When the thinly-scattered population fled before the savages, she was overtaken, scalped, and left for dead; but recovered to be an example of Christian faith and virtue. The daughter of a miller in Queens County defended her father from his brutal assailants at the risk of her life, when men who witnessed the cruelty dared offer no assistance. "The death bed of Mercer was attended by two females of the Society of Friends, who, like messengers from heaven, smoothed his pillow, and cheered his declining hours. They inhabited the house to which he was carried, and refusing to fly during the battle, were there when he was brought, wounded and dying, to the threshold."
When the wife of General Woodhull, who perished under the inhuman treatment he received at the hands of his captors, reached his bed-side, it was only in time to receive his last sigh. She distributed the wagon-load of provisions she had brought, for the relief of the other American prisoners. *
* Revolutionary Incidents of Queens County, by H. Onderdonk, Jr.
Rebecca Knapp, who died recently in Baltimore, was one of those who relieved the American prisoners in Philadelphia, by carrying them provisions from her own table. Others were associated in the same good work in New York. Mary Elmendorf, who lived in Kingston, Ulster County, studied medicine, that, in the absence of the physicians, who were obliged to be with the army, she might render assistance to the poor around her. Mrs. Speakman, of Philadelphia, daily visited the soldiers who were brought into the city ill of the camp fever, and placed in empty houses—carrying food and medicines, and ministering to their wants. Eleven in one house were restored through her kind attentions.
The journal of Rev. Thomas Andross, who escaped from a prison ship through Long Island, alludes frequently to female kindness and assistance. These prison ships were indeed store houses of pestilence and misery. A large transport—the Whitby—was the first anchored in the Wallabout; she was moored October 20th, 1776, and crowded with American prisoners, whom disease, bad provisions, and deprivation, of air and light, soon reduced to a pitiable condition. The sand-beach and ravine near were filled with graves, "scratched along the sandy shore." One of these ships of death was burned the following year—fired, it is said, by the sufferers, who were driven to desperation. *
* Thompson's History of Long Island.
Mr. Andross thus describes the old Jersey, in which he was a prisoner: "Her dark and filthy exterior corresponded with the death and despair reigning within. It is supposed that eleven thousand American seamen perished in her. None came to relieve their woes. Once or twice, by order of a stranger on the quarter-deck, a bag of apples was hurled promiscuously into the midst of hundreds of prisoners, crowded as thick as they could stand—and life and limbs were endangered in the struggle. The prisoners were secured between the decks by iron gratings; and when the ship was to be cleared of water, an armed guard forced them up to the winches, amid a roar of execrations and reproaches—the dim light adding to the horrors of the scene. Thousands died whose names have never been known; perishing when no eye could witness their fortitude, nor praise their devotion to their country."
A very interesting account is given in Dwight's Travels of the capture and escape of General Wadsworth. He had been for many years a member of Congress—and was sent by the legislature of Massachusetts to command in the District of Maine. In February, 1781, he dismissed his troops, and made preparations for his return to Boston. His wife and her friend Miss Fenno, who had accompanied him, shared in the peril, when, by order of the commander of the British fort, an attack was made on the house where the General lodged. It was near midnight, the weather being severely cold, and the ground covered with snow, when the enemy came suddenly upon the sentinel, and forced an entrance into the guard-room. Another party of them at the same instant fired through the windows of Mrs. Wadsworth's apartment; a third forcing their way through the windows into Miss Fenno's room. The two terrified women had only time to dress hastily, when the intruders assailed the barred door of the General's chamber. He made a brave defence, but at length, being wounded in the arm, was compelled to surrender.
With the most admirable self-command, Mrs. Wadsworth and her friend gave no expression to their own agitated feelings, intent only on relieving those of the wounded prisoner. The wife wrapped a blanket round him, and Miss Fenno tied a handkerchief round his arm, to check the effusion of blood. In this condition, his strength almost exhausted, he was carried off and the ladies were left behind in their desolated house. Not a window had escaped destruction; the doors were broken down, two of the rooms set on Fire, the floors drenched with blood; and an old soldier, desperately wounded, was begging for death, that he might be released from his sufferings. The neighboring inhabitants, who came to see what had happened, spared no labor—so that the next day they could be more comfortable; but the anxiety endured on the General's account could not be relieved by any kind attentions to themselves.
In about two months, Mrs. Wadsworth and her friend obtained permission to visit the prisoner, in the gloomy solitude of his quarters at Bagaduce. Parting from him at the end of ten days, Miss Fenno contrived to give him an intimation of the knowledge she had gained that he was not to be exchanged, by saying in a significant manner, "General Wadsworth—take care of yourself." The General soon understood this caution, learning that he was regarded as a prisoner of too much consequence to be trusted with his liberty. The account of his imprisonment, his remarkable escape, and his adventures wandering through the wilderness, before reaching the settlements on the river St. George, where he found friends—has all the interest of the wildest romance, but would here be out of place. His wife and Miss Fenno had sailed for Boston before his arrival at Portland. They were overtaken by a violent storm, and barely escaped shipwreck—being obliged to land at Portsmouth. There they had a new source of anxiety. The wife had left all her specie with her captive husband, and the continental bills had lost their currency. Without money, and without friends, after meditating on various expedients, she at last remembered that she had one acquaintance in the place. To him the wanderers applied—receiving assistance which enabled them to return to Boston, where a happy reunion terminated the distresses of the family. It may be added that General Wadsworth was an ancestor of the distinguished American poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.