THE YEAR is 1777, in the Town of Fort Edward, New York. Beautiful young Jane McCrea is planning to meet with her fiancée, a soldier in "Gentleman Johnny" Burgoyne's army. Her day is full of anticipation; the glory of the summer sun shines on her radiant black hair, and Jane is wearing the dress she plans to be married in later on that day. Its a glorious morning on July 27th, 1777. A great day to be young, a great day to be married, a great day to die.
FOR JANE, wedding plans are interrupted for eternity. In the time it takes an Indian "tommyhawk" to enter Janes skull, the bright morning sun will be gone forever. Poor Jane is about to meet up with the same murdering savage indians that had butchered a family in nearby Argyle only hours before. British authority and the promise of British protection mean nothing to the savages, and can do precious little to spare the life of this young girl.
ACCOUNTS of her murder vary widely, but the general consensus seems to be that Jane was murdered by Indians allied to the British, and under the control (or lack thereof) of General Burgoyne. Modern day politically correct Indian apologists would like to portray Jane's murder as an act committed by American soldiers, accidentally killing her as they fired on the British. Truth is that it was Indians who killed Jane for nothing more than the thrill of killing the poor young girl, a motive that was far to common in Jane's day. Her death did rally many to the cause of the Revolution, as the feeling amongst the locals was that British rule could not be trusted to ensure the safety of the land.
SHE WAS BURIED buried about three miles south of the Fort Edward, on the banks of Three Mile Creek. A monument now marks the spot where she was originally buried. Head south on RT 4 from Fort Edward. It's on the right side of the road.
AUTOPSY reports also vary. Eyewitness accounts however have Jane alive and well one second, and a tomahawk sunk into her skull the next. Bullet holes in her body were said to be from the Americans firing on the British, just opposite the present day high school in Ft. Edward. What really happened though is that Jane was murdered and scalped by Indians. the bullet holes were an afterthought, designed to throw the blame for her death on American soldiers. After all, just how do you explain the murder of a British subject by Indians allied to the British, and supposedly under British control?
TODAY her body rests in at the Union Cemetery in Fort Edward, next to the body of Duncan Campbell of Inverawe. SHAME, SHAME, SHAME, on the Village of Ft. Edward for allowing the monument marking her place of death to deteriorate to the deplorable condition it exists in today. This heroine of the Revolution deserves better. [The above article was written by Mr. Lane DeMuro sometime in the 1990's. See page credits and source information below. MS.]
THE JANE MCCREA TRAGEDY. By William L. Stone Probably no event, either ancient or modern warfare, has received so many versions as the killing Miss Jane McCrea, during the revolutionary war It has been commemorated in story and in song, and narrated in grave histories, in as many different ways as there have been writers upon the subject. As an accident merely, of the Revolution, accuracy in its relation is not, perhaps, of much moment. When measured however, by its results, it at once assumes an importance which justifies such an investigation as shall bring out the truth. The slaying of Miss McCrea was, to the people of New York, what the battle of Lexington was to the New England colonies. In each case, the effect was to consolidate the inhabitants more firmly against the invader. The blood of the unfortunate girl was not shed ill vain. From every drop, hundreds of armed yeomen arose; and, as has been justly said, her name was passed as a note of alarm along the banks of the Hudson, and as a rallying cry among the Green mountains of Vermont brought down her hardy sons. It thus contributed to Burgoyne's defeat, which became a precursor and principal cause of American independence. The story, as told by Bancroft, Irving and others is, that as Jane McCrea was on her way from Fort Edward to meet her lover, Lieutenant Jones, at the British camp, under the protection of the Indians, a quarrel arose between the latter as to which should have the promised reward; when one of them, to terminate the dispute, "sunk," as Mr. Bancroft says, "his tomahawk into the skull" of their unfortunate charge. The correct account, however, of the Jane McCrea Tragedy, gathered from the statement made by Mrs. McNeal to General Burgoyne on the fifth of July, 1777, in the marquee of her cousin, General Fraser, and corroborated by several people well acquainted with Jane McCrea, and by whom it was related to the late Judge Hay, of Saratoga Springs -a veracious and industrious historian and taken down from their lips, is different from the version given by Mr. Bancroft. On the morning of the 27th of July, 1777, Miss. McCrea and Mrs. McNeal were in the latter's house at & Fort Edward, preparing to set out for Fort Miller for greater security, as rumors had been rife of Indians in the vicinity. Their action was the result of a message sent to them early in the morning by General Arnold, who had, at the same time, despatched to their assistance Lieutenant Palmer, with some twenty men, with orders to place their furniture and effects on board a bateau and row the family down to Fort Miller. Lieutenant Palmer, having been informed by Mrs. McNeal that nearly all her household goods had been put on board the bateau, remarked that he, with the soldiers, was going up the hill as far as the old blockhouse, for the purpose of reconnoitering, but would not be long absent. The lieutenant and his party, however, not returning, Mrs. McNeal, and Jane McCrea concluded not to wait longer, but to ride on horseback to CoI. McCrea's ferry, leaving the further lading of the - boat in charge of a black servant. When the horses however, were brought up to the door, it was found that the side-saddle was missing and a boy was accordingly despatched to the house of a Mr. Gillis for the purpose of borrowing a side-saddle or a pillion. His name was Norman Morrison. It a not known what became of him, though tradition states, that being small and active, he . . . the savages and reached his house in Hartford, Washington County. (Appendix. 305). While watching for the boy's return, Mrs. McNeal, heard a discharge of fire arms, and looking out of a window, saw one of Lieutenant Palmer's soldiers running along the military road toward the fort, pursued by several Indians. The fugitive, seeing Mrs. McNeal, waved his hat as a signal of danger, and passed on; which the Indians perceiving, left off the pursuit, and came toward the house. Seeing their intention, Mrs. McNeal, screamed ; "get down cellar for your lives!" On this, Jane McCrea and the black woman, Eve, with her infant, retreated safely to the cellar, but Mrs. McNeal was caught on the stairs by the Indians, and dragged back by the hair of her head by a powerful savage, who was addressed by his companions, as the " Wyandot Panther." A search in the cellar was then begun, and the result was the discovery of Jane McCrea, who was brought up from her concealment,' the Wyandot exclaiming upon seeing her. "My squaw, me find um agin- me keep urn fast now, forever, ugh!" By this time the soldiers had arrived at the fort, the alarm drum was beaten, and a party of soldiers started in pursuit. Alarmed by the noise of the drum - which . . . So fatal was this discharge, that out of Lieutenant Palmer's party of twenty men, only eight remained, Palmer himself being killed on the spot. Judge Hay was informed by Adarn, after he became a . . . that his mother, Eve, had often described to him how she continued to conceal him and herself in an ash-bin beneath a fire-place; he luckily not awaking to cry while the search was going on around them in the cellar. This was also confirmed by the late Mrs. Judge Cowen. They, in common with Mrs. McNeal and Jenny, heard - the indians, after a hurried consultation, hastily lifted the two women upon the horses (which. had been waiting at the door to carry them to Colonel McCrea's ferry), and started off upon a run. Mrs. McNeal, however, having been placed upon the horse on which there was no saddle, slipped off and was thereupon carried in the arms of a stalwart savage. At this point, Mrs. McNeal lost sight of her companion, who, to use the language of Mrs. McNeal, "was there ahead of me, and appeared to be firmly seated on the saddle, and held the rein, while several Indians seemed to guard her - the Yandot still ascending the hill and pulling along by bridle-bit the affrighted horse upon which poor Jenny rode." The Indians, however, when half way up the hill, were nearly overtaken by the soldiers,~who, at this point, began firing by platoons. At every discharge the Indians would fall flat with Mrs. McNeal. By the time the top of the Fort Edward hill had been gained, not an Indian was harmed, and one of them remarked to Mrs. McNeal, "wagh urn no kill - urn shoot too much high for hit." During the firing, two or three of the bullets of the pursuing party hit Miss McCrea with a fatal effect, who, falling from her horse, had her scalp torn off by her guide, the Wyandot Panther, in revenge for the loss of the reward given by Burgoyne for any white prisoner -a reward considered equal to a barrel of rum. Mrs. Mc Neal, however, was carried to Griffith's house, and there kept by the Indians until the next day when she was ransomed and taken to the British camp. "I never saw Jenny afterwards," says Mrs. McNeal, nor anything that appertained to her person until my arrival in the British camp, when an aide~de-camp showed me a fresh scalp-lock which I could not. mistake, because the hair was unusually fine, luxuriant, lustrous, and dark as the wing of a raven. Till that evidence of her death was exhibited, I hoped, almost against hope, that poor Jenny had been either rescued by our pursuers (in whose army her brother, Stephen McCrea, was a surgeon), or brought by our captors to some part of the British encampment." While at Griffith's house, Mrs. McNeal endeavored to hire an Indian, named Captain Tommo, to go back and search for her companion, but neither he nor any of the Indians could be prevailed upon to venture even as far back as the brow of the Fort Edward hill to look down it for the " white squaw," as they called Jenny. The remains of Miss McCrea were gathered up by those who would have rescued her, and buried~together with those of Lieutenant Palmer - under the supervision of Colonel Morgan Lewis (then deputy quartermaster general), on the bank of the creek, three miles south of Fort Edward, and two miles south of her brother John McCrea's farm, which was across the Hudson, and directly opposite the principal encampment of General Schuyler. The only statements which, while disproving Mr. Bancroft's relation, seems to conflict with the above account of the manner of her death, is the one made by Dr. John Bartlett, a surgeon in the American army. This occurs in his report to the director~general of the hospitals of the Northern department~ dated at Moses creek at head-quarters, at ten o'clock of the night of July 27, 1777, and is as follows: I have this moment returned from Fort Edward, where a party of hen-hounds, in conjunction with their brethren, the British troops, fell upon an advanced guard, inhumanly butchered, scalped and stripped four of them, wounded two more, each in the thigh, and four more are missing. "Poor Miss Jenny McCrea, and the woman with whom she lived, were taken by the savages, led up the bill to where there was a body of British troops, and there the poor girl was shot to death in cold blood, scalped and left on the ground and the other woman not yet found. "The alarm came to camp at two P.M. I was at dinner. I immediately sent off to collect all the {regimental} surgeons, in order to take some one or two of them along with me, but the devil a bit of one was to be found." "There is neither amputating instrument, crooked needle nor tourniquet in all the camp. I have a handful of lint and two or three bandages, and that is all. What in the name of wonder I am to do in case of an attack, God only knows. Without assistance, without instruments, without anything I . . . This statement, however, was made, as is apparent on its face, hurriedly, and under great excitement. A thousand rumors were flying in the air, and there had been no time in which to sift the kernels of truth from the chafe. The surgeon is flatly contradicted by testimony, both at the time of the occurrence and afterward. General Burgoyne's famous " Bouquet order" of the lst of May, and his efforts, by appealing to their fears and love of gain, to prevent any species of cruelty on the part of his savage allies - facts well known to his officers and men - render it simply impossible to believe the statement of Surgeon Bartlett, that a "body of British troops" stood calmly by and witnessed the murder of a defenseless maiden - and a maiden, too, between whom and one of their comrades in arms, there was known to be a betrothment. Leaving, however, probabilities we have the entirely different and detailed account of Jenny's companion, Mrs. McNeal, "the woman with whom she lived," and who, as " the woman not yet found," was endeavoring - while the surgeon was penning his account - to prevail upon the Indians to go back and search for Jenny's body, left behind in their hurried flight. The entire matter, however, seems to be placed beyond all doubt, not only by the corroborative statement of the Wyandot Panther, when brought into the presence of Burgoyne -to the effect that it was not he, but the enemy, that had killed her - but by the statement of General Morgan Lewis, afterward governor of New York state. His account is thus given by the late Judge Hay~in a letter to the writer: "Several years after Mrs. Teasse had departed this-to her - eventful life, I conversed (in the hearing of Mr. David Banks, at his law-book store in New York) with Governor Lewis. Morgan Lewis then stated his distinct recollection that there were three gun-shot wounds upon Miss McCrea's corpse, which, on the day of her death, was, by direction of himself-and, in fact, under his own personal supervision- removed, together with a subaltern's remains, from a hill near Fort Edward to the Three Mile creek, where they were interred. The fact of the bullet wounds - of which I had not before heard, but which was consistent with Mrs. Teasse's statement - was to me ' confirmation strong as proof from Holy writ,' that Jane McCrea had not been killed exclusively by Indians, who would have done that deed either with a tomahawk or scalping-knife, and would not, therefore, be likely (pardon the phrase in this connection) to have wasted their ammunition. In that opinion Governor Lewis,- an experienced jurist - if not general -familiar with rules of evidence, concurred." This opinion of two eminent lawyers, as well as the statement of the Wyandot, receives, moreover, additional confirmation in the fact that when the remains of Jane McCrea, a few years since were disinterred and removed to the old Fort Edward burial ground, and consigned to Mrs. McNeal's grave, Dr. William S. Norton, a respectable and highly intelligent practitioner of physic and surgery, examined her skull, and found no marks whatever of a cut or a gash. Miss McCrea's remains have recently again been removed, for the third time to the new Union cemetery, situated half way between Fort Edward and Sandy Hill. A large slab of white marble has been placed over the spot by Miss McCrea~a niece, Miss Sarah H. Payne. (Appendix. 305). This fact, also, strongly confirms the opinion expressed --at the time by General Fraser, at the post- mortem camp investigation, that Jane McCrea was accidentally, or rather unintentionally, killed by American troops pursuing the Indians, and, as General Fraser said he had often witnessed, aiming too high, when the mark was on elevated ground, as bad occurred at Bunker's (Breed's) hill. It thus appears, first, that Jane McCrea was accident-ally killed by the Americans, and, secondly, that the American loyalist, David Jones, did not send the Indians, much less the ferocious Wyandot Panther, whom he abhorred and dreaded, on their errand. Indeed, the falsity of this latter statement (which, by the way, General Burgoyne never believed) is also susceptible of proof. The well established fact that Jones had sent Robert Ayers (father-in- law of Mr. Ransom Cook, now residing at Saratoga Springs, N. Y.), with a letter to Miss Jane McCrea asking her to visit the British encampment and accompany its commander in chief, with his lady guests, on an excursion to Lake George, clearly shows how the charge against Jones had crept into an accusation concerning misconduct and meanness; and the dialogue (also well authenticated) between two of her captors in relation to the comparative value of a white squaw - estimated at a barrel of rum - and her scalp-lock, accounts perhaps, for the story of the pretended proffered reward (a barrel of rum), alleged to have caused the quarrel among the Indians which resulted in . . . Afterwards killed at the battle of Saratoga, Oct. 7th, 1777 . . . General John Burgoyne. Appendix.313 . . . the supposed catastrophe. All who had been acquainted with David Jones knew that he was incapable of such conduct, and so expressed themselves at the time. The rumor, also, which is slightly confirmed in Burgoyne's letter to General Gates, that Miss McCrea was on her way to an appointed marriage ceremony, originated in Jones's admission that he had intended, on the arrival of his betrothed at Skenesborough (now Whitehall, N. Y.), to solicit her consent to their immediate nuptials- chaplain Brudenell officiating. But Jones explicitly denied having intimated such a desire, in a letter to Miss McCrea or otherwise, "Such," he added, '~ was, without reference to my own sense of propriety, my dear Jenny's sensibility, that the indelicacy of this supposed proposal would, even under our peculiar circumstances, have thwarted it." Indeed, this question was often a topic of conversation between General Fraser and his cousin, Mrs. MeNeal, who, with Miss Hunter (afterwards Mrs. Teasse), accompanied him from Fort Edward to Saratoga, and on his death, ii, that battle, returned to Fort Edward, after witnessing the surrender of the British general. Jones frankly admitted to his friends that in consequence of the proximity of the savages to Fort Edward, he had engaged several chiefs who had been at the Bouquet en campment, to keep an eye upon the fierce Ottawas, and especially upon the bloodthirsty Wyandots, and persuade them not to cross the Hudson but if they could not be deterred from so doing by intimations of danger from rebel scouts, his employc were to watch over the safety of his mother's residence, and also that of Colonel McCrea. For alt which, and in order the better to secure their fidelity, Jores promised a suitable but not specified reward ; meaning thereby such trinkets and weapons as were fitted for Indian traffic, and usually bestowed upon savages, whether in peace or war. But partisanship was then extremely bitter, arid eagerly seized the opportunity thus presented of magnifying a slight and false rumor into a veritable fact, which was used most successfully in stirring up the fires of hatred against loyalists in general, and the family of Jones in particular. The experiences of the last few years afford fresh illustrations of how little of partisan asseveration Is rcliable ; and there is so much of the terrible in civil war which is indisputably true, that it is not difficult, nor does it require habitual credulity, to give currency to falsehood. One, who a hundred years hence, should write a history of the late Rebellion, based upon the thousand rumors, newspaper correspondence, statements of radical and fierce politicians on one or another side, would run great risk of making serious misstatements. The more private documents are brought to light, the more clearly they reveal a similar, though even more intensified state of feeling between the tories and the whigs during the era of the Revolution. Great caution should therefore be observed, when incorporating in history any accounts as facts, which seem to have been the result of personal hatred or malice.
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