American Rifle - Alexander Rose [227]
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5. Pennsylvania Packet, no. 201, August 28, 1775, quoted in Dillin, Kentucky Rifle, p. 82.
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6. Ibid.; see also “Extract of Letter to Gentleman,” in Force, American Archives, III, col. 2.
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7. See his entry in L. Edward Purcell, ed., Who Was Who in the American Revolution (New York: Facts on File, 1993). Thomas Jefferson alludes to an accusation against Cresap in his Notes on the State of Virginia (Richmond: J.W. Randolph, 1853), p. 68, but of this particular crime Cresap is today generally regarded as being (in Purcell’s careful words) “relatively innocent.” There is a lengthy appendix on the Cresap affair printed in the 1853 edition, “Relative to the Murder of Logan’s family,” no. 4, pp. 240–69.
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8. W. C. Ford et al., eds., Journal of the Continental Congress, 1774–1789 (Washington, D.C., 1904–37), p. 2:89.
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9. “Extract of Letter to Gentleman,” in Force, American Archives, III, col. 2. “All who go out to war under him do not only pay the most willing obedience to him as their commander, but in every instance of distress look up to him as their friend or father. A great part of his time was spent in listening to and relieving their wants, without any apparent sense of fatigue and trouble.”
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10. D. Higginbotham, Daniel Morgan, Revolutionary Rifleman (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1961), p. 23.
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11. Leaving his family behind, Harrower shipped out to America on January 26, 1774, and died of an unknown disease in 1776. Harrower to James Craigie, August 28, 1775, printed in J. Harrower, “Diary of John Harrower, 1773–1776,” American Historical Review 6, no. 1 (1900), p. 100.
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12. H. L. Peterson, Arms and Armor in Colonial America, 1526–1783 (Harrisburg, Pa.: Stackpole, 1956), p. 196. There is some dissension on the number of companies authorized. W. F. Dunaway, The Scots-Irish of Colonial Pennsylvania (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1944), pp. 160–61, says nine were raised in Pennsylvania. Thus in early 1776 the new Eighth Virginia Regiment was reserved for German-Americans from the outlying Shenandoah Valley, and it was, uniquely, permitted to raise as many rifle companies as it liked. R. K. Wright, The Continental Army (Washington, D.C.: Center of Military History, 1983), p. 70.
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13. See note 57, attached to George Washington’s letter to Continental Congress, September 21, 1775. Also the Pennsylvania Gazette, August 23, 1775, printed a report dated August 10 noting that “Col. Thompson of the Pennsylvania regiment of riflemen, and a number of young gentlemen, volunteers, from Philadelphia, are arrived. Also Captain Morgan’s company in three 3 weeks from Virginia, being 600 miles.”
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14. General orders, August 13, 1776.
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15. Higginbotham, Daniel Morgan, p. 93.
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16. J. W. Wright, “Some Notes on the Continental Army,” William & Mary Quarterly, 2nd ser., 11, no. 2 (1931), p. 97;Wright, Continental Army, p. 125.
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17. Wright, “Some Notes on the Continental Army,” p. 93.
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18. Ibid., pp. 86–91.
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19. Higginbotham, Daniel Morgan, p. 93.
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20. A breechclout was a yard of cloth about eight or nine inches wide, ornamented with embroidery on