10/18/2024
When you transcribe documents about people, you learn of what they did, and who they were. Not necessarily what they would become. I had always recalled a passage in Frederick Mackenzie's Diary mentioning two deserters from West Point at New York in January 1781, dressed as lightly as it was summer. I found the deserter interview in August in the Clinton Papers. The deserters had no way of knowing that less than a week later the detachment they had belonged to would get into a hard fought scrap with DeLancey's Refugees, in which a number of their former colleagues would be killed, wounded or captured.
That was no longer their concern, as the day after they arrived at New York they met William Digby Lawler, formerly a quartermaster in the 17th Light Dragoons but then a lieutenant of cavalry in the Queen's American Rangers, who enlisted both of them into the troop then raising under Captain Thomas Ives Cooke, another veteran of the 17th LD.
Both would serve in Virginia. Gray would survive Yorktown but desert from the regiment on 29 July 1782. He was eventually discovered or turned himself in on 20 April 1783 but deserted again on 25 June 1783, this time for good.
His dishonor paled in comparison to Webster, who with a Frenchman in the regiment named Lewis Trepaud, were believed to have r***d a woman named Jane Dickenson. Simcoe unhesitatingly turned them over to Cornwallis for punishment. If there was a court martial, it has escaped history. Trepaud ended up being turned over to the Royal Navy for service there. Webster however was hanged the next day.
Here is their deserter interview:
"Janry. 15th [1781]
John Grey an American of Col. Jackson’s Regt. or 16th Massachusetts – left West point eleven days ago, on command to North Castle. Genl. Heath commands. There were about 140 Continentals & 400 militia on the detachment. The Sixteen Massachusetts Regiments are reduced to ten. The Six Months men are all gone home. They have not as yet received any Recruits. The greatest part of the Army have seventeen months due to them. Some of the troops have got french cloathing. He heard at West point that the Pennsylvanians had revolted & were going to Congress to get redress for their want of cloathing pay &c. The Officers told them it was not so. They heard they had Seven pieces of Cannon with them & had kill’d several of their Officers. Ethan Allen had declared, if the Congress did not establish his Commission & give him pay he would fight both King & Congress, as he had then got a considerable magazine of ammunition & arms.
Jonathan Webster of Col. Seely’s Regt. or first New Hampshire Regt. 43 men in his Company all for the War – deserted with Grey – Col: Hull commanded the detachment. Beef is pretty plenty, flour scarce. The Soldiers only wait for their money & cloathing to desert, as they are tired of the service.
Both these men came in without Coats."
Source: University of Michigan, William L. Clements Library, Sir Henry Clinton Papers, Volume 141, item 15.
