Source:Fleming-noted-service/content
IN THE article of November 12 referring to Judge Wilson McCandless, the Lawrenceville section of the city was again under consideration, with mention of Butler street, the main thoroughfare formerly the Butler road crossing the river at Sharpsburg.
This mention will recall the story of the Butlers—five brothers fighting in the Revolution and several of them in the Indian wars thereafter.
We have some additional light on the character of Gen. Richard Butler, the eldest of the brothers, who fell at the disastrous battle on the headwaters of the Wabash, in Ohio, November 4, 1791.
While speaking of the Lawrenceville section, especially the outer Butler street district, other pioneer names will come into notice, but these will be reserved for future notice.
Richard Butler was a colonel in the patriots' army as early as June, 1777, serving under Gen. Daniel Morgan, whose stirring life was written last week.
Historians of the day spoke well of all the Butlers, and especially of Richard, some in glowing terms. As many readers of The Gazette Times are preserving these stories in some form or parts of them in scrapbooks, it may be well to revert to the Butler family history and present these additional facts—after evidence discovered tending to strengthen the case.
The Rev. Dr. William Linn was a noted Presbyterian divine in his day, born in Cumberland county, Pa. He knew all the Butlers who were Cumberland county citizens at the outbreak of the Revolution. Dr. Linn was a natural orator, a lovable man, distinguished for his impressive eloquence as well as his amiable social qualities. He served nearly through the Revolution as a chaplain. In a historical sermon referring to Richard Butler, Dr. Linn said:
Personally Richard Butler knew no fear. He was with Arnold in the attack on the Brunswickers' camp at Saratoga, where Arnold was wounded.
He relates at length the salient points in Butler's service.
At Stony Point under Anthony Wayne, Richard Butler was colonel of the Ninth Pennsylvania Regiment and given by Wayne the command of the left wing. This action alone, with its history, is sufficient to place Richard Butler's name beside his intrepid commander's in the days when it was thought really necessary to fight and by many combatants to win as essential to maintaining their heads in statu quo—which being interpreted liberally can be said to mean "in their natural and ordinary positions."
With Wayne, Butler and other leaders of the revolution it was a case, as Franklin jokingly put it when signing the Declaration of Independence, of hanging together, or they would most likely hang separately. So enough of them "hung together" to give us a nation and incidentally some commemorated names, among them Franklin, Wayne and Butler.
In 1781 the Continental Army was reorganized and Richard Butler was assigned to command the Fifth Pennsylvania Regiment, again in Wayne's division, serving thus at Yorktown and later in Georgia.
"He only returned to his home," Dr. Linn remarks, "when the last gun of the Revolution had died away forever."
The history of Pittsburgh's part in the Revolution is recalled by mention of Richard Butler—and especially the great record of the Eighth Pennsylvania Regiment, one of the most noted organizations of the war—"which well deserves," says our historian, E. W. Hassler, "to be remembered by succeeding generations, especially in Western Pennsylvania, where live the descendants of many of its brave officers and privates."
The original staff officers, as authorized by Congress in the summer of 1776, were:
Colonel, Aeneas Mackay of Pittsburgh; lieutenant colonel, George Wilson of Georges Creek, Fayette county; major, Richard Butler, at the time Indian agent at Pittsburgh; quartermaster, Ephraim Douglass, a Pittsburgh trader; commissary, Ephraim Blaine, grandfather of James G. Blaine; adjutant, Michael Huffnagle of Hannastown; chaplain, David McClure; paymaster, John Boyd of Pittsburgh.
With the exception of Blaine and the Rev. Mr. McClure, the officers were frontiersmen. Blaine, an Ulsterman, was a landed proprietor in Cumberland county, a man of great energy who afterward became commissary general of the Continental Army. We have Blaine street in the Oakland district of Pittsburgh—but named for his distinguished grandson. This street name may be taken to represent also an earlier commemoration.
McClure was an itinerant preacher, a missionary among the Delawares on the Tuscarawas. He never served with the regiment, having returned to his native New England.
Of the officers Richard Butler made the most history. One captain, Moses Carson, proved false, and played the part of Arnold. The others were 100 per cent patriots.
The regiment may be taken as a distinctive Pittsburgh regiment. This place was the important seat of Western affairs. All the line officers were important men in the small community. Col. Mackay was one of the Pennsylvania magistrates, arrested by the odious Dr. Connolly in April, 1774, and sent to Stanton, Va., and kept in jail a month there, until released by Dunmore.
Lord Dunmore was the last royalist governor of Virginia and Connolly his agent here, and was notorious for the high-handed proceedings in the attempt to annex the region of Virginia. Devereaux [sic] Smith, another of the arrested magistrates, was at one time the partner of Richard Butler in the Indian trade. Quartermaster Ephraim Douglass was also a partner, at one period the three together. We have Smithfield street in honor of Devereaux [sic]—his "fields" street.
Seven of the companies of the Eighth Pennsylvania were raised in Westmoreland county and one in Bedford county. The regiments' duties were expected to have been the building, garrisoning of forts at Kittanning and at Le Boef [sic], now Waterford, in Erie county. Kittanning, at the outbreak of the Revolution, was the extreme limit of white settlements towards the north from Pittsburgh.
Pittsburgh was then in Westmoreland county—remaining in that county until September, 1788, when Allegheny county was formed.
Hannastown was the county seat of Westmoreland county destroyed by the Indians in 1782 and never rebuilt. It was about four miles north of Greensburg—a town of log houses and a stockade fort.
The Eighth Regiment was raised quickly, largely from what was known as the enrolled yeomanry.
Between August 9 and December 16 630 men were enlisted—a fairly good-sized regiment.
The men were rendezvouzed [sic] here and marched to Kittanning. They had built their own rude cabins there and had settled down for the winter when they were surprised by orders from Washington, commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, to join him somewhere near the Delaware River, Washington having been driven across that stream; Philadelphia was in danger and later fell. The cause of the Revolution was at low ebb and great alarm prevailed throughout the colonies; hence, the call for aid was sent to all parts.
The Eighth Pennsylvania was the most distant command summoned thus to support the desperate patriot cause. Being patriots the Eighth's men went, but they "kicked"—a good soldier term.
A storm of protest arose on the frontier to be left unprotected. The men felt it a hardship to be called away from a special duty for which they had enlisted. They were unprovided for a winter march over the mountains—300 miles. They were without uniforms or tents, scantily furnished with blankets and cooking utensils—but they went.
January 6, 1777, at the very worst period of a Pennsylvania winter, the command began its desperate journey—along bad roads, through the dense and silent forests, over the desolate mountains, fording icy streams. Hungry, cold and suffering, the men of the Eighth went their way.
Encampments were made in the most favorably sheltered places, unusally [sic] amid heavy timber; great fires of logs were kept burning all night to keep the men from freezing to death. Hunting parties at times procured wild game that could be shot. Most of the time the command was on short rations.
Arnold's march through the Maine woods to Canada was the only march during the Revolution that exceeded in hardship the march of our frontiersmen in the Eighth Pennsylvania.
Our troops now and lately on the Rio Grande have suffered many privations; much self-denial; they have done their duty—are doing it—but the mention of hardships with comparison to those of these Revolutionary soldiers—dismiss the thought. At least admit in these days our soldiers are better fed and better conditioned every way.
It is erroneous to infer that because Morgan was a Virginian that most of his famous riflemen were Virginians. The records show that 163 only came from Virginia. The Eighth Pennsylvania furnished 139, including Richard Butler and Capt. Swearingen. Here is another name whose descendants are numerous in Western Pennsylvania today.
The First Pennsylvania Regiment furnished 54 men—the regiment recruited from the upper Susquehanna, among them Lieut. Samuel Brady, later transferred to the Eighth regiment and coming with them to Fort Pitt after that distressing winter at Valley Forge. This assignment gave Brady his opportunity for his enduring fame as a scout and ranger in Western Pennsylvania—his name commemorated in Brady's Bend and East Brady in Clarion county.
While the riflemen of the Eighth regiment were fighting at Stillwater and Saratoga, the portion of the regiment that remained with Washington had fought under Wayne in the defeats at Brandywine, Paoli and Germantown.
Daniel Broadhead [sic] led the regiment back to Pittsburgh in 1778. The Thirteenth Virginia Regiment, raised also on the frontier, accompanied the Eighth on their return.
May 2, 1778, Gen. Lincoln McIntosh succeeded Gen. Edward Hand in command here, and three weeks later the two regiments left Valley Forge for the Ohio.
The Virginia regiment was from the same region, Southwestern Pennsylvania, and was raised by Col. William Crawford and composed largely of Virginia adherents. This regiment had for its lieutenant colonel John Gibson. Some men—about 100 in number—had remained at Fort Pitt, and, on the return of the main body, Col. Gibson took command.
All these commanders were men of energy and persistence, bold in planning, fearless in execution, and like the Butlers, they made good history.
It was a trying march surely, but the Eighth Pennsylvania arrived at Quibbletown, near Philadelphia, at the end of February, 1777, and went into miserable quarters. One-third of the men were sick; within two weeks there were 50 deaths, among them Col. Mackay and Lieut. Col. Wilson. Sturdy Richard Butler remained to command.
Meanwhile Washington had won the hardfought victories at Trenton and Princeton. So the Eighth Regiment took courage. Daniel Broadhead [sic], a familiar name subsequently about Pittsburgh, became colonel; Richard Butler was promoted to lieutenant colonel, Stephen Bayard of Pittsburgh, son-in-law of Col. Mackay, was made major, and the regiment was placed in Wayne's Second Brigade of the Pennsylvania Division.
Soon several transfers were made—Lieut. Col. Butler to the First Pennsylvania, March 12, 1777, and then, June 7, to be colonel of the Third Pennsylvania, and assigned to Daniel Morgan's command. Stephen Bayard became lieutenant colonel of this regiment, and serving as captain in it was George McCully, whose descendants are prominent in Pittsburgh's business and social life today and have been for over a century. The grave of Mrs. George McCully can be seen with the headstone in Trinity churchyard on Sixth avenue, to the right of the walk to the parish house, as one goes in.
It was Washington who formed Morgan's rifle corps. Washington had a vast experience as a frontiersman and he well knew the necessity of a quick and accurate trigger and flash. He placed under Morgan the best sharpshooters he could find in the army. Naturally, familiar with the region about Fort Pitt, he looked to the frontiers here for some of his selections and took more from Pittsburgh's regiment than from any other.
Returning to the consideration of Richard Butler, after showing the nature and extent of his services, it is well to go into another phase of his character. In a few words, how he resented the slight put upon his command by a great soldier and one who should have known better than to do what he did. This commander was the Baron Steuben. It is in the final scenes about Yorktown that the espirit [sic] de corps of the Pennsylvnaia troops shines conspicuously. Baron Steuben commanded in the trenches when the flag came from the British works with proposals for capitulation. Gen. Henry Lee says:
La Fayette's tour of duty arrived while the negotiations went on and it was a point of honor who had the right to plant our flag on the captured citadel. La Fayette marched with his division to relieve Steuben but the latter would not be relieved. Ensign Ebenzer [sic] Denny was detailed to erect the flag. While he was in the act of planting it, Steuben galloped up, took the flag and planted it himself. Col. Richard Butler resented the supposed affront to the Pennsylvania troops, and sent a challenge to Steuben, and it required all the influence of Washington on one side and Rochambeau on the other to prevent a duel.
Maj. Ebenezer Denny, in his "Military Journal," writes of this incident. He says:
October 19—Our division man the lines again. All is quiet. Articles of capitulation signed. Maj. Hamilton commanded a battle which took possession of a fort immediately opposite our right and on the bank of York River. I carried the standard of our regiment on this occasion. On entering the fort, Baron Steuben, who accompanied us, took the standard from me and planted it himself. The British army parade and march out with their colors furled; drums beat as if they did not care how, grounded their arms and returned to town.
Henry Lee was Governor of Virginia after the Revolution. He commanded the Virginia troops that came to Western Pennsylvania to put down the whisky insurrection. He was the father of Robert E. Lee.
In his "Memoirs" he speaks of Gen. Richard Butler, as "the renowned second and rival of Morgan in the Saratoga encounters."
Gen. Richard Butler's only daughter became the wife of Isaac Meason, owner of the Mt. Braddock estate in Fayette county, near Uniontown. Mrs. Meason died on her estate there in 1879, in her ninety-sixth year. She was the sister of Capt. James R. Butler, who commanded the Pittsburgh Blues in the war of 1812, and whose company fought bravely, especially in the battle of the Mississinawa in William Henry Harrison's campaign. After his return from the war Capt. Butler returned to his mother's home on Marbury street, now Barbeau, formerly Third street, Pittsburgh.
It is not without a thrill that men of red blood read of the stirring days in the early history of our contry. The Butlers, Broadhead [sic], the Nevilles, Craigs, Crawfords, Mackay, Bayard and others commemorated locally, were true men and gallant soldiers. Withal, they were kind men and good citizens.
