Part 1 - Introduction
Part 2 - Those Left Behind
Part 3 - A Variety of Hardships
Part 4 - The Women Join Their Husbands
Part 5 - Services of the Women
Part 6 - Problems in Camp
Part 7 - Widows & Orphans
Part 8 - A New Life

One problem was taking away good soldiers from their military duties to better look after a large family. In the case of the King's Loyal Americans serving at Sorel in October of 1778, ten men out of a strength of only 86 survivors of the Burgoyne Campaign had to be left at Quebec and Montreal to tend to their families.²⁹

Sometimes the needs of the family came before the army, as in the case of Christian PULISVELDT, a Bergen County, N.J. Loyalist. He served as a private in the 4th Battalion, New Jersey Volunteers in 1777, a time when no provision was made for all families.

Unable to support a family consisting of a wife and five children, he was able to obtain a discharge from the regiment and seek employment in the Commissary General's Department, which also proved inadequate to his needs. Making a marginal living as a basket maker, he was forced to seek provisions for himself and family as destitute refugees in 1782.³⁰

Leaving behind a small detachment to look after the families while the regiment campaigned far away has been briefly discussed earlier. That, too, was not without its problems.

Joshua HAMILTON, an assistant in the Inspector General of Provincial Forces Department, sailed with the fleet to capture Charlestown in December of 1779.

Before leaving, he made arrangements for his wife Elizabeth to receive three dollars per week out of his salary, as well as insuring that she and his two children would receive provisions, fuel and quarters.

He was unfortunately taken by a Rebel privateer on his voyage and held a prisoner for fourteen months. What he found waiting for him at New York was not exactly a teary eyed homecoming:

...having late obtained my parole I returned to New-York, where, upon my arrival I found to my great astonishment, that my said wife had during my absence become a common prostitute to both soldiers and sailors, and that on the 23d day of October last, she was married by the Reverend Mr. WALTER, Chaplain to the third battalion of Brig. Gen. DeLancey's brigade, to one John POFF, a Hessian soldier, in the battalion of Landgrave a certificate of which marriage now remains in my hands.³¹

Not all the women in camp were exactly of the best sort. Thomas POWERS, a private in the Volunteers of Ireland in 1778, fatally learned how dangerous some of the women could be.

He was on guard duty in the quarters of the regimental tailors when Lucretia ELLIS the wife ("the appellation that [she] generally went by") of Archibald McNICOLL smashed a heavy bottle into his ribs while her "husband" stabbed him with a bayonet.

It seems they had taken exception to their confinement for being drunk (which by-the-bye, POWERS was also). He died soon afterwards but amazingly neither of them was convicted of murder.³²

Being with the regiments in garrison or on campaign was attendant with all the dangers of a military life. Samuel BURKE, a free black native of Charlestown, S.C. and servant to General Montfort BROWNE (as well as a soldier) in the Prince of Wales American Volunteers, proudly boasted his wife "a free Dutch mullato Woman" with "a very Good House and Garden situate in New York, with Furniture" had "accompanyed him in all his marches & routes- during upwards of eight years hard Service in America."³³

Women and children often saw the real face of war, often with severe consequences.

Lieutenant and Adjutant James MILLER of the Maryland Loyalists set sail with his family to recover from a wound, only to be captured and ransomed by the Rebel privateer New Black Princess off the coast of Ireland in May of 1781.³⁴

Sometimes the war would come to them.

The women and children of the 4th Battalion, New Jersey Volunteers and the Garrison Battalion witnessed the terrible assault on Paulus Hook by Lt. Col. Henry Lee and a force of continental troops in August of 1779. Lee would later excuse his not burning the barracks due to the great number of dependents there.

Others witnessed the death or capture of their loved ones first hand. Thomas Tredwell JACKSON describes his experience in capturing the Loyalist post of Fort St. George, Long Island, on the 23rd of November 1780:

The poor dogs had not time to rub their eyes, or gasp before they were obliged to cry Quarters. A musical sound. Here was a scene my friend, of war my eyes never beheld nor description cannot equal. The cries of the wounded in the agonies of death. The screeching of the women and children while the parent and friend were entreating pity and compassion, called forth every tender feeling, yet add to these the shouts of the veterans it gives a pleasing lustre to the triumphs of a soldier.³⁵

These encounters rarely targeted the dependents, but there were the exceptions. One tragic incident occurred during Sullivan's attack on Staten Island on 22 August 1777.

The garrison, composed to a great degree of New Jersey Volunteers, was engaged all over the island. The third battalion of this corps of six was retreating towards some old rebel works, led by their twenty eight year old commander, Lt. Col. Edward Vaughan DONGAN.

His wife and children, not thinking themselves in danger, did not flee with the corps. When Sullivan's attack broke down into a plundering expedition, some Continentals made Mrs. DONGAN an object of their desire, chasing her through woods and swamps, her three year old child at her side.

At the same time she was being abused, her husband was shot and mortally wounded in a counterattack elsewhere on the island. He would die three days later.

The shock of witnessing his mother's abuse and his father's wound caused the death of their child, only a few hours before the colonel's. They were buried together in Trinity Church, New York.³⁶

29 Muster Rolls of the King's Loyal Americans, Sorel, 16 October 1778. PRO, War Office Papers, Class 28, Volume 4, folios 84-89.

30 He was allowed but two months provisions due to his being relatively healthy and able to work. Petition of Christian Pulisveldt, 13 March 1782. Great Britain, Public Record Office, Headquarters Papers of the British Army, PRO 30/55/4229.

31 This was but one more unfortunate episode for Joshua Hamilton. In addition to losing his family and being taken prisoner, he had the dubious distinction of being court martialed and cashiered twice in 1778, first from the King's Orange Rangers and then from the 4th Battalion, New Jersey Volunteers. How he was able to obtain his second commission after being cashiered remains a mystery, let alone how he got a position in the Inspector General's office. The Royal Gazette (New York), April 14, 1781.

32 Court Martial Proceedings of Lucretia Ellis, alias McNicoll and Archibald McNicoll. War Office 71/86/219/238.

33 Burke himself was wounded twice in the war, once at Danbury in 1777 and again at Hanging Rock in 1780. Memorial of Samuel Burke, no date. Great Britain, Public Record Office, Audit Office, Class 13, Volume 63, folios 401-402.

34 Memorial of James Miller, 6 June 1781. War Office 34/176/86.

35 The Loyalists at the fort were not Provincials; they were members of Thomas Hazard's Corps of Refugees, mostly from Rhode Island. Thomas Tredwell Jackson to "a friend," 26 November 1780. East Hampton Free Library, Pennypacker Long Island Collection.

36 The New-York Gazette and the Weekly Mercury, September 1, 1777.