-p.1855, Richard deCantillon Stewart who married Tamer (last name unknown), and Andrew Stewart 1787-a.1836. According to deeds and mortgages, John, James, and Andrew may have removed to western New York State but no record of their descendants could be found.

In 1836, William Stewart’s 83-year-old widow Catharine Rowe applied for a widow’s pension. Her younger brother Philip Rowe gave affidavit that his brother-in-law William Stewart (of the Town of North East, later Milan) “rode a famous black horse which commanded the admiration of the people… (and) kept said horse during the war and a little after it.[4]” Another soldier from the same unit, Andrew Frazier also remembered this impressive horse in his deposition.

Philip asserted that William Stewart was “particularly obnoxious to the Tories on whose detection and apprehension he was reputed to be uncommonly active and vigilant… a zealous Whig and efficient officer.” He was active in service as late as 1778 or 1779 and perhaps until 1781. He marched to West Point in 1776 with his brother-in-law Philip Rowe where they remained for several weeks. He was frequently absent from his family for most of the duration of the war.

Philip said that William Stewart came to live in the area two years before he was married. Catherine and William lived with her elder brother John Rowe and their parents were deceased. William Stewart “kept a store” in the Town of North East (which was much larger geographically in the eighteenth century) where he lived, until he died. He made his will in 1776 while healthy, because he was “providently called upon to step in to assert and defend by arms the rights, privileges and liberties of the United States of North America, sensible of the mortality of man and uncertainty of life, and more especially when called upon to enter the field of battle…”[5]

He died 10 March 1788 at 49 years, 8 months and 16 days[6]. He is buried at what is now called the Rowe Ground on the western side of Rt. 199 in the Town of Milan across from the Methodist Church. His wife, some of his children, and his brother James rest close by.

WIDOW

William and Catherine had three children (John, Catherine, and Henry) before the Battle of White Plains and five (William, Isabella, James, Richard, and Andrew) after it. The first and seventh were already dead in 1836. A William I. Stewart of Kings County, NY swore that all of William and Catherine’s children but their son James were dead by 12 July 1853[7].

Catherine remembered marrying in February of 1772. She did not accompany her husband on any of his “military expeditions”.

Four days after she died on 6 February 1844, Catherine Stewart’s pension was increased to $120. In 1855 it was increased to $180 to the benefit of William Stewarts only surviving child, James W. Stewart and in 1856 the service was accepted as being 12 total months and the sum was increased to $240. As shown in these documents, Catherine could not sign her own name.

SERVICE

William Stewart served as Adjutant and Captain in the Dutchess County Militia under Col. Petrus TenBroeck, and later under Col. Morris Graham “and served during (the) greater part of (the) war[8]”. He participated in the Battle of White Plains. His widow “often heard him declare that he cared not for his private fortunes so long as he could be instrumental in establishing the independence of the country.”

On 14 April 1775 a meeting was held in Charlotte Precinct (part of which became Pine Plains and Milan). There, Morris Graham, Robert R. Livingston, Jr. (aka Chancellor Livingston), and Egbert Benson were elected as delegates representing Rhinebeck, North East, Amenia, and Rumbout to the provincial congress to be held in New York City on 20 April. William Stewart and Morris Graham were the representatives from North East at that meeting. Shortly after this congress, news of the Battles of Lexington and Concord, the first military engagements of the Revolution fought on 19 April, arrived, and just after that, the first Articles of Association “a sort of pledge and protest against the government of England” were circulated for signing in New York[9]. Many local men signed this pledge, including William Stewart, who with Nathaniel Mead, J. Simmons, and Frederick Ham reported the results for North East[10]. Many who did not sign did so out of blind obedience to the King but also fear and uncertainty.

William Stewart’s documents had been lost by the time his widow Catherine Rowe applied for a pension in the 1830’s. This made application difficult for her and she had to call upon many friends and relatives to give testimony for his service. This must have been incredibly frustrating for her, but gives those of us researching him a much bigger picture of what he did to further the cause of American freedom. From this pension and what records remain, we can paint a picture of a record of service that runs from the very first shots to the surrender of Cornwallis.

Morris Graham, Hugh Rea (who married into the Knickerbocker family), William Stewart, Augustine Graham, David Wilson, Hugh Orr, and George Morehouse were members of the committee appointed to elect military officers on 26 August 1775. Two months later, a Dutchess County Regiment of Militia was organized of various companies. Huntting describes it in the History of Little Nine Partners:

“These companies in connection with five other companies from Rhinebeck Precinct, formed a regiment officered as follows: Petrus Ten Broeck, Colonel; Morris Graham, Lieut. Col. ; Simon Westfall, 1st Major; Jonathan Landon, 2d Major: William Stewart, Adjutant ; Hendrick VanHovenbergh, Quartermaster. Their commissions were issued October 17, 1775.[11]”

On 10 September 1776, Col. Graham’s regiment of Dutchess County militia was recorded with William Stewart as Captain of the 6th Company and Hardenburg and Seaton, Lieutenants. A letter from Kings Bridge, 4 October 1776 from a General Heath to Captain William Stewart ordered him to “convey 2 suspect persons to Fishkill, leave to then go to Nine Partners to return to Kings Bridge on Wednesday next.[12]” Andrew Frazier and John Smith gave testimony in Stewart’s widow’s pension that the tour of duty immediately following the Battle of White Plains (28 October 1776) in which and William Stewart acted as Captain was for a total of nine months. A Henry Soper also said in his own pension that he served under Captain Stewart for six months in the spring of 1776. Such assertions were important to increasing the sum that James W. Stewart received from his late mother’s widow’s pension.

Stewart’s widow thought that he was active in “disarming the Tories and suppressing disaffection” and that he was often gone six months at a time. She believed he took part in the Battle of White Plains. Andrew Frazier, a free black man also gave deposition to back up Catherine’s claim to a pension and said that he knew William Stewart when he was single and running a store in North East and that he had come to America from Scotland a “few years” before he knew him, and that was only 1-2 years before William and Catherine were married. Catherine believed this was around 1766. Frazier was in the same regiment as Stewart and as a “wagoner” helped transport arms they had procured from Tories to a storage facility somewhere in the Great Nine Partners. Once, he recalled, when they marched to New Rochelle, the regiment was fired on by British Ships on the Sound before the Battle of White Plains. When Frazier took ill, Morris Graham made him his “writer” and he was present and accounted for William Stewart also being present for those encounters with the British. He was fairly certain that Stewart remained in the service for the entire duration of the war, though he himself left it shortly after White Plains. Frazier echoed Catherine in saying that both among the troops and his neighbors in the Town of North East, Stewart was thought of as an “active and efficient officer.”

A letter of 2 January 1777 says that a “portion of the militia in Dutchess in Col. Graham’s regiment having refused on 30 Dec 1776 to march to the passes of the Highlands are to be compelled by force.[13]” In May of 1777, Stewart participated in the court martial at Ft. Montgomery “probably for the trial of those who failed to serve as required.[14]” When Stewart’s unit was reorganized on 18 March 1778 under Col. Morris Graham he was reappointed adjutant. The pension assumes that he held this position continually from his first appointment in 1775. The pension file of Everly Simmons declares that he served under Stewart and Morris Graham in 1780 or 1781 for three months. On 19 October 1781 British General Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown. If the statements of the men who gave depositions in Catherine Stewart’s widow’s pension and others are true, William Stewart did indeed serve “during (the) greater part of (the) war”.

Footnotes:

[1] Tombstone, Rowe Grounds, Milan, Dutchess Co NY

[2] Revolutionary War Widow’s Pension W.19104 especially pages 480 of 1104 regarding troop movements.

[3] Names of persons for whom marriage licenses were issued by the secretary of the province of New York, previous to 1784 Albany: Weed, Parsons, 1986 p.330

[4] Revolutionary War Widow’s Pension W.19104

[5] Will: Book A REC 1930#1 Stewart William Northeast Precinct 9 Sep 1776, prob. 18 Jun 1789 pp.142-143

[6] Pension W.19104

[7] Pension W.19104

[8] Pension W.19104

[9] Huntting, Isaac. History of the Little Nine Partners. Charles Walsh & Company, 189 P. 39-40

[10] Little Nine Partners P.42

[11] Little Nine Partners P.45

[12] Pension W.19104 “Vol 2 p. 882” noted

[13]  Pension W.19104

[14]  Pension W.19104

Losee/Thomas House

18 Friday Nov 2011

Posted by SKH in 19th Century Photos, 20th Century, Genealogy

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

genealogy, John Losee, Losee, photography, revolutionary war, upper red hook

Excerpt from a report from the Year Book of Dutchess County Historical Society, 1918 pages 21-27. This came from the semi-annual meeting in October of that year when the society visited several sites in and around Red Hook, including the Losee/Thomas/Red Tavern house.  My notes and corrections are in italics. The house is located in Upper Red Hook on Spring Lake Road, click here for google maps to see exactly where. My great-grandfather Harvey Losee was born 30 Mar 1867 in the house Upper Red Hook and died 20 Feb 1931 in the same house after a 10-year illness.

“The next stop was at the famous Red Tavern in Upper Red Hook, where the present occupant, Dr. Harvey Losee (on the left) read the following paper:

Members of the Dutchess County Historical Society: It gives me great pleasure to extend to you a hearty welcome to ye ancient village of Red Hook, at present yelept (yclept-“called”) Upper Red Hook.

When Mr. Adams called upon me not long ago, and said that this burg was upon your itinerary for this year, and asked permission to see “The Old Red Tavern” I told him it would give me the greatest pleasure; but when he also asked me to make a “speech”, I demurred. There is something so formal and stage frighty about the term “speech”, that timid souls instinctively take fright. But upon questioning him, Mr. Adams hedged, and said I would not be expected to act the part of a Cicero, but rather a cicerone in the matter of “The Old Red Tavern”, and so, as the nervous young speaker said, I kindly consented.

“The Old Red Tavern” or “The Old Brick Tavern” or “The Thomas House” was, according to some authorities, the thing that gave the village and township its name, though this point is more or less disputed; but the thing is certainly very plausible as the old red Dutch tavern stood at the angle or hook where the great thoroughfare, to Connecticut and the East, branched from the Albany Post Road. Farms came by this road in great numbers from the East, bringing their produce to be shipped by sailing craft to New Amsterdam or New York, and “The Old Red Tavern” was one of their regular ports of call, and must have undoubtedly become in time a notable public landmark, than that it should have received it from a strawberry patch.

It is not possible to fix upon even an approximate date when the house was built. The custom which was employed in the building of many of the early houses, of inserting the date in the gable, was, unfortunately not observed in this case. The late Gen. de Peyster, a member of many historical societies, and an antiquarian of some note, showed me a map (see scan at right, click to enlarge) of the date 1789, in which this house is set down and spoken of as a very old house at that time. There seems little doubt that it is well over 200 years old at the present time (1918). The house was not built of Holland brick, as some have thought, but brick made of the clay from our own Hudson. But the brick is of such adamantine hardness, that the masons, in putting in a new window, or making repairs, encountered such a difficult task that they always maintained that such brick had never been made in this country. The house was built in the simple Dutch style, with gambrel roof and dormer windows. A good many years ago, when the house was renovated, this characteristic roof was removed, and a gable added, which of course was a great architectural error. The oak beans, as in all the old houses, are large and hand-hewn; one, the great trimmer on the third floor, being 17×17. The walls of the house today stand perfectly four square, but the floors, due to the very weight of the heavy timbers, show some slight sagging. The cellars which are rather dungeon-like, are crudely hewn out of the rock, and in them during Revolutionary days, were incarcerated British prisoners, as well as an occasional continental soldier who had proved rebellious to military discipline. It was the general saying among our old inhabitants, who had it from their parents or grandparents, that Washington had stopped at the Old Tavern on one occasion, while Lafayette was said to have spent two or three days there. Gen. Gates is also reported to have stopped once with his command while Gen. Putnam maintained it as his headquarters for a brief period while in this section of the Hudson. The late William H. Teator (b. 1817) told me that his father had told him that he was at “The Old Brick Tavern” one night while a regiment of Putnam’s soldiers were quartered in the vicinity, and on that occasion a hogshead of rum was broached and finished in the same evening. There was a large block and tackle, he said, by which the casks of rum were hauled up and tiered in the back part of the room.

The first story, at the time, he thought, being practically all in one room, with a large fire-place at each end (At right, Harvey’s parents John Eckart Losee and Mary Elizabeth Knickerbocker in the living room of the house c. 1890). And for some reason, which he said he didn’t understand, it was always the custom to broach the very topmost casks first. Possible there was some system of siphonage, or gravity arrangement by which the worthy Dutch burghers sitting around the big fire-place smoking their long nines, could obtain their liquor without even the exertion of crooking their elbows! Those were certainly rum days! I found an old day book (ach, where is it now, Harvey?) amongst some rubbish, which had evidently belonged to one of our early store-keepers, as the charges were in pounds, shillings and pence, and the chirography was characteristic of that period – for it was equal almost to our finest engraving, and the ink was as bright as if written but the day before. One customer, “a thirsty soul,” whose name appeared at most regular intervals of three or four weeks, was invariable charged with five gallons of rum at the rate of two shillings and six pence. And there would occasionally be entered upon the book what would seem might have been a sop to his better half, namely the purchase of a quarter or half pound of tea. Could the shades of those worthies look forth to-day upon this now almost entirely arid country, they would certainly see a great change in this respect. And in speaking of shades, we are reminded of the ghost or spook which haunts “The Old Red Tavern.” In reading our histories and manuscripts, while collecting material for this cicerone business, I noted that the History of Dutchess County, in the matter of the hanging on the Tory at the Old Tavern, says that the Albany stage coach drove up at just the critical moment, and Judge Yates descended and ordered the victim lowered, and threatened them all with hanging if they did not desist from their purpose. But the account of it which I prefer, is the one given me by my old friend Mr. Teator, before mentioned, who had the story from his father or grandfather, together with many other interesting stories of the early peoples and customs of this village. He said, that the person in question, was not only a Tory, but a spy, and had been caught red-handed in conveying information to the British concerning the disposition and strength of Putman’s forces, and that he was hung one night quite right and proper at “The Old Brick Tavern,” and they used the very tackle which hauled up the rum and other heavy commodities, for this purpose. And people, who in later days inhabited the house, said that upon certain moonless nights, when the wind was in a certain quarter in the East, one could hear the creaking of the old tackle as it was being drawn up, together with gasps and guttural groans, as if emitted by a strangling person; while occasionally, there would be bursts of demoniacal shouts and laughter, as from a rum-crazed crowd. And this part of the story I can vouch for, as I have heard it all myself many a time – with only the slight difference, however, that while I have never noted that it occurred upon nights when the wind was in any particular quarter, yet I had noticed that it was very apt to occur upon nights after the ladies of our community had served one of their famous suppers in these rooms below.

While having nothing to do with the history of the old house, there is an incident connected with it, which I am minded to give, as it was certainly a very odd coincidence. When I began my medical studies in New York, economy and companionship made it necessary for me to select a room-mate, and after a time I selected as such from among nearly 300 class-mates, a young Hobart graduate, whose home was upon the banks of Lake Ontario, and who had never been in this part of the country before (Photo at left of the NH Galusha paddle steamer taken by Harvey on a trip most likely to visit this classmate in Rochester c.1890). I had never heard his name before, nor had he ever heard mine. And yet, strange to relate, out in his own home he had a photograph of me. His sister had been the nurse in the last sickness of a distant relative; this relative (names, Harvey!) married a lady whose ancestors had lived in our old house, and one time upon a visit to this part of the country, they had come to see it, and my father had presented them with a photograph if it in which I, with other members of the family, figured. And upon the death of Mr. Rose, this photograph with other effects, came into the possession of my room-mates’s sister. The four walls of the old house to-day stand untouched by the hand of man or Time, but in the interior alterations have been of such a nature as to leave scarcely anything to suggest its venerable age.

Of the people who lived in it, in its earlier days, when it was maintained as s hostelry and high wassail was held in its ancient hall, we have but little record; but later is was the abode of the law, and next came a good Dutch domine, (dominie) who established his parsonage here (Dominie-“Reverand” Andrew N. Kittle 1785 – 1864 and wife Eliza Gosman, on the right). And now for nearly one hundred years Medicine has had here its home. And fie upon thee! Sir Pessimist, if thou canst not see in this steady evolution, that the world doth move apace towards better things, when we progress from the rum-seller to the lawyer, to the domine, (dominie) to the doctor!

May the four walls of the old house weather the blasts of another centuries storms, and long eye that very like, the zenith of progress will be attained by its being the abode of the lady mayor, or other high official of a thoroughly evolutionized village!

Losee/Thomas house from an unpaved Spring Lake Road c.1930

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