To All Brave, Healthy, Able Bodied and Well Disposed Young Men, in this Vicinity, Who have any Inclination to Join the Troops now Raisng under General Hand, at Fort Pitt, for the Defence of the Liberties & Independence of the United States against the Hostile Designs of Foreign Enemies
TAKE NOTICE,
that Saturday, July Fourth, at Pricketts Fort, Monongalia County, at the confluence of the Monongahela River & Pricketts Creek, attendance will be given by Captain Springer of the Monongalia County militia, commanded by Colonel Zacquill Morgan, for purpose of receiving the enrollment of such youth of spirit, as may be willing to enter into this HONOURABLE service.
The ENCOURAGEMENT at this time, to enlist, is truly liberal & generous, namely, a bounty of TWELVE dollars a year in GOLD & SILVER money on account of pay, the whole of which the soldier may lay up for himself & friends, as all articles proper for his subsistence & comfort are provided by law, without any expence to him.
Those who may favour this recruiting party with their attendance as above, will have an opportunity of hearing & seeing, in a more particular manner, the great advantages which these brave men will have, who shall embrace this opportunity of spending a few happy years in viewing the different parts of this beautiful continent, in the honourable & truly respectable character of a soldier, after which, he may, if he pleases, return home to his friends, with his pockets FULL of money & his head COVERED with laurels.
GOD SAVE THE UNITED STATES
What was the original source citation for this document?
Gen. Hand visited the fort on 4 Jul 1777?
It doesn’t say General Hand will be at the fort. It says his recruiter will be there. The poster is a re-creation based on historical events. Its purpose was to announce a small re-enactment of the raising of a militia which we held at the present-day fort to celebrate the Fourth of July. The actual historical raising of volunteers probably took place at Kern’s Fort (20 miles north in Morgantown) in August of 1777 when 500 militiamen (Monongalia County militia under Zackquill Morgan) were raised to take part in a campaign against the Shawnee and other tribes in Ohio, led by Gen Hand. Included in that number were militiamen from Pricketts Fort led by Captain Springer. En route to Fort Pitt, the Mon County militia was diverted to put down a Tory uprising in Washington County, Pennsylvania. The uprising was put down, but it left Gen Hand with too few militiamen to carry out his expedition. These events are dicussed in John Boback’s PRICKETTS FORT: A BASTION IN THE WILDERNESS (Fairmont, WV: Pricketts Fort Memorial Foundation, 2005). His sources are the PRICKETTS FORT MILITIA FILE kept in the PRICKETTS FORT MEMORIAL FOUNDATION archive collection and Thwaites & Kellogg, FRONTIER DEFENSE ON THE UPPER OHIO, 1777-1778, 1912), pp 43-44.
So what about the Company raised by Captain Zackquill Morgan for which Captain Morgan was paid for 174 days of service on 4 Oct 1774?
Did his Company join the march of Lord Dunmore’s Northern Division to Camp Charlotte where the treaty was signed which ended Dunmore’s War on about 30 Oct 1774?
The soldier’s in Dunmore’s Division were discharged upon their return to Fort Gower on Hocking Creek on 5 Nov 1774.
That’s correct. They were part of Dunmore’s Northern Force in 1774. (See “Backwoods Virginians and the First Declaration of Independence” at http://prickettsfort.wordpress.com/2010/06/27/backwoods-virginians-and-the-first-declaration-of-independence-2/ )
In ’74 they were in the pay of the British Army to fight the Mingo & Shawnee. In ’77 they were in the pay of the Continental Army to fight the Tories.