Weatherford's Surrender

Jim's Photo - Weatherford's Surrender

General Wilkinson's Last Call Of Duty

Portrait At The NPS Site

 With these movements [at the Battle of Lacolle Mills on March 30, 1814] Wilkinson disappears from the scene of active life. On March 24 orders were received relieving him from duty under the form of granting his request for a court of inquiry and he made over the army to General George Izard and departed.

Once more he passed the ordeal of investigation which in reality was a sham once more he was acquitted but he never again was permitted to assume his command in the army and passed the closing years of his life in Mexico. Source

Maryland Military Maps

Taken from the Historic Map Collections of the Sheridan Libraries (Military Maps Of Maryland):

Source

1814 Sketch of the Military Topography of Baltimore

GPML G3844.B3S42 1814

Ryerson And The Loyalists

The loyalists of America and their times: from 1620 to 1816, Volume 2, Egerton Ryerson (Volume 1):

My 3rd great-granduncle, Isaac B. Howard, was Egerton Ryerson's assistant and was an in-law of Ryerson's in-law.

Dr. John Beatty was the brother-in-law of Isaac Brock Howard, a member of my Howard family.  Isaac B. Howard was Dr. Egerton Ryerson's assistant.  So Dr. John Beatty's brother-in-law, Isaac B. Howard,  was affiliated with another brother-in-law of his, Dr. Egerton Ryerson.

Battle of Horseshoe Bend

Battle of Horseshoe Bend took place in Alabama on March 27, 1814:

Battle of Horseshoe Bend

Colonel William Russel

Present Day Peoria, Illinois

Source

"...Colonel Russel himself, one of the heroes of King's Mountain, was leading an expedition of mounted rangers, against the Indians of the Peoria towns, in Illinois."

Source

Among those listed in the 7th Regiment of Infantry:

William Russel, Colonel

Thornton Posey, Lieutenant-Colonel

Zachariah Taylor, Captain; Major by brevet

Cochrane's Plans

Description of a letter held in the Indiana University Archives:

Source

His Majesty's Ship Ann

Bermuda, 25th March 1814

Cochrane's Signature On Page 16 Of Letter Referenced Above

Early Amherstburg And Fort Malden

Source

"A paper on the history of Fort Malden would hardly be complete without a short account of the place where it was originally built. Amherstburg has been called a town for more than a hundred years and is therefore nearly as old as the original fort. It is today, and has been for many years, a unique town in some respects, the situation is beautiful overlooking the entrance to the Detroit River...".

"The name of the town is decidedly English, whilst in another respect it is characteristic of a town in the Province of Quebec, It has a considerable French population...".

"After the evacuation of Detroit in 1796, many of the British civil and military removed to Amherstburg."

"On the 24th of August 1908, Earl Grey, Governor General of Canada, visited Amherstburg and was shown the remains of the Fort Malden."

"...a number of United Empire Loyalists ex-members of Butler's regiment of Rangers formed a settlement in the vicinity of the present town of Amherstburg. Among the settlers were the Caldwells... .  Captain Caldwell had command of the company of Butler's Rangers in the war of 1812." [Source]

On Lake Ontario

Source (Page 9)

Price Doubled In Textiles

Source

From The Protectionist, Volume 13:

Wool and cotton cards furnish another signal example in the same line of illustration. These articles were dutied fifty cents per dozen--a rate maintained steadily until the war of 1812, and then doubled. 

Pre-War Deaths At Fort Adams

Source

From the American state papers: ...(investigation as to why so many soldiers were dying at Fort Adams):

Previous to the embarkation, 3 companies, of the 6th infantry, under the command of Major Pike, were ordered to the garrison of Orleans, and between the 1st and 12th of September, the army embarked, and, making some delay nearly opposite the city, owing, I think, very probably, to a defect in one of the artillery boats, proceeded, on the 23d, up the river, under the command of Major Backus, of the light dragoons.  I had been taken sick...followed the army...the General being ill in Orleans.

...two hospitals were established, one at Point Coupee, and one at Fort Adams, where the weakest of the men were left.... .

A description of Fort Adams and the Natchez, Mississippi, area, from Cuming's Tour To The Western Country (1807-1809):

Source

Ships In Ports

Source Page 466

"...[Captain David] Porter was forced (September 7) to come to port for water and stores...".

"These vessels were divided into three squadrons."

Woodward And Proctor

The War of 1812 Magazine article, Remember the Raisin! Anatomy of a Demon Myth, By Sandy Antal:

"Unlike Canadians who usually explain away a complicated series of events through the alleged incompetence of the British commander, Americans have persistently demonized Colonel (later Major-General) Henry Procter as a bloodthirsty commander who either directed or permitted the murder of defenceless American prisoners. It was these alleged atrocities that gave rise to the slogan, Remember the Raisin!"

"Judge Woodward of Detroit...approached Colonel Procter on the subject, expressing outrage over the murders and depredations."

Mystic Experiences

Mariner Ca 1817 [Not Mystic Mariners]

An account of The Battle of Groton Long Point:

"In the summer of 1859, stories about the experiences of mariners living along the Mystic River during the War of 1812, were published in Mystic’s weekly newspaper, The Mystic Pioneer. The accounts were authenticated by eyewitnesses to the events who were still alive."

More War of 1812 information in Connecticut; Maritime Museum Opens Exhibit on War of 1812.

More from the Connecticut Magazine:

Source

Private Webb's Famous Daughter

Source - First Lady Lucy Webb Hayes

Source

Among Colonel Ball's troopers was a private, James Webb (1795 - 1833), the father of Lucy Webb Hayes, whose old flint-lock rifle and hunting horn are among the treasures of Spiegel Grove.

See Ball's Battle.

Brown's Story

From the Timeline of John Brown's Life from PBS's American Experience:

1812 The War of 1812: A 12-year-old John Brown travels through the Michigan wilderness to deliver a herd of cattle. He lodged with a man who owned a boy slave. Brown was treated well, but the slave was beaten before his eyes with an iron shovel. The memory would forever haunt John Brown.

Source

Source

British Officers On The Penobscot

British Military Uniforms [YouTube]

The Maine Historical Magazine, Volume 3

Duncan McArthur, POW

Source

"...Congress passed a law to employ a large additional number of regular troops; and although [Duncan] McArthur was still a prisoner of war, not being exchanged, the President of the United States nominated him Colonel to the twenty-sixth Regiment of United States Infantry, and the Senate confirmed the appointment."


The Adjutant-General's Office, Washington City, 18th Jan'y, 1813, included Duncan McArthur on its list of officers of the Army and Militia of the United States who were "made prisoners of war at Detroit, Queenston and elsewhere...".

Source

Nelles' Cell For American Prisoners

See the picture online of the cell for American prisoners at the Henry Nelles Home (Cell for American Prisoners) via the Grimsby Museum Digital Collections.


"Description: [Links added] ...located in the basement of the Nelles house (125 Main Street West)... ."  "The house was owned by Colonel Robert Nelles (1761-1842)... ."  "His eldest son, Henry (1789-1841), lived in the home following the War with his young wife Sarah."

Source

Map Of Harrison's Movements

From The Pictorial History of Fort Wayne, Indiana: A Review of Two ..., Volume 1:

Pre-War Leanings Of Jacob Barker

Map During Pre-War And War Of 1812 Era

From Incidents in the life of Jacob Barker, of New Orleans, Louisiana...:

Politically, "the odious alien and sedition law fettered the press, and the stamp law of John Adams bothered him in his business; its repeal became an object of deep interest; this urged him on in the support of Jefferson."  "In those days party feeling ran very high; the purchase of Louisiana was a theme on which the Federalists rang all their changes; they denounced Jefferson as being under French influence...accused him as paying tribute to Bonaparte [when paying for the Louisiana Purchase]."

After Running The Gauntlet

Reconstruction of the fort on Mackinac Island

Heroes and Heroines of the Fort Dearborn Massacre: A Romantic and Tragic ... By Noah Simmons, included the following, about Mrs. Susan Simmons:

Sometime in the fall of I812 the warriors of Green Bay with their prisoners left Green Bay and marched to the ruins of Fort Dearborn, thence around the end of lake Michigan and up to Mackinac, which was still in the hands of the British and Indians. It was winter when they reached Mackinac, and negotiations for the ransom of the prisoners were opened. Mrs Simmons and her babe had suffered terribly while on the journey to Mackinac. Winter had come on and found her thinly clad while she was often compelled to seek food from under the snow. Still amid all her privations and hardships the heroic woman thought only of the safety and comfort of her child. While in Green Bay the Indians had, by various devices, attempted to take her babe from her, under the pretext of friendship.

Proposed Atonement For Hull's Defeat

Source

So by degrees Montreal became the focus or centre of American strategy. It was to be in its capture and pillage an atonement for Hull's defeat at Detroit; but man proposes and God disposes. [Source]

Rights Of Belligerents And Neutrals

The Naval War of 1812: Events of 1812-13,  By Theodore Roosevelt:

Battle Statistics

Source

On Humber Bay

Source

From The battle of York;...:

Away to the east, where the St. Lawrence runs beneath the ramparts of old Quebec, stands the honoured monument to the two heroes who died upon the fatal field — Wolfe and Montcalm, victor and vanquished, who in valour, in death, and in fame, were not divided.

Yet we, too, nearer home, have an eventful and strangely parallel scene of strife.

In the neighbourhood of our city of Toronto, the "Humber Bay" is our " Wolfe's Cove," the " Garrison Common" our "Plains of Abraham"; over them in one long day a fierce battle raged, on them a victor died in the hour of victory.

As we pass along the westward of where the Humber Bay begins its graceful curve there will be found no memorial raised to do honour to whom honour is due.

As we enter the city of Toronto, we shall find no statue erected to the fallen, no inscription set up to record the deeds of the eventful day, and at the Old Fort, the culminating point of the attack, not, as yet, any tribute paid to the memories of those gallant defenders who fought and died in the defence of York on the 27th April, 1813.

Captain Darby Noon

Source

Darby Noon at Registers of Enlistments in the United States Army, 1798-1914:

Unknown To The British Authorities

Source (Page 300)

From Robert Randall and the Le Breton flats.... :

"Le Breton on this trip also learned of the location and strength of the American Forts at Detroit and of a very large depot of supplies of every description for the Western American Army, which were unknown to the British Authorities, and which he was of opinion could be easily captured."

Educated At The Military Academy

A list of officers in the army of the United States who hold brevet commissions for gallant conduct in battle, and for other causes, from American State Papers: Documents, Legislative and ..., Part 5, Volume 2, by United States. Congress:

Florida And The Other War Of 1812

Florida

The Other War of 1812: The Patriot War and the American Invasion of Spanish East Florida, by James G. Cusick, University of Georgia Press, Apr 15, 2007 - 392 pages (also here):

"...a party of Georgians invaded East Florida, confident that partisans there would help them swiftly wrest the colony away from Spain. The raid was a strategic and political disaster."

Source: Congressional Edition

Post-War Charges Preferred Against Elliot

"I ask this injustice as a junior officer assailed by the secret espionage of a superior."  [Charles Crillon Barton]

Taken from the Manifest of the charges preferred to the Navy department and subsequently to Congress, against Jesse Duncan Elliot: esq., a captain in the navy of the United States, for unlawful conduct while commodore of the late Mediterranean squadron; and a refutation of the recrimination raised by that officer .

A brief description of the incident that lead to the above.