Flying Camps, Prison Ships, and the Battle of Long Island
I've come to realize that I really know very little about the American Revolution. I remember learning about the Minutemen at Lexington and Concord in April 1775, of course, but my knowledge of what happened during the subsequent eight years is quite limited. Happily, as I've spent time researching my family's past, I've learned a good deal more about what went on during the Revolution. Three topics that recently came to my attention are George Washington's “flying camps,” the Battle of Long Island, and the incarceration of American soldiers by the British on prison ships. Each of these played a big role in the Revolutionary War experience of my five times great-grandfather Jacob Holtzinger.
Pennsylvania Convention. 1776. In Convention for the State of Pennsylvania. 7 resolutions: ordering march of the entire State militia; excepting several western counties: and others relating to the flying camp. Philadelphia: Henry Mille. Image from the Library of Congress.
For the first year of the Revolution, the Americans were able to keep the British forces largely bottled up in Boston, where they had been sent in response to the Boston Tea Party. The British evacuation of Boston in March 1776 meant that the Americans could expect to face British incursion into the colonies, most likely in the strategically important New York City area (Coakley 2005).[1] The solution proposed to this challenge by General George Washington was to create “flying camps,” mobile units that could quickly move to different areas to reinforce the Continental Army and local militias as needed. Washington proposed this idea to the Continental Congress in April 1776 and received permission and funding to recruit 10,000 soldiers for the flying camps, primarily from Pennsylvania and Maryland (Baker 2011; Devine 1979).
My ancestor, Johann Jacob Holtzinger,[2] was born in Germany in 1750 and immigrated to America as a young man, signing the oath of allegiance in Philadelphia in 1775. That same year, he married Barbara Leikens, another German immigrant, and settled in Northampton County, Pennsylvania, north of Philadelphia. In the summer of 1776, Jacob joined the Northampton County flying camp battalion—signing up for a six-month tour of duty through December 1776—and was elected lieutenant of his predominantly German-speaking company. When he marched away with his regiment in late July or early August 1776, he left behind a pregnant wife who he wouldn’t see again for nearly two years.
Bowles, John. 1776. Plan of the attack on the provincial army on Long Island, With the draughts of New York Island, Staten Island, and the adjacent part of the continent. August 27th 1776. Image from the Library of Congress.
Jacob fought in only one battle during the Revolution. To his misfortune, it was the Battle of Long Island, fought August 27, 1776, in what is now Brooklyn, defending against a substantial British force that had landed at Staten Island some weeks earlier. The battle was a complete disaster for the Americans, who were badly outnumbered as well as poorly trained. Jacob and many of his flying camp comrades, for example, had been in the army for less than two months at this point. British General Howe’s troops were able to flank the American forces, resulting in high casualties, particularly among the inexperienced flying camp battalions, although George Washington was able to preserve the core of the regular Continental Army through a strategic retreat (Devine 1979; Onderdonk 1849; Richards 1908).
Jacob, like many of the flying camp soldiers, was captured by the British during the Battle of Long Island. As a fellow soldier explained in his widow’s pension application:
Holtzinger had the Command of thirty men, and while in an Engagement on Long Island, he and his men fought until their ammunition was Exhausted, then they were taken prisoner by the Hessians, put into a Church, and afterwards put into a prison Ship.
In fact, the Northampton County flying camp battalion was so decimated during the battle that it never re-formed and the remaining soldiers were assigned to a Berks County battalion. While the surviving flying camps limped along for another few months, during which many additional soldiers were taken captive by the British at the Battle of Fort Washington. the approach was deemed a failure and the experiment was ended (Baker 2011; Devine 1979).
Jacob spent the next two years as a prisoner of the British, at first aboard one of the derelict prison ships moored in Wallabout Bay, the current location of the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Conditions on these ships were appalling. Lack of food and poor sanitation led to the death of thousands of prisoners from starvation and disease (Richards 1908).
Darley, Felix Octavius Carr, artist, and Edward, Bookhout, engraver. 1855. Interior of the old Jersey prison ship, in the Revolutionary War. Cincinnati: H. Howe. Image from the Library of Congress.
General George Washington, writing to General Howe in January 1777, said of the prison conditions:
I am sorry I am again under the necessity of remonstrating to you on the treatment which our prisoners continue to receive in N.Y. Those who have lately been sent out, give the most shocking accounts of their barbarous usage, which their miserable emaciated countenances confirm (Onderdonk 1849, p 215).
Jacob was, in many ways, one of the lucky ones. He survived a year aboard the prison ship and was paroled on September 5, 1777, which allowed him some freedom although he had to remain in New York. On July 5, 1778, he was exchanged for a British lieutenant and returned home to Pennsylvania to see his wife and meet his first child, a daughter who was by now nearly 18 months old. As a revolutionary war veteran, he was able to apply for a grant of 300 acres of land in Bedford County, Pennsylvania, which he sold in order to move further west to Westmoreland County. He and his wife had eight more children, and he died in 1825 at the age of 75.
A coda to this story helps explain how I know so much about Jacob’s experiences in the war. His wife Barbara outlived him by nearly 25 years and in May 1846, at the age of 87, applied for a pension as the widow of a revolutionary soldier. Her pension application contains a wealth of information, largely because she had great difficulty persuading the government that she was entitled to the pension. Her original application was lost—requiring all of the information to be resubmitted—and then rediscovered some time later. She struggled to prove her marriage, finally managing to do so through a combination of family Bible records and the testimony of friends and neighbors.
Where her real difficulties began, though, was in trying to prove that Jacob had served in a role that made her eligible for a pension. His pay certificate, provided by to the pension office by the Pennsylvania Auditor General's Office, stated that he had served in the militia, which in the eyes of the pension office meant that he couldn’t have served two years as his widow claimed, and in any case, they noted, she hadn’t proved that the Jacob Holzinger who received the back pay was actually her husband. [3] After many depositions, testimony from several expert witnesses, a testy letter from the Pennsylvania Auditor General's Office, and the involvement of two U.S. Representatives, the pension office finally conceded and, in August 1848, awarded Barbara a pension of $320 per year. I hope this money made her more comfortable until her death in October 1849 at the age of 90.
[1] The British believed that gaining control of the Hudson River would enable them to separate rebellious New England from the rest of the American colonies (Coakley 2005).
[2] Like many German immigrants, Jacob was always called by his middle name. His last name also appears, at various times as Holzinger, Holsinger, Holtzer, and Holzer.
[3] This confusion between the flying camps and the militia was common, even during the Revolution, but it is clear that George Washington and his senior officers saw the flying camps as part of the regular army (Devine 1979).
Works Cited
Baker, Richard Lee. 2011. “Villainy and Madness” Washington’s Flying Camp. Baltimore, MD: Clearfield.
Coakley, Robert. W. 2005. “The American Revolution, First Phase.” American Military History Volume 1: The United States Army and the Forging of a Nation, 1775–1917. Richard W. Stewart, Ed. Washington, DC: United States Army Center of Military History.
Devine, Francis E. 1979. “The Pennsylvania Flying Camp, July - November, 1776.” Pennsylvania History 46 (1): 59-78.
Onderdonk, Henry, Jr. 1849. Revolutionary Incidents of Suffolk and Kings Counties; with an Account of the Battle of Long Island and the British Prisons and Prison Ships at New York. New York: Leavitt and Company.
Richards, Henry Melchior Muhlenberg. 1908. The Pennsylvania-German in the Revolutionary War 1775-1783. Lancaster, PA: The Pennsylvania-German Society.