Posted on by Charlie Frye

Aaron Oliver and Ezra Fuller – Memorial Day

In researching my books I learn some of the details about little-known soldiers of the American Revolution who made the ultimate sacrifice. Each year when Memorial Day nears, I try to carve out time to share those stories. This year I chose two who chose to fight for American Independence from Great Britain.

I began learning about Aaron Oliver and Ezra Fuller while researching Honor and Valor because they were soldiers who enlisted in the Continental Army company my great-great-great-great-grandfather, Isaac Frye, captained. In early 1777, the regiment was recruiting and I wrote about how Isaac recruited from the towns near his home in Wilton, New Hampshire.

My habit before writing is to research the histories of the men who served in the Continental Army with Isaac Frye. Early in my research, I found the enlistment documents for Isaac Frye’s company. The first was signed by enlistees who gathered in Wilton, New Hampshire on April 1, 1777. Aaron Oliver and Ezra Fuller were present and they enlisted as private soldiers in the Continental Army for a term of three years. Their signatures are indicated in the image with red arrows.

I research genealogical information for each soldier. I found Aaron Oliver was born on 25 August 1750 in Malden, Massachusetts, and that he was married to Abigail Townsend and they had three sons, Luther, Ezra, and Aaron Jr. In 1777. They were living in Temple, New Hampshire when Aaron enlisted. Ezra Fuller was younger, born in 1757 in Lynn, MA; he was not married. He lived in Mason, New Hampshire when he enlisted.

As I continued my research, I found two unexpected references for Aaron Oliver. The first was a Daughters of the American Revolution publication, Forgotten Patriots, African American and American Indian Patriots in the Revolutionary War, A Guide to Service Sources, and Studies; and the second was Glenn A. Knoblock’s African American Historical Burial Grounds and Gravesites of New England. Forgotten Patriots provides that Oliver was of mixed heritage, “mulatto”. That got me curious and I searched for the names of all the men in Isaac Frye’s company. Ezra Fuller was included as “African American”. Knoblock provides additional history about Oliver and uses his case to illustrate the practice of “warning out”, a practice where towns ousted unwanted or burdensome people from dwelling within their boundaries.

I learned a good deal more about Oliver and Fuller from town histories and several of the muster rolls Isaac Frye and the officers of his company made each month. Several facts that applied to Oliver and Fuller have stuck with me.

  • They were born, and died, as free men.
  • Each could sign his name and therefore I presume could read and write – something three in ten of their white counterparts could or did not do.
  • The monthly muster rolls show Oliver and Fuller were not segregated within Captain Frye’s company. The rolls list the men in groups of five by their “messes”, meaning those who shared meals and tents. Frye’s rolls show messes were initially determined alphabetically. All men in the company were equals in pay, misery, risk, and soldierly duties.

Despite these inferences, I found no specific references to the character or accounts of either Oliver or Fuller in any diaries, journals, or contemporary writings. Their service was as exemplary as any other private soldier in the Continental Army.

Aaron Oliver’s Service

As the Continental Army evacuated from Fort Ticonderoga in early July of 1775, Oliver and two other men, Ensign Samuel Leeman, and Private Jonathan Foster were assigned to guard the baggage and invalids. Thus, these three were caught in the Battle of Hubbardton. Leeman was killed and Foster escaped to the east but was unable to rejoin the company until later. Knoblock provides that Oliver was taken prisoner, and taken to and held in the British prison ships at Wallabout Bay in New York. Oliver’s health deteriorated and he was released from captivity and returned home to Temple in April 1778. Isaac Frye’s muster roll for November 1778 has a notation of Oliver dying on April 30, 1778. At his death, Aaron Oliver was twenty-seven years of age. In December of 1778, Oliver’s widow, Abigail, was warned out of Temple – the town would or could not support them.

I found that fact troubling for having learned Josiah Parker’s story, and after his passing, the Town of Wilton, of similar size and means, appeared to support his widow Phebe and their children until Phebe married recently widowed John Greele a year and a half later.

It is also troubling that I have never found evidence that Aaron Oliver was ever paid or that his widow, Abigail, received any compensation for his service.

Added April 25, 2024: I happened to find one additional enlistment for Aaron Oliver in the Massachusetts Rolls (Vol. 11, p. 635): Oliver, Aaron, Temple. Descriptive list endorsed ” August 4 1775; ” Capt. Ezra Town s co., Col. James Read‘s regt.; rank, Private; age, 25 yrs. : stature, 5 ft. 10 in.; eyes, black; occupation, farmer; birthplace, Malden; residence, Temple; enlisted April 23. 1775; mustered July 11, 1775 ; reported a mulatto ; also reported absent on command.

Ezra Fuller’s Service

Ezra Fuller served in the place of Deacon Amos Dakin, who may also have paid his town or state bounty, a bonus for enlisting. Fuller was apparently very ill at the time Captain Frye’s company marched to Fort Ticonderoga,, as Fuller does not appear on the rolls until joining the company in September after the Battle of Freeman’s Farm. Fuller apparently fits into the company and marches with them into the Battle of Bemis Heights in which he is wounded.

Fuller spends several months recovering in Albany and is among the first to march from there to Valley Forge to join his company at some point between the muster rolls taken on April 4, 1778 and May 2, 1778. However, Fuller is immediately listed as sick. He was apparently taken to one of the hospitals in the area. Because he was not with the company and Captain Frye was also sick, but remained in the camp at Valley Forge, his disposition was unknown. He is listed on the monthly muster rolls as sick at Valley Forge through April of 1779. However, I found a record indicating he died on July 14, 1778 – he was just twenty-one or twenty-two years old. On August 28, 1782, Ezra Fuller’s father, David Fuller, was given his son’s pay.

-CEF

Posted on by Charlie Frye

Battles of Saratoga 243rd Anniversary

Of all the work and research I put into the writing of Honor and Valor, chapters 7 and 8 which deal with the Battles of Freeman’s Farm and Bemis Heights proved the most challenging. Over the last two decades I read many books about these battles. I particularly enjoyed the works of Richard M. Ketchum and Sean Snow, and Don Troiani & Eric Schnitzer.

Plaque dedicated to the New Hampshire Continentals who fought at Saratoga in 1777.

My goal in reading those and many others was to get my bearings and then shadow the 3rd New Hampshire Regiment and my ancestor, then Captain, Isaac Frye on these battlefields. I cross-referenced the sources from the above-mentioned works and several others to piece together a series of minute-to-minute sequences that plausibly occurred on the afternoons of September 19 and October 7, 1777.

I also spent a day walking the battlefields, doing my best to see the terrain as soldiers saw it in 1777. Many first-hand accounts of the battles included the tremendous sounds of cannon, musketry, and anguished screams of the wounded and dying men. Combine that with all the smoke and smells and I found myself duly impressed with the valor of those who fought.

If you’re like me and have pursued a deeper understanding of these battles, and wondered what it was like to have been there, please invest some time and read Honor and Valor. I learned a great deal writing it, especially when it came to realizing the great fortitude and commitment the men on both sides of these battles brought to bear through the brutality of war and the sufferings produced by 18th Century armies in a months-long campaign.

The best histories are the stories of specific people and why they did what they did. In my writing, I strive to revive the stories of several people that many historians might only include as flavoring in their writings rather than the main course. Names like Isaac Frye, Ezekiel Goodale, William Adrian Hawkins, and Will Burton do not make the indexes in most histories and historians have not written about their families or their everyday concerns for well over a century.

-CEF

P.S. If you should read or have read Honor and Valor or The War Has Begun, and any of the other books mentioned above, their authors and I would very much appreciate a review on Amazon, as more reviews means Amazon helps promote my books and others on the American Revolution.

I am also happy to include that the e-books editions are now available to borrow from libraries that use the Biblioboard service for loaning e-books to their patrons.

Posted on by Charlie Frye

Will Burton and July 5, 1777

While researching and writing Honor and Valor I found journal and diary entries telling of the first commemorations of the July 4th in 1777. The evening of 5 July, 1777 turned out to be substantially more important. As the sun set that day on the American soldiers at Fort Ticonderoga, outnumbered by 3:1 by General Burgoyne’s army several miles to the north, they loaded what they could carry and left. On boats they carried cannon and baggage south toward Skenesborough (now Whitehall), though most marched east and then turned south toward Hubbardton.

The Americans at Fort Ticonderoga numbered about 3,000 with a majority being Continental Army soldiers and the rest Massachusetts and New Hampshire militia.

Will Burton, barely 15-years-old, a fifer with the 3rd New Hampshire Continental Regiment, and likely full of adrenaline marched with them toward Hubbardton. Will, like my ancestor, Isaac Frye, was from Wilton, New Hampshire. Each of the nine companies in the regiment had a fifer and a drummer. Isaac Frye was at that time a Captain and commanded one of the companies in the 3rd NH, the same one Will had enlisted in three months earlier.

When I wrote the outline of Honor and Valor, I was telling Isaac Frye’s story. I was loosely aware of Will Burton’s service and knew I wanted to include it, but had not worked out how until I began writing the book. After getting stuck trying to introduce Will, I realized he would need to be a major character and a significant part of the story would need to come from his perspective.

I had no idea how important Will’s perspective would prove to be. Isaac Frye was an officer, and any who know the U.S. Army know an officer’s life and experiences are different than those of the privates (the short form of “private soldiers”, the 18th Century term for enlisted men).

Having been a private when I was barely 18-years old in the modern U.S. Army, I had some idea of Will’s role in the Continental Army. Being at the dirty hands end of the chain of command and bound by a sense of duty and a sacred oath builds character. Like Will, I learned it takes more than an oath to become a soldier.

-CEF

The image features the cannon at Fort Ticonderoga guarding against approaches on Lake Champlain.

 

 

 

Posted on by Charlie Frye

Honor and Valor – Historical Insights

Does your book provide any new contributions to our understanding of history? Most historians and people with degrees in history ask this of me when they learn of the research behind my books. It’s also an excellent weed-out question for those who like to read, whether it’s narrative-history, biography, or historical novels.

In Honor and Valor, I divide the contributions to historical understanding into two categories:  New Inferences from existing documents, and first tellings of these inferences.

First Tellings:

  • 40 Man Scout: In Chapter 6, I assembled the following:
    • A name by name composition of the forty-man scouting party from the rolls of all five of the regiments under Enoch Poor.
    • A plausible route from Louden’s Ferry to where they were ambushed.
    • Plausible reasons for undertaking the scouting mission in the first place.

The route came from military terrain analysis, and the site of the ambush from the Mohawk perspective was far and away the best option given the terrain, giving the Mohawk warriors cover, concealment, high ground, and placing their adversary in likely swampy lowland terrain. Luck was on my side for identifying men in the scouting party.  They left on September 4, 1777, and returned the following day.  Most regiments took their rolls on the fourth and noted the members as “On a Scout” or “On Command.” The total of such references from all five regiments was forty men.  No additional rolls were taken until January 1, 1778, but those rolls confirmed the results. My narrative of the battle combines the terrain analysis with Thomas Anburey’s account from within Burgoyne’s camp and Gavin Watt’s description that provided casualties on the Mohawk side, which implied the possibility of an attack on the caravan itself – in particular, John Deserontyon’s wounding; he was already wounded and I thought it unlikely for him to lead the ambush.

  • Battles of Saratoga from the perspective of being embedded in Isaac Frye’s company: The descriptions of these battles I’ve read are all akin to a bird’s eye view on a military-style walkthrough description. Those are necessary to form a basic understanding. Read enough of them and one can become rather immersed. But, do so with the intention of putting yourself in the shoes of a specific participant, and now your point of view changes radically, narrowing and becoming grounded, literally. What this person saw, heard, and might have done, minute by minute for several hours.  In particular, I am indebted to the work in Don Troiani’s Campaign to Saratoga – 1777: The Turning Point of the Revolutionary War in Paintings, Artifacts, and Historical Narrative. As a compilation of the most recent historical insights on these battles, it proved invaluable context for the specific accounts offered by members of the New Hampshire regiments in their letters and journals. I walked Isaac’s likely path through those battles Saratoga National Historical Park for an entire day to get the perspective of a six-foot-tall captain attempting to make sense of a chaotic battle over uneven terrain and through clouds of smoke from musket- and cannon-fire. Try putting yourself in a regiment commander’s place – I found smoke to be the first enemy you might face when making decisions to commit your men or to avoid losing your men.
  • The Fever at Valley Forge:  In cursory histories of battles, there is an assumption that because a regiment was present, they fought, and that every man in the regiment participated. Very early in my research, I figured Isaac fought in the Battle of Monmouth based on such thinking.  Instead, I learned he was sick. In Chapter 13, after analyzing the monthly rolls, I was able to piece together a far larger and more significant pattern of sickness in May, June, and July at Valley Forge.  I analyzed all rolls from March through September from the five regiments under Enoch Poor (1st, 2nd, and 3rd NH; and 2nd and 4th NY). Isaac’s company was percentage-wise the hardest hit.  There was no way to give a name to the disorder, or even to assume that it was just one disorder. I suspect the men who came back with William Adrian Hawkins carried it into camp, though Hawkins either avoided it or like Henry Dearborn only had a mild case that wasn’t reported in the rolls; Dearborn noted his case in his journal. An additional theory is all the fordings of the Schuylkill River, which must have been chilly, even in May, may have progressively undermined the men’s immune systems.

New Inferences from Known Documents:

  • Recruiting a Company in 1777:  In Chapter 2, I had to set aside my initial assumption that Isaac traveled around to each town. New Hampshire had organized its militia by county and assigned muster masters who knew the composition of their county’s militia and who might be good candidates for the Continental Army.  Major Abiel Abbott is who Isaac would have relied upon to expedite the recruiting of his company.
  • 24 hours in Schaghticoke: In Chapter 5, I got lucky.  After doing my initial research, I had a good narrative. I  was also in contact with Christina Kelly, the Town Historian for Schaghticoke, NY, starting with a 2011 blog on Major Van Veghton, then sharing Joseph Gray’s narrative for what had occurred.  Christina dug in and found a much richer story, and shared Schaghticoke in the American Revolution: A New Perspective on the Death of Major VanVeghten in August of 2018.  I combine these to tell a full version from Isaac’s narrative perspective.
  • Final Siege at Saratoga and the Surrender:  It seems to me this part of the victory at Saratoga is never told in full, and I enjoyed piecing it together.
  • Captain Beal at Fishkill:  This is important for the build-up of circumstances, particularly the lack of pay for the New Hampshire Continentals. For years, an incorrect account of Captain Beal circulated on the Internet and I am happy to report I can no longer find it.
  • Battle of Barren Hill: Also written from the perspective of those on the ground. This is a plausible telling of these events, as they are not as extensively documented. However, it became clear after piecing together the timeline for regiments learning Von Steuben’s new manual of arms that Captain Daniel Livermore, as senior officer, would likely have had command of the 3rd Regiment as Dearborn and Scammell, who were both in camp confirmed their presence in camp in their writings. There are a long series of untold and remarkable instances where junior officers had to assume command of their regiments due to the senior officers being otherwise engaged. I was glad for the opportunity to tell how Livermore and Isaac likely stepped into larger roles in this instance.

CEF

 

Posted on by Charlie Frye

A Worthy Milestone to Report

At long last, I’ve finished the draft of “Honor and Valor”.  Let the editing begin.  My goal is to have it published in early March.  Merry Christmas to me!

 

-CF

Posted on by Charlie Frye

Progress update 3/12/2019

Nearly two years ago, I published “The War has Begun”.  Six months later I began writing “Honor and Valor” and it feels like I am about two-thirds done with the draft.  The Burgoyne campaign needed “just as bit” more research as Bob Euker famously intoned.  I am writing about Isaac in Fish Kill, NY in November of 1777 now.  He, along with all of the New Hampshire Continentals have endured a hard year and done so with no pay.  On the horizon:  A winter at Valley Forge.

Back to writing,

-CF

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Freeman’s Farm: The more I read …

For the past few weeks, I’ve been writing the scenes during the Battle of Freeman’s Farm. The perspective is from inside the 3rd New Hampshire Regiment; imagining what it was like to be in the ranks, commanding platoons and companies, and orchestrating the positioning of a regiment on that battlefield.

Most histories are written from a bird’s-eye view with the occasional tidbit coming from the diary or memoir of one of the men on the field. No complaints as those are great reads for getting introduced to the events and people involved. That said, between such histories and paintings of these battles, both new and old, something has been troubling me. How is it, given that each side had roughly 3,000 men, each man roughly twenty cartridges, and fired most of them over the 4-6 hours they were on the battlefield, that there were only a little over 1,000 total casualties?

Do that math:  The Americans fired upwards of 60,000 bullets, and maybe 1,000 found an enemy soldier. The British fired about the same number and only hit half as many Americans.

For having fired a musket and demonstrated, hundreds of times, how a firelock works, while explaining the range and just how far off target they could be at a distance of 75 yards, I was still surprised by these numbers.

As I considered the possible reasons for this, some notions of what must have been happening, strategically and tactically, began to develop.  First, the 18th-century battlefield was more like a chess match than a shooting gallery. Colonels and captains had to preserve their troops by maneuvering on the field with the dual intent of catching their enemy within range of their muskets.

Sidebar:  Is the right word musket or firelock?  If Google’s NGram Viewer is reliable, it looks like it was similar to “flip phones” versus “cell phones”. It seems that firelocks were a specific new form of the musket class of weapon. 

Smoke from firing volleys, providing the fog of battle to hide movements, was only the beginning. Advancing or retreating while firing volleys by platoon allowed for relatively high rates of sustained fire to push groups of enemy troops out of the way, or respectively slow their advance.  Getting close enough, perhaps by flanking (coming around to the side of an enemy’s formation), to warrant a bayonet charge while your enemy reloads was a tempting and dangerous goal. Execute poorly and the tables could be turned rather quickly.

Given that, my respect has risen considerably for the American Colonels (Cilley, Scammell, Cook, Adams, and Hull) who directed their men in the field around Freeman’s farm against Burgoyne and Hamilton on this day 241 years ago. These men did not just rush onto the field ala Mel Gibson (as Benjamin Martin or William Wallace) and clash with their enemy. One of the consistent recollections by the men who were there was of the tremendous amount of musketry.  That meant firing volleys, advancing, wheeling, and retreating if no advantage was gained.

Another thing to take into account was the likelihood that Morgan’s riflemen, and the Jaegers who carried rifles, accounted for a double-digit percentage of the casualties. There were points during the battle where the fighting came to hand-to-hand combat. Both of these facts imply that those muskets accounted for even fewer casualties than the 1 in 60 that my initial estimate suggested.

Consider that not all men on either side were killers. Aiming a firearm with the intent of taking a life is no small thing. Given all the smoke, there were certainly times when finding a target was impossible–just point into the smoke and pull the trigger when commanded to fire.

It seems only one man in five or even six fired a shot that struck an enemy that day. The credit for keeping the American casualties so low goes to the officers who guided their troops on the field and in the woods while they fought for something more than a sixpence.*

-CF

* From a Henry Dearborn quote: “But we who had Something more at Stake than fighting for Six Pence Pr Day kept our ground til Night, Closed the scene, & then Both Parties Retire’d”

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Schaghticoke in the American Revolution, Major VanVeghten scalped

Got to love the Internet for providing the basis to connect the threads of history! See my comment proposing the connecting the thread at the end.

schaghticokehistory's avatarHistory of the Town of Schaghticoke

          In the last post, I related a Knickerbocker family legend that the fort near the Mansion was occupied by Hessian soldiers at the time of the battle of Saratoga. Though I doubt very much that that was true, there is no doubt that there were bands of Tories, Indians, and perhaps Hessians and British roaming through the area during the summer of 1777 before the battle of Saratoga. Major Dirck VanVeghten of the  local militia unit, the 14th Albany County, was killed by one band when he came from Saratoga just before the battle to check on his home in Schaghticoke. One source states that VanVeghten came home on “an intelligence gathering mission.” In either event,  he was accompanied only by Solomon Acker, one of  the soldiers in his company of the 14th Albany County Militia.

            The story of Major VanVeghten really illustrates the great variety…

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New Hampshire Continental Bounties in 1777: A model for the Army College Fund?

Early on I learned my ancestor, Isaac Frye, recruited a company of soldiers for the Continental Army in early 1777.  He ranked as a captain at that time, and records show was given 300£, for to be paid as bounties to induce the men to enlist.

For years, I took that literally, i.e., he was given species as in hard sterling silver money.  In those days that was enough money to buy a nice plot of land. Read more

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Nathan Weare’s 1777 Ticonderoga Diary was Actually Sullivan’s Expedition in 1779!

As I’ve been writing “Honor and Valor”, book two of Duty in the Cause of Liberty, I have had to get back into research mode. I always look for journals written by the men who were there–these journals have an authenticity historians cannot replicate. In writing about the lead-up to the evacuation of Fort Ticonderoga, I found a reference to the “Diary of Lieut. Nathan Weare Kept at Ticonderoga and During the Retreat, 1777.” Read more