Andrew 1779
Age 24-25
Feb 1 1779 transferred
to Captain Holmes 1st Regiment.
Muster roll date Mar 1779
and April 1779 is at Elizabethtown, New Jersey.
Jul 3 1779 is listed at
Wyoming
Daughter Elizabeth born 3
Sep 1779
1 Oct 1779 is listed as
Easton, Pennsylvania
8 Nov 1779 is listed at
Scotch Plains
Led by Major General John Sullivan and
Brigadier General James
Clinton, the expedition was conducted during the summer of 1779,
beginning June 18 when the army marched from Easton, Pennsylvania, to October 3 when it
abandoned Fort Sullivan, built at Tioga, to return to George
Washington's main camp in New Jersey. While the campaign had only one
major battle, at Newtown (since the tribes evacuated ahead of the
large military force) along the Chemung
River in
western New
York, the expedition severely damaged the Iroquois nations'
economies by burning their crops, villages, and chattels, thus ruining the
Iroquois technological infrastructure . With the Amerindians' shelter gone and
food supplies destroyed, thereafter the strength of the Iroquois Confederacy
was broken. The death toll from exposure and starvation dwarfed the casualties
received in the Battle
of Newtown, in which about 1,000 Iroquois and Loyalists were decisively
defeated by an army of 3,200 Continental soldiers.
Sullivan's army carried out a scorched
earth campaign,
methodically destroying at least forty Iroquois villages throughout the Finger
Lakes region
of western New York, to put an end to Iroquois and Loyalist attacks against
American settlements as had occurred the previous year of 1778 such as the Cobleskill, Wyoming
Valley and Cherry Valley massacres.
The survivors fled to British regions in Canada and the Niagara Falls and
Buffalo areas.[1] The devastation created great hardships for
the thousands of Iroquois refugees who fled the region to shelter under British
military protection outside Fort
Niagara that
winter, and many starved or froze to death, despite strenuous attempts by the
British authorities to import food and provide shelter via their limited
resources.[citation needed]
The Sullivan Expedition devastated the Iroquois crops and towns
and left them dependent upon the mercy of the British for the harsh winter of
1779. With the Iroquois population decimated by disease and battle, the Indian
morale never fully recovered, and the Iroquois thereafter mostly limited their
incursions into the new United States to isolated hunting parties, the main
populations having permanently migrated north of the border.[citation needed]
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