Mary Kiddy, 43rd Regiment, knows what is owed to her

Mary Kiddy was on her own in New York in January of 1783. Some money was owed to her, and it is because of this that we know of her existence. But the brief summary that was recorded leaves mostly questions about her life and experiences.

Mary Kiddy was married to William Kiddy, a soldier initially in the 34th Regiment of Foot and later in the 43rd Regiment of Foot. Thanks to muster rolls for these regiments, we do know a lot about him. He joined the 34th Regiment some time between 1761 and 1768 (a gap in the regiment's rolls prevent knowing when or where). In 1768 he was a private soldier in the 34th Regiment in Philadelphia. The following year, the 34th returned to Great Britain, spending the next several years at various posts in Ireland. By April of 1776 he was a corporal in the regiment's light infantry company, preparing to return once again to North America, this time part of the force bound for Quebec to dislodge American force besieging the city.

After a highly successful 1776 campaign and a winter in Canada, in the summer of 1777 the the 34th's light infantry was part of the expedition under General John Burgoyne that set out from Canada towards Albany. By the time this campaign ended in October, Kiddy was a prisoner of war, and spent the winter of 1777-1778 in a crude barracks outside Boston. From there the prisoners were moved inland to Rutland, Massachusetts. It was here that he fell ill, so much so that he was sent to New York in a cartel rather than going with other prisoners to Virginia.

In the summer of 1780 he was sufficiently recovered to return to active service. With most of the 34th Regiment still in Canada and his own company still prisoners of war, Kiddy was drafted into the 43rd Regiment of Foot. Muster rolls for the 34th Regiment's light infantry company end in early 1777, and the rolls for the 43rd record Kiddy as having "enlisted"in June 1780, with no indication that he had been in the 34th Regiment; if it were not for his wife, nothing about his time as a prisoner of war, or that the man in the 34th was the same man who joined the 43rd, would be known.

In April 1781 the 43rd Regiment sailed to Virginia, part of a reinforcement of British forces operating in the Tidewater area. Also that month William Kiddy was appointed corporal again, returning to the rank he had held for years in his previous regiment. During the summer they joined up with General Charles, Lord Cornwallis's army in Yorktown. It was there that William Kiddy died. The 43rd's muster rolls record his death as occurring on 24 October, but the 24th of the month is often used on muster rolls when an exact date is not known, so we cannot be sure exactly when he died. The cause of death is also unknown; he may have fallen ill in the deprived conditions when Cornwallis's army was besieged, been wounded during the intense artillery bombardment they endured, or fallen to some other cause.

Mary Kiddy was left a widow, which meant that she was entitled to her late husband's estate. In January 1783 a board of officers in the city of New York was hearing claims from soldiers who had been prisoners of war, escaped or been exchanged, and then joined different regiments, leaving their accounts with their previous regiments unsettled. Mary Kiddy went before the board and petitioned for her late husband's back pay and clothing due from the 34th Regiment, and she knew exactly what was owed: "three suits of Cloathing for 1776, 1777 & 1778 & a balance of 1.9.4 ½ due from the 34th Regt on the 17th Novr 1778, she also claims her husbands intermediate pay from the 17 of Novr 1778 to the 24th of June 1780, amounting at 8 per day to L19.10". Soldiers received a new suit of regimental clothing each year, and William Kiddy had not received his for the last three years that he was in the 34th; on the last day that his company's accounts were settled in 1778, he was owned one pound, nine shillings, four and a half pence; and he was also owed pay from the day of that last settlement and until the day he joined the 43rd Regiment. She computed the pay at the rate owed to a private soldier, which may be a simple error on her part, or may mean that her husband was reduced to private soldier after the last available muster roll in February 1777 and before accounts were settled in November 1778.

The brief record of Mary Kiddy's statement to the board explains that her husband was in the 34th, was left sick at Rutland, was exchanged and went to New York, that he joined the 43rd Regiment and died in Virginia. It says nothing of her experiences. When did they marry? Was she with him in Canada? Was she on the 1777 campaign, and among the prisoners in Rutland? Or did they meet and marry in New York? Did she accompany him to Virginia? Her statement reveals much about her husband, but little about her - including what became of her after January 1783.

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Cornelius Killegrew, 34th Regiment, a man of the sincerest integrity

Many men spent their entire military careers as private soldiers, but intelligent, literate men could advance quickly. The army needed capable non-commissioned officers, and was quick to recognize those who had the skills and capacity. Cornelius Killegrew was one such man.

Born in Edgeware just north of London, Killegrew learned to be a comb maker. Instead of pursuing this trade, however, he enlisted in the army when he was seventeen years old in 1765. What drew him to the army is not known, given that he had a trade that was probably in some demand in a metropolitan area, but he soon proved to be capable of leadership.

After just three and a half years, the 5-foot 9-inch tall soldier was appointed corporal, a significant step up in responsibility that also brought higher base pay and more opportunities for extra earnings. In 1775 he was appointed sergeant, the pinnacle of advancement for most enlistees.

His regiment, the 34th Regiment of Foot, sailed to Quebec in 1776 as part of the expanded British commitment to the American war. During the famous 1777 campaigns that attempted to split the colonies, Killegrew was among 100 men of the 34th with the detachment under his own regiment’s lieutenant colonel, Barrimore St. Leger, who held the local rank of brigadier general. They made their way to Lake Ontario, then along the Oswego River, and over land to Fort Stanwix.

Sergeant Killegrew was “appointed provost Martial at 2s-6d pr day for the Expedition and to be obeyed as such,” meaning that it was his job to receive and provide guards over all prisoners. This included enemy prisoners of war and soldiers on the expedition who had committed disciplinary infractions, including apprehended deserters. He probably had to pay expenses of his duty out of this stipend, which was in addition to his regular pay as a sergeant, but he nonetheless stood to profit from this posting. It was one of the myriad ways that British soldiers and non-commissioned officers earned more than their base pay, allowing them to live better than the subsistence-level base pay would allow. This extra earning potential that was pervasive in military duty may have been a factor in so many men choosing the army as a career.

And Killegrew had a long career. He spent thirteen years as a sergeant, and another six years as the 34th Regiment’s sergeant-major. He finally took his discharge in April of 1792 when the regiment was posted on the Isle of Guernsey.

Rather than return to his native London, Killegrew went to Ireland. In 1793, when the City of Limerick Militia was formed, he was appointed sergeant-major, bringing his twenty-seven years of experience in the regular army to the job.

The City of Limerick Militia had its moment of glory in the 1798 rebellion.  They were sent north to help repel a French invasion. On September 5, a force consisting primarily of some 200 infantry from the militia, supported by a few cavalry and others, was posted at the village of Colooney five miles from Sligo. Orders had come to abandon the village, but the militia instead took post at a critical defile. They held the position against an attack by five times their number, repelling French forces supported by Irish rebel militia in a four-hour engagement. So important was their stand that a silver medal was struck and awarded to each of the participants, bearing the inscription “to the Heroes of Colooney.”

At this writing, it is not known whether Sergeant-Major Killegrew was at the battle. He may have been in the thick of the fight, or he may have been back in Limerick handling administrative tasks. Either way, he soldiered on for another twenty years. He is one of very few soldiers to have an obituary posted, in the 16 September 1818 edition of the Limerick Chronicle:

Died - This morning, in Mary-street, aged 74, of gangrene in the leg, which baffled professional skill, Mr. Cornelius Killegrew, Serjeant-Major of the City of Limerick Militia since its first formation, and formerly of the 34th regiment; a man of the sincerest integrity. His remains will be interred with military honors to-morrow, at four o’clock afternoon.

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Frederick Fisher, 34th Regiment, seeks 200 acres

It's frustrating sometimes to find an interesting anecdote about a British soldier, but to have no additional information on the man to add some substance to the story - his age, where he was from, and so forth. Equally frustrating, and much more common, is to have very informative demographic data with no hint at all of the man's individuality. Frederick Fisher provides an excellent example.

The 34th Regiment's muster rolls tell us very succinctly that Fisher joined the regiment some time between April 1776 - shortly before the regiment left Ireland for Canada - and January 1777. The rolls prepared on the latter date give no indication of where Fisher and a large number of other new men came from. We can follow him through the semi-annual rolls and see that he served as a private soldier until he was discharged at Fort Niagara in June 1784.

Fisher's name, and some knowledge of the 34th Regiment, leads us to suspect that he was German. Some 2000 men were recruited by the British army in the German states in late 1775 and early 1776 for service in the ranks of British regiments; for the most part, these men joined their regiments in America in late 1776. The 34th received over 100 of these German recruits. A description list of men in the 34th prepared in 1783 correlates with this assumption, listing Fisher's country of birth as "Foreign" (as opposed to English, Scottish or Irish); there's an outside chance that he was from some other region including America, but given the large number of Europeans, mostly Germans, that joined the regiment in 1776, it's a pretty good bet that he was German.

The list also tells us that Fisher was 41 years old in January 1783 and had served 7 years in the regiment. So he was born in 1741 or 1742 and enlisted at the age of 34 or 35. That's an unusually old age for enlistment, albeit not unprecedented. Many of the German recruits who joined in their 30s had had prior military service in European armies, but we don't know if that's true of Fisher. We also learn from the desciption list that he was 5 feet 5 and one half inches tall.

Fisher appears again as having applied for a land grant of 200 acres in Ontario in June 1797. He wrote a brief but well-composed petition in which he explained that, having enlisted after 16 December 1775, he was entitled to the grant. He was correct: in a move to stimulate recruiting when it became apparent that an all-out war had begun in America, the King proclaimed that men who enlisted after 16 December 1775 were entitled to be dischaged at the end of the war, as long as they'd served at least three years, and could take a land grant in America if they wanted it. Fisher met these criteria and claimed his land, but gave no indication of why he'd waited so long to do so or where'd been in the mean time. Included in his petition was a copy of his discharge, which indicated that he was (in June 1784) 43 years old and had a swarthy complexion, brown hair and grey eyes.

Also revealing from this petition is that Fisher was able to write, and write lucidly, in English. When he'd learned this skill is not known. His German roots are perhaps confirmed by his spelling his name "Frederick Fisher" in the body of the petition but signing it "Fredrich Fischer."

This is a lot of information about the man. We know about his entire military service, and his general physical characteristics - more than we know about so many people of the era. But that's all we know. In eight years of service he certainly experienced many things, perhaps participated in dangerous military actions and contributed to the construction of fortifications that survive to this day. In over 30 years of pre-military life and over 13 years of post-military life, he was occupied at something or another every single day. It appears that he mastered two languages. And yet we know nothing of any specific thing this man did, other than write one petition. We don't even know if he got the land he asked for.

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William Disney, 34th Regiment of Foot

When hostilities broke out in America, it was critical to increase the strength of the British military presence there; this meant increasing the strength of the army overall. Recruiting efforts were intensified. Because the army was an all-volunteer force, greater incentives had to be offered than the usual enlistment bounty and the possibility of a pension after a long career. On 16 December 1775, a proclamation was issued that men who enlisted after that date would be entitled to a land grant in America if they chose it, as long as they had served at least three years when the war ended. For agricultural workers, some itinerant, this was a very tempting offer; even though the lands were in a far-away wilderness, it was the only likely way for a British laborer to own his own property.

One of the many who enlisted under these terms was William Disney. The 5' 10 1/2" tall Irishman enlisted in the 34th Regiment of Foot 1776 and proceeded with his regiment to Canada where he spent the entire war, mostly in the environs of Quebec. In 1783, when the war ended and the army was reduced in size again, he took his discharge at the age of 28. The land being offered, due to the outcome of the war, was in Canada rather than more southern colonies as had been anticipated years before; Disney opted to return to Great Britain instead of taking the land bounty (his reason for doing so, however, is not known).

Disney traveled from Quebec to Halifax with the intention of continuing on to England, but for some unknown reason was unable to continue the journey. Instead, he went to work for a landowner named George Deschamps in Windsor, some miles northwest of Halifax.

He worked hard and well. By 1786 he had saved some money and earned the respect of his employer. He decided it was time to try his had at developing his own land. In a good clear hand he wrote a petition to the local government expressing his desire to settle in the area if he could receive a land grant. His employer endorsed him, saying that he was a "well able to improve a location."

We have no information on how William Disney fared, but his story of voluntary enlistment, faithful service, diligent work and initiative is typical of the majority of British soldiers, largely overlooked because their careers were uneventful but nonetheless important.

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Moses Livermore, 34th Regiment of Foot

Even when we have substantial amounts of information a man, his military career sometimes follows a path that we cannot fully explain. Moses Livermore started his service in a typical enough way - as a recruit in the 46th Regiment in Ireland.

A great challenge for recruiting parties in Great Britain, and particularly in Ireland, was desertion. Men received a bounty for enlisting, and this tempting source of money led some to practice the dangerous game of bounty jumping (enlisting strictly to receive the bounty money and then deserting immediately). Other men probably simply reconsidered their decision and absconded. Recruiting officers complained that some towns made “a trade of Desertion and too often with impunity" and that the local culture facilitated desertion of recruits “whilst surrounded by their Friends and Relations who employ every allurement to prevail upon them to desert.” Although Livermore seems to have been such a man, the 46th Regiment managed to catch up to him enough times that he was eventually drummed out of the regiment because of his repeated desertions.

Continuing his antics, he enlisted again but this time into the 34th Regiment of Foot in March 1775. The 21 year old, standing six feet tall, was probably an attractive specimen for the army, but he made his way off again just three months later. Rather than lie low, he enlisted yet again, this time into the 9th Regiment of Foot. He was not, however, able to hide his past; he was claimed by the 34th Regiment and punished (probably by lashes) for his crime. Because of his stature, and certainly in spite of his unreliability, he was put into the regiment's grenadier company late in 1775.

The 34th Regiment was among those ordered to embark for the relief of besieged Quebec, and by April they were embarking on transports in Cork. Livermore deserted once again, avoiding his regiment's departure. His inability to evade capture also persisted. Although he made his was to England he was taken up as a deserter. This time he was pardoned rather than punished, and put on board ship with other recruits bound for America. Not one to be influenced by the mercy shown him, he plotted with others to steal the ship's boat and escape. When his plan was found out, he was tried, convicted and received 500 lashes.

On 21 September 1777 he finally joined his regiment in America. The grenadier company to which he officially belonged, however, was campaigning near Saratoga and would soon be made prisoners of war. Livermore remained with the eight battalion companies of the regiment in Canada, and was formally transferred into one of them at the end of the year.

Moses Livermore continued to make a poor impression on his officers. Although it is not clear when and where he saw combat, the commanding officer of the regiment indicated that "he only plays the Lion at the head of all kinds of Thievery and Mischief and is a timid lamb in the face of his Enemy." This suggests that he had other disciplinary infractions besides those of which we have direct records. When he deserted from a wood cutting party in June 1780, it was the last straw. He was quickly captured, and his commanding officer requested (from the commander in chief of the army in Canada) that he either be tried by a general court that could sentence capital punishment; short of that, the officer requested permission to drum him out of the regiment once and for all because "the loss of such a nuisance takes nothing from the strength of a Corps." The officer hoped that Livermore would be pressed into service on a navy ship, where presumably he would be less able to abscond.

Livermore was discharged from the 34th Regiment on 13 July 1780; it is not known whether he was lashed yet again as a prelude to being drummed out. Here we would expect to lose site of this incorrigible man. Rather than disappearing into the countryside or being pressed into the navy, however, he once again joined the army. Researcher Todd Braisted determined that Livermore this time chose not a regular British regiment but a Royalist corps called the Queen's Loyal Rangers serving in Quebec. He served in that organization and its Provincial successor, the Loyal Rangers, for over two years, through the last surviving rolls in early 1783. Whether he served with good discipline or continued to be "a nuisance" is not known. In 1808, Moses Livermore was living in Hawkesbury, Ontario (at that time called Upper Canada), and petitioned for a land grant as a reward for his service in the Loyal Rangers.

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