Jonathan and Elizabeth Ross: Patriots, Part 1

   With Memorial Day having come and gone and Independence Day here before we know it, I am mulling the subject of “patriotism.” We often call our rebel ancestors who fought in the Revolutionary War “patriots,” but what exactly is imbedded in that word?  In past generations we tended to consider patriots primarily as male soldiers (perhaps with a few women of letters, Abigail Adams and Mercy Otis Warren), and we placed them on pedestals. They became examples of public morality – exalted subjects for our children and grandchildren to admire and draw inspiration. The reality is sometimes more grey, but also much more richly textured. Patriotism also extended well beyond the soldiers to their wives and extended families.

    The story of my fifth-great grandparents, Jonathan Ross and his wife Elizabeth (___) of Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, serve as examples of this idea. Jonathan was born about 1728, possibly in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, but there is no first-hand evidence of his parentage.[i] He later lived on a farm in Tyrone Township, Cumberland County, in a part that later became Perry County. Land records show that on 3 February 1762, he purchased 150 acres and was taxed on that parcel in 1763 and again in 1767.[ii]

        The historical record offers few glimpses of his personality. In April 1767, he was arrested and prosecuted, along with David Beard, for assault and battery in the Cumberland County Court of Quarter Sessions.[iii] Thomas Ross, perhaps his brother, posted bail on 7 April,[iv] but the matter does not seem to have been continued, perhaps because the parties agreed to settle.[v] Later, Jonathan held several minor offices and positions in Tyrone Township, including fence viewer,[vi] superintendent of roads,[vii] and grand juror.[viii]

    At the outbreak of the Revolution, Jonathan enlisted as a Private in the Cumberland County Militia.[ix] Little is known about the activities of his unit, but in the spring of 1778, it, along with that of Bucks County, came under the command of the American General John Lacey, who had orders from General Washington to interfere with the flow of supplies into British-held Philadelphia. Through attrition from expired terms of enlistment, the Cumberland force was reduced to just sixty men, when they gathered on the morning of 1 May 1778, at Crooked Billet Tavern, about fifteen miles northeast of Philadelphia.[x] Lacey’s forces were surrounded by a much larger detachment of 400 British Light Artillery commanded by the British Lt. Col. Robert Abernathy, supported by 300 Queen’s Rangers commanded by Major John Graves Simcoe. A brief exchange ensued as Lacey withdrew into a nearby woods. The American forces managed to kill nine British soldiers but sustained 26 losses of their own. The British then committed several atrocities on the captured and wounded men.

    An anonymous diarist wrote in an account for the New York Journal newspaper:

The alarm was so sudden [that] we had scarcely time to mount our horses before the enemy was within musket shot of our quarters. We observed a party in our rear had got into houses and behind fences; their numbers appearing nearly equal to ours, we did not think it advisable to attack them in that situation…Our people behaved well; our loss is upwards of thirty killed and wounded. Some were butchered in a manner the most brutal savages could not equal; even while living, some were thrown into buckwheat straw, and the straw set on fire; the clothes were burnt on others, and scarcely one without a dozen wounds with bayonets and cutlasses.[xi]

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[i] Jonathan was aged “about 50” at the time of his death in 1778, according to a petition made by his widow, Elizabeth, to the Orphan’s Court of Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, on 21 February 1787. See Orphan’s Court Records of Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, 21 February 1787, volume 3, page 18. Some researchers have speculated that he was a son of John Ross of Donegal Township, Lancaster County, but more research is needed to prove this assertion.

[ii] History of that Part of the Susquehanna and Juniata Valleys Embraced in the Counties of Mifflin, Juniata, Perry, Union, and Snyder (Philadelphia: Everts, Peck, & Richards, 1886), 2: 963, 968. See also Merri Lou Scribner Schaumann, Tax Lists – Cumberland county, Pennsylvania, 1750, 1751, 1752, 1753, 1762, 1763, 1764, 1765, 1766, 1767 (Dover, PA: Merri Lou Scribner Schaumann, 1988), 51, 135.

[iii] Merri Lou Scribner Schaumann, Indictments 1750-1800, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania (Dover, PA: Merri Lou Scribner Schaumann, 1989), 28, citing original Court Record page 297.

[iv] Ibid., 29, citing original Court Record page 315.

[v] Diane E. Greene, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania Quarter Session Dockets, 1750-1785 (Baltimore: Clearfield, 2000), 100, citing original page 133.

[vi] Ibid, 25 March 1789, 122, citing original pages 41-42.

[vii] Ibid., 20 March 1770, 136, citing original pages 81-82.

[viii] Ibid., 18 January 1774, 235, citing original page 106.

[ix] Thomas Lynch Montgomery, comp, Pennsylvania Archives (Harrisburg, PA: Harrisburg Publishing, 1906), 5^th series, 6: 342, 361.

[x] Mark Mayo Boatner, Encyclopedia of the American Revolution (New York: David McKay Co., 1966), 309.

[xi] Anonymous diarist quoted in Frank Moore, comp., Diary of the American Revolution, 1775-1781 (New York: Washington Square Press, 1967), 293-294.