Alexander Robinson, 57th Regiment of Foot

This blog has featured many stories of deserters, some recaptured, some not. Occasionally deserters turned up in the in highly unexpected places.

A man named Alexander Robinson enlisted in the 57th Regiment of Foot in March 1769, and deserted the following year while the regiment was in Dublin. This in itself was not unusual, nor was the fact that Robinson was never apprehended in Ireland. The 57th Regiment continued serving on the Irish establishment until the beginning of 1776 when they embarked for America as part of the expedition against Charleston, South Carolina. They then sailed to Staten Island and participated in the campaign that gained control of New York city and the surrounding area. The summer of 1777 found them settling in to garrison New York where they would remain for the rest of the war, engaging not in major campaigns but in numerous foraging expeditions and other incursions in the region. Deserters, however, were not forgotten...

Among the expeditions in which the 57th Regiment participated was the October 1777 capture of Fort Clinton and Fort Montgomery on the Hudson River. This venture was intended to provide some relief to General Burgoyne's beleaguered army, bogged down north of Albany, but it was too little, too late. It was nonetheless a bold action, with a violent struggle for control of the forts in which the British forces prevailed. Nearly 300 American prisoners were taken. Among them was Alexander Robinson, who was recognized by some of his former comrades in the 57th Regiment.

It is no surprise that Robinson was put on trial for desertion. During the war a number of other British deserters were taken up while serving with the enemy; bearing arms with the enemy was a much more severe crime than desertion alone, and most of these men were found guilty and sentenced to death. Several aspects of Robinson's trial, however, indicate that his case was not so clear cut.

Although witnesses at the trial testified that Robinson was "taken prisoner at Fort Montgomery" he was tried only for desertion and no evidence was presented that he was armed, in uniform, or in any way acting with the American army. The only testimony was that he had, in fact, enlisted in 1769, deserted in 1770 and was taken again on 6 October 1777 at the fort. He offered nothing in his defense except to acknowledge his crime and throw himself on the mercy of the court. Indeed, the brief trial seems to be almost a matter of form rather than a detailed inquiry into a severe crime.

Robinson was found guilty of this capital crime, but instead of death he was sentenced to 1000 lashes, a typical punishment for desertions when soldiers were gone for only a short time and surrendered willingly. Given the circumstances, this punishment suggests that the court was privy to information that does not appear in the trial record - perhaps Robinson surrendered himself and offered a plausible story about why he had deserted and how he came to be in America. Unfortunately we have no record of it, or any indication of why he was at Fort Montgomery on that fateful day.

The muster rolls for the 57th tell us simply that Alexander Robinson "returned from desertion" on 6 October 1777. He continued to serve in the regiment after that for several years until he died in New York on 28 August 1782. There is no indication of any other remarkable events in his military career, and typical of muster rolls there is no indication of the cause of death.

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William and Elizabeth Royal, 63rd Regiment of Foot

If you like the material in this blog, you're sure to enjoy my book.

The featured soldier this week came to my attention because of the plight of his wife, brought to my attention by colleague and blogger J. L. Bell who does an outstanding job of ferreting out details on the individuals who formed the society of 1770s Boston and environs. We learn of Elizabeth Royal (or Royall) from a resolution by the Massachusetts Provincial Congress's Committee of Safety dated 21 June 1775: 

That Joseph Adams, driver of the stage from Newbury, be, and he hereby is directed, to transport back to Newbury, Elizabeth Royal and her child, who, as she says, is wife to William Royal, first sergeant in the 63d regiment of foot, now in Boston, and deliver her to the care of the selectmen of said Newbury, who are hereby directed to provide for her and her child, at the expense of the colony. 

The 63rd Regiment of Foot had arrived in Boston only a few weeks prior to this resolution. The regiment's muster rolls confirm the presence of William Royal in its ranks; he was already in the regiment in January 1775 and sailed with them from Ireland to America, but we have not traced his career to determine when he joined the army (another published version of the Committee of Safety's resolution gives the name as "Rogers" but there was no man by that name in the 63rd Regiment). The rolls note that he was "British" as opposed to "Irish" or "Foreign", indicating that he was from either England, Scotland or Wales. Clearly he was already married to Elizabeth before the regiment left Ireland, because by June 1775 they had a child. And he was no serjeant - the rolls list him as a private soldier.

Perhaps his wife inflated his rank in an attempt to impress her detainees. When the 63rd arrived in Boston the town was already under siege; in fact, the Committee of Safety's resolution suggests that Elizabeth Royal was taken up while trying to get into Boston from Newbury. But what were the wife and child of a British soldier, particularly one who had only just arrived in Boston, doing in Newbury at that time? 

We can only speculate. The likely answer is that she had not been allowed to accompany her husband on the transports that brought the regiment to America, and booked her own passage on another vessel. When shipping was allocated for British regiments deploying to America, an allowance was made for 60 women to accompany each regiment. This allowance is widely, and incorrectly, interpreted to mean that only 60 wives were allowed to be with a regiment at any time. Quite the contrary, most regiments in America had more than 60 wives with them; it was only the passage to America that posed a problem and many women found their own ways to make the crossing. Elizabeth Royal may have landed at another American port and then proceeded over land towards Boston. 

There are other plausible explanations. William Royal may have been a long-serving soldier who had gotten married in America during a previous deployment, then transferred into the 63rd Regiment in order to return to his family. Or Elizabeth Royal could've arrived with the regiment in May and left Boston for any number of reasons, expecting to be able to return. 

It is not known why the Committee of Safety didn't simply allow this mother and child to enter Boston, but instead sent her back to Newbury to be subsisted at public expense. We also do not know whether she was ever reunited with her husband. Even if she was, they were not destined for a long and happy future. The muster rolls show that William Royal continued to serve in the 63rd Regiment until he died on 6 October 1777; as is typical for these documents, no cause of death is given. The fate of his wife and child who dutifully tried to get to him in Boston remains unknown.

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John Mayell, 22nd Regiment of Foot

A great challenge in researching the careers of British soldiers who served in America is that there is no comprehensive source of information - no catalog of records indexed by individual that tells a full story. Instead, we are left to piece information together. For many soldiers, we have only a name on a muster roll. The (usually) semi-annual muster rolls sometimes have gaps for spans of a few years, and sometimes are not fully annotated; in the best case, the rolls tell us something about when a man joined the army and when he left it. We can infer more from the service of his regiment in general, but occasionally individual soldiers were not with the rest of the regiment for varying periods of time, so it is very difficult to be sure whether an individual served in a specific location at a particular time based strictly on the muster rolls.

For some soldiers we are fortunate to have additional documents, but those sources do not always seem to agree leaving us with puzzles to be solved. A good case in point is John Mayell, a soldier in the 22nd Regiment of Foot.

The muster rolls of the 22nd show us that Mayell (also spelled Meyell, Mayle, and Mail) joined the 22nd Regiment on 9 April 1766. The regiment had recently returned to Great Britain from service in America and was recruiting to refill its depleted ranks. Mayell served initially as a fifer, but by 1770 had become a private soldier. The obvious conclusion is that he enlisted at an early age, possibly the son of a soldier, and played the fife until he was old enough to shoulder a firelock. But the muster rolls tell us more, and cast doubt on that theory.

In December 1776 Mayell transferred into the 63rd Regiment of Foot. In that corps he served as a drummer. In October 1779 he transferred back into the 22nd Regiment, and there also is listed as a drummer until 1784 when again became a private soldier. He was discharged in 1786. It was fairly common for men follow this pattern of appointments, from drummer to private soldier and back to drummer again, sometimes several times during their careers. Muster rolls give no reasons for such appointments, only the dates on which they occurred. Occasionally it was due simply to a change in the established number of drummers in a regiment, but in most cases we are left only to wonder.

The reason for Mayell's transfer to the 63rd Regiment is also a mystery. The dates correspond exactly to the time that the 22nd Regiment was in Rhode Island; the 63rd initially also served in the Rhode Island garrison, but returned to New York early in 1777. Perhaps Mayell held a useful office in New York. Transfers of soldiers often correspond to transfers of officers, and we can deduce that the soldiers were officer's servants, but this is not the case with Mayell. Again, we can only wonder.

Besides the muster rolls, another document sheds more light on Mayell. After his discharge he received an out-pension, meaning that he returned to the region where lived before joining the army and collected a semi-annual payment amounting to five pence per day. Mayell's army discharge, a document that survives for many pensioners, is missing; his name does, however, appear on a list of out pensioners that provides additional details. He was born in the parish of Milksham in the county of Wiltshire, and pursued the trade of a shoemaker before joining the army. Our theory that he enlisted at an early age is proven incorrect; he was 47 years old in 1786, meaning that he was about 27 when he joined the 22nd Regiment - not an unusually old age for an enlistee, but certainly only than his service record would have had us guess. Adding to the confusion is that he had served 27 years as a solder in 1786, meaning that he must have had service prior to joining the 22nd regiment.

Another document clarifies some aspects of Mayell's career. on 23 January 1766 he and his wife Jane were examined at the Quarter Sessions in the town of Kendal, Westmorland. The reason for the examination is not given; perhaps they were assumed to be vagrants or had somehow drawn suspicion to themselves. Mayell deposed that he was born in Milksham, Wiltshire (which agrees with the pension records) and served two years of a six-year apprenticeship to a shoemaker in Bradford, Wiltshire, and that he had been discharged from the army as "unfit for duty." This explains the length of service given in the pension records; he had indeed served in the army before, but unfortunately we do not know exactly when or in which regiment. We can guess that he was in his early teens when he left his apprenticeship - again, in unknown circumstances - and he may have enlisted any time between then and the age of about 19, to have had about 7 years of service by 1766. John and Jane Mayell were given a pass to go back to Bradford where he'd worked as a shoemaker, but within three months he was in the army again.

Having received a pension after his discharge in 1786, Mayell was obliged to return to active service in British garrisons if the need arose. In 1790, pensioners were called to serve. Due to ill health Mayell was unable to travel to Bristol for an examination to determine whether he was fit, but instead received an examination from a doctor in Devizes, Wiltshire, saying that he was unfit. His failure to appear in Bristol caused him to be dropped from the pension rolls, but he wrote a petition and included the doctor's endorsement which allowed his status to be restored. The petition survives, and reveals two details about Mayell: he could write (the deposition is written in the same hand as his signature), and that he had been wounded in the shoulder. No indication is given of when he received this wound.

Already we have more documents concerning Mayell than we have for most soldiers, and yet each one introduces more questions about his career. A final (so far) document does clarify one aspect of it. In October 1781 the 22nd Regiment of Foot was among those that embarked in New York to relieve General Cornwallis's besieged garrison at Yorktown. The fleet sailed too late and soon returned to port having effected nothing. The 22nd was, however, embarked on a warship, the Robust. Unlike the transports ships that were privately owned vessels operating under contract, warships belonged to the navy; as such, they maintained muster books recording who was on board and when, including passengers. These muster books survive, and that of the Robust lists each man in the 22nd Regiment who embarked. The 22nd embarked eight companies of soldiers (the grenadiers and light infantry were detached at this time) but included only four drummers. Also listed are six men who were "Musick", a term denoting the regimental band, among them John Mayell.

Regimental bands of music were not part of the regimental establishment and were funded at the whim of the officers. There was no regulated size or composition, and information on them is fragmentary. In 1773 the 22nd Regiment procured clothing for 11 band members, consisting of scarlet coats with buff facings and silver buttons, and cocked hats with silver lace. The only known instruments are French horns, clarinets and a pair of cymbals, but there were surely some others. Band members are not listed as such on muster rolls and so are difficult to identify; the six men on board the Robust are the only ones of the 22nd to be positively identified. Some are listed as drummers on the muster rolls for their entire careers, while others follow patterns similar to that of John Mayell albeit not on the same dates.

That Mayell was a musician offers additional possibilities to his unusual career path. It was fairly common for soldiers discharged after the Seven Years War in the 1760s to reinlist, and age was less a factor for a man with prior military experience than for a new recruit. That Mayell had been considered unfit for service when examined in 1766 suggests that he was allowed to reinlist specifically because of his musical talent. He may have transferred into the 63rd Regiment because his musical skills were desired in the New York garrison. But these are only speculations. Just as the initial assumption about his enlistment age, based solely on the muster rolls, turned out to be incorrect, so could other assumptions about the bearing of his musical skills on his career. And we know nothing of his shoulder wound, or whether his wife Jane accompanied him to America. Even with five separate sources of information to draw from, much about John Mayell remains a mystery. And yet we know more about him than most.

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Thomas Hanley (also Handley and Humly) 18th Regiment of Foot

This installment is graciously contributed by Dr. Steven M. Baule, who is preparing a study of the service of the 18th (Royal Irish) Regiment of Foot in America during the decade leading up to the American Revolution. First, I must take the opportunity to mention that my own book,

Thomas Hanley enlisted in the 18th (Royal Irish) Regiment of Foot in 1764, while the regiment was near Dublin, Ireland; he may, however, have been recruited in England. Hanley’s military career shows a common thread for musicians. He is promoted to drummer or fifer for a time and then returned to the ranks. It is probable that the men so promoted and reduced were members of the regimental band; officers may have rotated them through the rank of drummer or fifer in order for all of the bandsmen to have equal access to the extra pay allotted to a drummer or fifer (drummers and fifers were paid at the same rate as corporals). Only one member of the 18th Foot was identified in an official document as a “bandsman” between 1767 and 1775 and he did in fact follow this path of being rotated in and out of the rank of drummer and fifer. Not all regiments had a band of music, but the 18th Foot did. Its band is recorded as having played a couple of concerts in Philadelphia while the regiment was stationed there. 

Hanley’s first years in the military probably involved learning basic soldier tasks: standing guard, supporting the civil powers in Dublin and possibly learning to play the drum and fife. It isn’t clear when Hanley learned to play an instrument, but he did learn within his first five years in the Royal Irish. Most likely he was able to play one or more of the following: hautboy (oboe), clarinet, serpent, and/or the (French) horn if he was in the band. Military bands of the period appear often to have been made up of about eight musicians including two hautboys, two clarinets, two serpents (an early form of bass horn) and two horns. Unfortunately, the instruments used by the 18th Regiment’s band haven’t been determined.

Hanley marched from Dublin to Cork Harbour in late April 1767 and embarked for America in May. He arrived in Philadelphia with the Royal Irish as a private in Isaac Hamilton’s company on 11 July 1767. If Hanley was already a member of the band, he performed at the commencement ceremonies of Philadelphia College in the spring of 1768. He was transferred to the Lt. Colonel’s company when the regiment was ordered to Illinois in May 1768. It is possible he was transferred so he could serve with the Drum Major and be groomed to become a drummer when a vacancy opened. He didn’t have to wait long with the toll that sickness took on the regiment in Illinois; he was appointed drummer in Captain Lane’s Company on 5 February 1769. He remained with that company, which saw several captains, for the next few years; ultimately, it became Captain Payne’s Coy in 1771. He was reduced from drummer to private on 5 March 1772.

Hanley was stationed at the North Liberties Barracks in Philadephia with eight companies of the Royal Irish and a company of the Royal Artillery. He remained as a private and potentially a member of the regiment’s band of music through the fall of 1774. He was transferred to the Grenadier company as a fifer on 8 October 1774 as the regiment prepared to move from Philadelphia. The Grenadier company and two other companies were ordered to reinforce the garrison. The other five companies marched to New York City.

While in Boston, Hanley was court-martialed on 11 February 1775 for being very drunk on the street after Tattoo and abusing his regimental clothing. He was found guilty and sentenced to 100 lashes. For some reason, most likely prior good conduct, the entire sentence was remitted.

The companies of the 18th Regiment in Boston formed a composite corps with some companies of the 65th Regiment under the command of Lt. Colonel Bruce of the 65th. The 18th’s two fifers were ordered to mount guard whenever Lt. Col. Bruce was on duty. Probably, the two fifers served as additional orderlies for Bruce. As a grenadier, Hanley probably marched to Concord on 19 April and participated in the Battle of Bunker Hill on 17 June. He was on duty on 7 October 1775 on Charleston Heights when the company was mustered for pay.

The 18th Regiment was drafted in December 1775; that is, the able bodied private soldiers were sent into other regiments and those no longer fit for service were discharged. As a fifer, Hanley wasn’t drafted but instead returned to England with the officers, non-commissioned officers and drummers. Those privates who had previously been drummers or fifers were not drafted either, further supporting the supposition that they were part of the regimental band. They arrived at Portsmouth in February 1776. Hanley was appointed drummer in Captain Hamilton’s company when the regiment was reorganized in southern England in the summer of 1776. He was posted to the Light Infantry company in 1777 and then to the General’s company in 1778.

He was listed as sick on 6 March 1778. He was present at the Camp of Instruction at Coxheath in southern England from June to November 1778. The troops concentrated at Coxheath were prepared to thwart a Franco-Spanish invasion threat that materialized upon the French entry into the America Revolution. He was at Warley Camp in June 1779 and returned to the Grenadier company on 26 August. In June 1780, Hanley was present in Hyde Park, London to enforce civil order after the Gordon Riots. He remained a drummer when the Royal Irish were moved with the rest of the troops at Hyde Park to Finchley in August 1780. In 1781, he was with the regiment when it was posted to the Channel Islands and in 1783, he was sent to Gibraltar. He was listed as a private in the General’s company in July 1784, and is recorded as sick on both returns for 1784. He remained at Gibraltar through 1787. Unfortunately he is simply dropped from the rolls at that point, with no indication of why he left the regiment.

As a senior soldier and a musician, Hanley joined the 41st Regiment of Foot when it was changed from a regiment of invalids to a marching regiment. He served only fourteen months, however, before being discharged at Hilsea Barracks because he was “afflicted with the scurvy” on 24 March 1789.

Hanley appears to have not wished to be discharged, as he traveled to Sheerness and enlisted in Captain James Malcom’s Independent Company of Invalids there. He was discharged from that company after two months service. This discharge on 9 September 1789 appears to have been permanent He was paid nine extra days pay after discharge to provide for his travel home. Nothing more is known about his life after his discharge from the army following 25 years of service.

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Moses Bright, 62nd and 7th Regiments of Foot

On 31 January 1770, a man named Moses Bright from Newbury, county Berkshire, enlisted in the 62nd Regiment of Foot. At 34 he was older than most recruits but not of an unusual age for a soldier in general; most enlistees in this era were in their early twenties. This late start did not distinguish Bright from having a long and interesting military career.

Bright joined his regiment in Ireland in March. He spent the next five years in that country, marching from place to place and learning the ways of army life. By the time the regiment embarked for Canada in early 1776 he was fairly experienced, albeit strictly at peace time soldiering.

His service in America tested his mettle and proved his endurance and loyalty as a soldier. He was wounded on the famous campaign under General Burgoyne in 1777, and taken prisoner under the treaty of Saratoga. Like many of those prisoners, he managed to escape and join the British army in New York City. When he was trasferred into the 7th (Royal Fusiliers) Regiment of Foot in December 1778, he was one of 33 men from Burgoyne's army to do so including 15 from the 62nd Regiment.

With the 7th Regiment Bright and his comrades from the northern army went campaigning again. In July 1779 they participated in raids on the Connecticut seaport towns of New Haven, Fairfield and Norwalk. Moses Bright was again wounded, but again recovered and returned to active service. When the 7th Regiment was sent to serve in the southern colonies in 1780, he was in its ranks. An experienced veteran now, he was appointed corporal on 24 July 1780.

The southern campaign went poorly for the Royal Fusiliers. They were part of the force under Banastre Tarleton that was soundly defeated at the Battle of Cowpens on 17 January 1781. Many men of the regiment were captured including Moses Bright. The seasoned soldier escaped a second time, making his way to Savannah, Georgia where he rejoined elements of his regiment there and was appointed serjeant. 

When the war was winding down and the southern colonies were evacuated and prisoners of war repatriated, men of the 7th Regiment of Foot coalesced again in New York. The end of the war brought a reduction in forces, and although the 7th Regiment was sent back to Great Britain many of its men were discharged in America, some to settle there and others to take land grants in Canada. Moses Bright became a supernumerary serjeant when the establishment of his regiment was reduced to include fewer non-commissioned officers. He had the option of remaining in the ranks as a serjeant en seconde, that is, serving as a private soldier while waiting for another serjeant's post to become available. He chose instead to obtain his discharge by finding another man to serve in his place, probably one of the many other discharged British soldiers looking for opportunities in the manpower-reduced British army.

Details on his subsequent life have not been found. He was discharged on a date typical of men who took land grants in Canada. In 1797, however, he petitioned the commissioners of Chelsea Hospitial for an out-pension and provided a testimonial from the current commanding officer of his former regiment. He appears to have served in one of the many invalid companies raised to garrison British coastal installations, receiving a discharge from one in 1802 and from another in 1804 at 68 years of age.

A veteran of campaigns in three theaters of war, twice wounded in battle, twice taken prisoner and twice escaped, everything that we know about Moses Bright's 8 years of service in the American War comes from a few sentences written in his pension petition. It is a shame that we don't have more details about the many experiences that he had. 

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John Overon, 22nd Regiment of Foot

Frequent mention is made here of muster rolls, key documents for chronicling the careers of British soldiers. These primary sources have some limitations and nuances that must be considered, however, and sometimes they are outright misleading.

During the era of the American Revolution, muster rolls were prepared for each six-month period for each company of a regiment. A single roll is a sheet that gives the name and rank of each officer, serjeant, corporal, drummer and private soldier in the company during that six-month period. If a man was not in the company for the entire period, then an annotation gives the date and the event that caused the change: "joined", "enlisted", "entertained", "landed", "from" another company or what have you if he came into the company; or "discharged", "died", "deserted", "to" another company or what have you if he left.

At least, that is the ideal case, and it is generally true for most regiments for most of the war years. But sometimes dates are missing, and sometimes an entire annotation is missing such that men appear for the first time with no date or reason given - or disappear. Sometimes the missing information can be deduced from other sources, sometimes not.

The muster rolls were prepared after the end of the period they described - usually within a month or two, but sometimes not for a few years. This was particularly true when regiments were captured or became very busy with intense campaigning; in some cases, the rolls for an extended period were all prepared at once, in other cases they weren't prepared at all leaving us with gaps in the records.

The purpose of the rolls was financial; each regiment was provided with sums of money to pay its soldiers, and the muster rolls were an ex post facto way of representing where the money went. As such, the dates are deceptive. The date on which a man "enlisted" was the date on which he began drawing pay through the specific company, often months or years after he actually joined the army with a recruiting party, but sometimes when he embarked on a transport before actually joining his regiment in America. When a man was discharged he usually received a few weeks' extra pay to provide for his journey home; the muster rolls give the date through which the man was paid rather than the date on which he actually left the regiment. All of this becomes clear only because, for some men, other information exists that provides actual dates and clarifies the administrative dates given in the rolls.

The geographic distribution of the army also caused nuances in the rolls. A case in point is John Overon, a five-foot-six-inch tall laborer from Balking, Essex who enlisted in the 34th Regiment of Foot in 1769 at the age of 18. He does not appear on the 34th's muster rolls until the second half of 1771. His career can then be easily traced (allowing for variations in the spelling of his name such as "Overhead") through service in Ireland and deployment to America in 1776. The 34th Regiment was sent to Canada and Overon served there for most of the war. In the first half of 1782, in circumstances that we have not yet learned, he was captured; the muster roll for that period denotes him as “Prisoner with the rebels”.

When the war ended, prisoners of war were repatriated. Some did not return, having either died in captivity, escaped and disappeared into the coutryside, or chosen to stay behind after their release. The British army gave a directive that these men be listed on the muster rolls as having "deserted" in June 1783, an arbitrary way to adminstratively write them off. Overon and some other prisoners were not even given this much attention; they simply no longer appear on the rolls. For a researcher attempting to study an individual soldier, this leaves a dead end. The only assumption is that the man had died or chosen to resettle in the colonies.

But that's not what happened to John Overon. He escaped from captivity and made his way not to Canada but to New York. Rather than send him back to Canada, he was drafted into the 22nd Regiment of Foot on 1 January 1782 (another date that sounds suspiciously administrative). He continued to serve in that regiment for another ten years, taking his discharge in Dublin in July 1791 at the age of 40 after 22 years as a soldier, “being affected with a beginning consumption and otherwise infirm and Old.”

The muster rolls of the 22nd Regiment record him simply as having "enlisted" with no indication that he was in fact an experienced soldier from another regiment. The only reason we know he came from the 34th Regiment is because his discharge paper from the 22nd Regiment survives. It gives the number of years he served in each of the two regiments, which correlates perfectly with the muster rolls. Had he not received a pension, this document would not exist and we would have no way of connecting the names on the muster rolls of regiments that were posted so far from each other. There are other men for whom the muster rolls do not tell the complete story, and probably many more with interesting careers that cannot yet be deciphered.

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John Russell, 26th Regiment of Foot

Those within a reasonable distance of Fort Montgomery may be interested in attending my lecture on 13 September, dealing with a British soldier who served in the October 1777 storming of that place. This installment concerns another soldier who also probably participated in that action. 

John Russell, a soldier in the 26th Regiment of Foot, had some good news awaiting him. He had inherited a valuable estate in his native Scotland, in the lowlands east of Glasgow. We don't know why Russell, son of a freeholder, had enlisted or when. Gaps in the muster rolls of the 26th Regiment prevent us from knowing when he enlisted, but his name is among the prisoners taken at St. Johns, Canada, in November 1775. An American force had surprised and seized a number of British posts between Lake Champlain and Quebec, and the prisoners, John Russell among them, were sent to Lancaster, Pennsylvania. 

Russell fared well enough as a prisoner to be exchanged with the rest of his regiment after about a year of captivity. He was appointed corporal right around the time of the exchange. There is no reason to doubt that he was in the ranks when the regiment participated in the assault on Forts Clinton and Montgomery in October 1777. A month later, he was transferred into the grenadier company, still as a corporal. For reasons not known, he was reduced to private soldier on 5 June 1778. Such reductions were quite common; although sometimes the result of disciplinary infractions, they also occurred when a man's health prevented him from performing his duty, and even sometimes at the request of the soldier himself. 

It was over three years later that news of his inheritance arrived in New York. There was only one problem: John Russell was nowhere to be found. The 26th Regiment had been drafted in late 1779; that is, the able-bodied men were transferred into other regiments, the older and unfit men were discharged, and the officers, serjeants and drummers returned to Great Britain to recruit anew. Russell had not returned with them, so word was sent to the army in New York in an effort to seek him out. An ad was placed in the newspaper:

John Russell, some time a corporal in the grenadier company of his Majesty’s late 26th regiment of foot, is desired to apply as soon as possible to James Inglis, vendue master, in New York, who has letters and instructions for him respecting a valuable freehold, and other estate fallen to him by the death of his father Mr. - Russell, of West Craigs, between Glasgow and Falkirk, in Scotland. If he does not apply in a very short time as above, or any where else execute such writings as are necessary to secure said estate, it will be legally seized upon by his brother of a second marriage; and for ever lost. It will be exceeding kind in any person who can give him information of this, or to communicate where he is, so as a letter can be sent to him. 

[The New York Gazette, 19 February 1781] 

Because the 26th was no longer in New York, there was no way to check the muster rolls which would've informed that Russell had deserted on 13 June 1779. Even if that was known, it was worth the effort to advertise for him; deserters sometimes returned and were drafted into other regiments if their original corps were no longer in the area. And some deserters managed to remain in the area incognito, although we can only wonder whether such a man would've been able to come forward to claim his inheritance without running afoul of military justice. We are left, however, to wonder - no additional information about John Russell has come to light.

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