In September 1777, American commander George Washington ordered Brigadier General Anthony Wayne’s Continental Army troops to harass the British troops and attempt to capture their supplies. Wayne had his 1,500 men camp in Paoli, about four miles from the British. He assumed that the British had no idea he was so close. He was dead wrong.
British general Charles Grey quickly learned of the whereabouts of the Continental Army’s camp. He came up with a plan for a surprise attack at night. The entire attack would be carried out with bayonets and swords. He had his troops remove the flints from their muskets so the guns would not fire. This seems like a bad idea until you realize that the sound of gunfire alerts your enemy. Also, in the dark, the shot causes a burst of light, which shows the enemy your position.
Charles Grey had fought against the Jacobites in Scotland and in the Seven Years’ War before fighting in the American Revolution.
The British army crept through the woods at night and swooped in on the sleeping Continental troops around midnight.
Colonel Thomas Hartley later wrote, “The Enemy last Night at twelve o’clock attacked … Our Men just raised from Sleep, moved disorderly—Confusion followed … The Carnage was very great.”
Many soldiers awoke to being brutally stabbed in the dark. “I with my own eyes,” wrote Lieutenant Colonel Adam Hubley, “see them, cut and hack some of our poor men to pieces after they had fallen on their hands and scarcely shew the least mercy to any …”
Caught by total surprise, Wayne and his troops fled in terror. Militia member William Hutchinson wrote about one doomed man, “More than a dozen soldiers had with fixed bayonets formed a cordon round him, and that everyone of them in sport had indulged their brutal ferocity by stabbing him in different parts of his body and limbs,” and that a physician who examined that soldier found “46 distinct bayonet wounds.” The British were thought to have killed some who surrendered as well. In all, 71 soldiers were taken prisoner, 53 killed, and 150 wounded.
This painting, A Dreadful Scene of Havock, was painted by request of one of the British soldiers who participated in the attack.
Some blamed the American commander, Anthony Wayne, for the massacre of his men. The furious Wayne insisted the matter be brought to court. He was ultimately found not guilty, but Wayne learned from that battle. He used the same strategy of attacking at night with bayonets in a later battle at Stony Point against the British. The rallying cry “Remember Paoli” rang out as they stormed the fort.
But who is the spirit of the headless soldier that silently gallops down Darby Road? Stories of his ride have been told for more than a century.
Legend has it that the soldier was one of Wayne’s troops, a local man. Because he lived close by, he was able to visit home often. One night when he was sleeping at home, he woke from a nightmare that his fellow troops were being slaughtered. Ignoring the protests of his wife, he got dressed and rode his horse back to camp. There he found a bloodbath. Before he could get away, he was beheaded by British troops.
On every anniversary of the massacre, this poor soldier is doomed to repeat the fateful ride to his death. Some have said that if the rider stops and hands you his cut-off head, you will die before the end of the year.
Captain Fauntleroy’s grave at the Old Tennent Churchyard.
After the Revolutionary War, white American settlers spread to lands north of the Ohio River formerly held by the British. This led to brutal and violent conflicts between the settlers and the Native Americans who had always lived there and considered the land theirs. President George Washington had to find a way to defeat them.
One of Washington’s challenges was that he didn’t have an army. After the Revolutionary War, the army had been disbanded. So he created the First American Regiment under the leadership of General Josiah Harmar. Harmar trained the men in the European style of combat, which had troops lining up on a battlefield.
In October 1790, Harmar’s troops marched out in a line to confront the Miami, Shawnee, and Potawatomi tribes, led by Miami chief Little Turtle. They were cut down at every turn. They floundered fighting in the dense woods that the tribes used to their advantage. It was such a slaughter that Native Americans called the final conflict against Harmar the “Battle of the Pumpkin Field” because the fields full of bloody heads from dead US soldiers reminded them of pumpkins.
Chief Little Turtle, considered one of the best Native American leaders, won a number of major victories against US forces.
The second general appointed by Washington, Arthur St. Clair, fared even worse than Harmar. In November 1791, the Native American forces killed more than six hundred troops, along with around two hundred camp followers, including women and children. It would prove to be the most people killed in any battle between the United States and Native Americans in history. St. Clair survived the massacre and was promptly asked to resign.
That’s when Washington turned to a man known for getting things done—Major General “Mad Anthony” Wayne, who had survived the Paoli massacre and helped lead the Continental Army to victory in the Revolutionary War.
Why did Washington ask Wayne to come out of retirement to fight the Native Americans? He knew Wayne could inspire, train, and terrify troops into winning battles. During the Revolutionary War, Washington had commended him for “good conduct and bravery” for his troops’ successes at the battles of Brandywine, Monmouth, and Germantown.
In July 1779, Washington had considered attacking Stony Point, a well-defended fort held by the British. Wayne replied, “Issue the order, and I’ll storm hell!” And he did.
Wayne led a group of elite troops in a well-planned nighttime bayonet attack. Although he was shot in the head during the attack, he said, “Forward, my brave fellows, forward! Carry me into the fort. If I am to die, I want to die at the head of the column!” He survived and took the fort and the British troops prisoner. He wrote to Washington, “The fort and garrison, with Colonel Johnston, are ours. Our officers and men behaved like men who are determined to be free.” For his bravery, Wayne received one of the few medals awarded during the Revolutionary War.
Though Wayne was calm in battle, his nickname, “Mad Anthony,” endured for a number of reasons. During the Revolutionary War, troops often threatened to mutiny because of a lack of supplies, food, or payment. Wayne had to quash a number of these rebellions, in some cases even executing their leaders, which he did in front of all his troops so they knew not to mutiny again.
Beyond his leadership skills, Wayne was also quite a character. He liked fine food and dress and made sure his troops were as well outfitted as possible. Wayne was also known for his exceptionally foul language—which is saying something, since soldiers were known for their swearing.
After the British surrender in Yorktown at the end of the Revolutionary War, Wayne’s troops were sent south to fight the Native Americans supported by the British in Georgia. Once he subdued them, he left the army in 1783.
Wayne was known as a general who led from the front lines, which meant he was often first into battle.
Then, in 1792, Wayne came out of retirement. He was appointed by President George Washington to command the new Legion Army. While the US government attempted to negotiate peace with the Native Americans, Wayne trained his soldiers to fight them. For two years, he drilled his troops, even employing war games that simulated a Native American attack.
Throughout this time, Wayne suffered from malaria and painful bouts of gout, a disease that comes on suddenly and makes it feel like your joints are on fire. However, he remained a tough leader. Major William Eaton later wrote, “I have seen him, in the most severe night of the winter of 1794, sleep on the ground, like his fellow-soldiers, and walk around the camp at four in the morning, with the vigilance of a sentinel.”
On August 20, 1794, Wayne’s three thousand troops defeated the Native American alliance in what was called the Battle of Fallen Timbers. They continued their march, burning the Native people’s crops and dest
roying villages along the way. This show of strength led to the Treaty of Greenville, in which tribes gave up significant lands in Ohio to white American settlers.
Native American warriors set up their defenses behind a line of trees that had been knocked down by a tornado. They thought it might hide them and stop Wayne’s cavalry, but in the Battle of Fallen Timbers, it did not help as much as they had hoped.
In December 1796, Wayne was in Fort Presque Isle, Pennsylvania, when his gout became terrible. Captain Henry DeButts wrote, “It by turns affected his feet, knees and hands, with considerable inflammation and a great degree of pain … on the morning of the 3d inst. [December 3, 1796], it appeared that the gout had taken possession of his stomach, where it remained with unconquerable obstinacy and extreme torture, until it put a period to his existence.” Upon his death, Wayne was dressed in his finest uniform and buried near the fort’s flag.
In 1809, Wayne’s family decided to move his remains to the family cemetery in southern Pennsylvania. They paid Dr. J. C. Wallace to dig up the body and get it ready for travel. Wallace was surprised to find that, even though twelve years had passed, the general’s corpse had held up well. Since a rotting body would not travel well for hundreds of miles in a wagon, Wallace was then tasked with boiling the flesh off the body. He boxed the clean bones for travel and reburied the other remains, including the pot, in Presque Isle. Wayne’s son took the bones back to the family’s plot in Radnor. Some say the wagon bounced so much that a few of the general’s bones were lost along the way.
Since his body rests in two places, Wayne’s spirit is said to thunder along the roads between. On his birthday of January 1, his ghost, astride his horse Nancy, is seen searching for his lost bones.
Jarvis Hanks was fourteen years old when he joined the American Army as a drummer boy, which broke his mother’s heart. For a $20 signing bonus and 160 acres when discharged, Hanks agreed to stay in the army for the entire War of 1812. The recruiter promised his grieving mother that Hanks would not be on the front lines. The recruiter lied.
Hanks was stationed at Fort Erie when the British, led by Lieutenant Colonel William Drummond, attacked on August 15, 1814. Hanks later wrote in his memoirs, “The night was rainy and extremely dark; and as anticipated, the attack commenced at two in the morning. The enemy came with bayonets, scaling ladders, hand grenades and [bundles of sticks]. Every one of them was supplied with an extra half-pint of rum for the strengthening and whetting up his courage; to make him fierce and brave in the attack and reckless of danger to himself.”
The British succeeded in using ladders to reach the top of the bastion, which stuck out from the top of the wall of the fort. They began turning the gun they captured toward the Americans when, as Hanks remembered, “an awful explosion occurred which blew up the bastion; sent, in a moment, near two hundred of our enemies into eternity; caused the remainder to retreat with terror to their camp; and closed the contest for the present.”
After the sun had risen, Hanks went out to see the carnage. He “counted 196 bodies lying in the ditch and about the fort; most of them dead; some dying. Their faces and hands were burned black, many of them were horribly mutilated. Here and there were legs, arms and heads lying in confusion, separated by the concussion from the trunks to which they had long been attached. One trunk I observed, deprived of all its limbs and head.” The Americans roughly buried all the British dead in a large ditch near the fort.
These were just a few of the many who perished during the Siege of Fort Erie. Today, it is considered one of the most haunted places in Canada. The sound of long-ago gunfire is common, and spirits of soldiers have been seen in the area, among other shadowy figures.
Fort Erie is located on the Niagara River, across from Buffalo, New York.
The War of 1812 had been ongoing for two years along the Canadian border. The Americans settled into Fort Erie, located on the Niagara River across from Buffalo, New York. About 2,200 soldiers, under the command of Brigadier General Edmund Pendleton Gaines, defended the well-fortified camp, which backed up to the river.
In August 1814, British lieutenant general Sir Gordon Drummond (William’s uncle) and his 3,000 men were tasked with taking the fort from the Americans, which he wrote would be a “great hazard,” considering “the strength of the enemy’s position and the number of men and guns by which it is defended.” His plan was a siege, which meant surrounding the fort and cutting off its supplies. Once in position, his troops would bombard the fort until the Americans surrendered.
Gordon Drummond was an experienced leader, known for being both ruthless and aggressive.
Unfortunately for General Drummond, his engineer didn’t have experience building fieldwork, the platforms from which British artillery would bomb the fort. They spent days constructing it, all while being shot at by the Americans, only to find that it was positioned too far away. Their guns could barely reach the fort. But a lucky shot on August 14 hit a chest of ammunition, causing a massive explosion.
Drummond assumed that the explosion had weakened the American forces, so he planned a surprise attack that night. He assumed wrong—few soldiers had actually been killed. Worse, a deserter from the British Army had told the Americans of Drummond’s plan, so it was no longer a surprise.
Three columns of British soldiers made their way in darkness through the woods and across the icy river. Their guns were disabled, so there was no chance the sound of gunfire would alert the Americans. But as they neared the fort, a hail of American gunfire lit up the night, killing numerous British soldiers. Two columns were forced to withdraw.
However, the column under Colonel Drummond managed to scale the walls of the fort under heavy fire. As Jarvis Hanks had described, when they finally succeeded in reaching the top of the wall, it exploded. Lieutenant David Douglass had a haunting memory of the moment: “Every sound was hushed by the sense of an unnatural tremor beneath our feet like the first heave of an earthquake. Almost at the same instant the center of the bastion blew up with a terrific explosion and a jet of flame mingled with fragments of timber, earth, stone, and bodies of men rose to the height of one or two hundred feet in the air and fell in a shower of ruins to a great distance all around.”
Colonel John Le Couteur wrote to his brother that after being blown up and retreating to the British lines, “in a fit of sorrow I threw my sabre down exclaiming, ‘This is a disgraceful day for Old England!’ Col. M—, who heard me, said, ‘For shame, Mr. Le Couteur! The men are sufficiently discouraged by defeat.’ Col. Pearson said, ‘Don’t blame him. It is the high feeling of a young soldier.’ To my surprise the Commander-in-chief, Sir Gordon Drummond, had heard all this as he was close behind and he asked me, ‘Where is Col. Scott?’ ‘Oh! Sir! He is killed, just being brought in by his men.’ ‘Where is Col. Drummond?’ ‘Alas! Sir! He is killed too. Bayonetted.’ And I burst into tears at the loss of my beloved commander and three parts of my men.”
The British taking the northeast bastion during the night assault on Fort Erie.
While it was a victory for the Americans, the siege continued for another month. Men on both sides were killed daily. Jarvis Hanks wrote, “As there were no regular barbers attached to the army, the soldiers used to shave themselves, and each other. One morning several were shaving in succession, near a parapet [wall]. Sergeant Wait sat down facing the enemy, and Corporal Reed began to perform the operation of removing the beard from his face, when a cannon ball took the Corporal’s right hand, and the Sergeant’s head; throwing blood, brains, hair, fragments of flesh and bones, upon a tent near them, and upon the clothing of several spectators of the horrible scene.” Reed’s arms were amputated and he was thought to have died soon after. The headless Wait was immediately buried near where he died.
On September 17, in heavy rains, the Americans attacked. They disabled British cannon and blew up ammunition. Four days later, the British retreated across the river. After 791 were killed and wounded for the British and nearly as many for
the Americans, the siege was finally over. In November, preparing for the coming winter, the Americans blew up the fort and abandoned it.
However, the ruins have not been abandoned by the spirits of the many men who lost their lives there. In the years following the battle, townspeople claimed to see two ghosts along the banks of the Niagara River. One had no hands and the other had no head. Later, when Jarvis Hanks’s memoir came to light, it became obvious who they were—Sergeant Wait and Corporal Reed. In 1987, their bodies were found buried near the old fort. They were reburied with honors, and the hauntings have ceased.
The ghost of a woman has also been seen in an area that used to be a mess hall for the soldiers. While no record exists of a woman dying during the siege, women did work in that area. Her spirit was even captured in a recent photograph taken of the room.
David “Davy” Crockett was already famous when he joined Texas’s fight for independence from Mexico in 1836. A frontiersman who knew how to tell a great story, Crockett had led an adventurous life. He ran away from home at age thirteen and traveled the country, performing odd jobs. An expert marksman, he claimed to have killed 105 bears in one seven-month period. He was a soldier and scout before running for Congress in 1827 and winning. His popular stories on the campaign trail led him to write an autobiography, which became a national bestseller. After losing a Congressional race in 1835, Crockett told a crowd, “I told the people of my District, that, if they saw fit to re-elect me, I would serve them as faithfully as I had done, but, if not, they might go to hell, and I would go to Texas.”
Battlefield Ghosts Page 2