On this day 250 years ago, Dr. John Connolly arrived in Portsmouth, Virginia where Royal Governor Dunmore commissioned him as a Lieutenant Colonel. Connolly had been Dunmore’s agent in the Fort Pitt area the previous year and had participated in Dunmore’s War against the Shawnee and Mingo. Connolly proposed to Dunmore a plan for Connolly to return to Fort Pitt where he would raise a force of Indians and Loyalists to seize Fort Pitt and Cumberland, Maryland then march down the Potomac River to meet Dunmore at Alexandria, Virginia.

On that same day, William Cowley, who had been an aide to Connolly and had traveled with Connolly to meet General Gage in Boston, disclosed Connolly’s plot to General Washington and his staff in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Cowley provided Washington a letter that declared that

a real Friend to Liberty would join in my Sentiments to stop such outragious Actions & Rebellious Works which are going to be put into Execution—please your Excellency I lived along with Major John Connelly of Fort Pitt have done this two years—last July he was obliged to retire from Fort Pitt the Inhabitants had a suspicion of his being an Enemy to his Country . . . the Major . . . just after we left Boston he ask’d me if I was willing to go with him into the Indian Country as he had been with General Gage to get a Commission & Orders to go into the Indian Countrys to raise the Indians & the French  . . .  he intends to fall upon is Fort Pitt & to take That & then he says that he thinks that most part of that Quarter will join him as he says he has Orders to give them three hundred Acres of Land to each Man that will join him—And another Scheme he told me he was going to put into Execution that is in regard to Convicts & indentured Servants to set them at their Liberty & to give them Land to join him & when he has taken Fort Pitt he intends to proceed down for Alexandria & there he is to be reinforced by Lord Dunmore & some men of War & then to sweep all the Country before him 

General Washington on that same day wrote to John Hancock, President of the Continental Congress in Philadelphia and his cousin Lund Washington at Mount Vernon, who passed the information on to George Mason of the Fairfax Committee of Safety. Mason in turn alerted the Virginia and Maryland Committees of Safety to Dunmore’s plans. By the end of the month local committees of safety in Virginia were on the lookout for Connolly.

“William Cowley to George Washington, 30 September–12 October 1775,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-02-02-0063. [Original source: The Papers of George Washington, Revolutionary War Series, vol. 2, 16 September 1775 – 31 December 1775, ed. Philander D. Chase. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1987, pp. 67–69.]; “George Washington to John Hancock, 12 October 1775,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-02-02-0140-0001. [Original source: The Papers of George Washington, Revolutionary War Series, vol. 2, 16 September 1775 – 31 December 1775, ed. Philander D. Chase. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1987, pp. 146–150.]

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The Connolly Plot

Also on this day 250 years ago in Philadelphia, John Adams forwarded to his close friend James Warren, President of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress a “Proposal Regarding the Procurement of Powder” by sending vessels to Antigua, Montserrat, Nevis, St. Kitts, St. Martins and St. Eustatius in the West Indies.

Sources: “Enclosure: A Proposal Regarding the Procurement of Powder, 12 October 1775,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/06-03-02-0100-0002. [Original source: The Adams Papers, Papers of John Adams, vol. 3, May 1775 – January 1776, ed. Robert J. Taylor. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979, pp. 197–198.]

And on this day 250 years ago in Topsham, in the District of Maine, Massachusetts, Sarah Fulton, Alenar Clarke, Jannet Berry, and Hannah Harvard wrote to General Washington:

We your humble Petitioners beg Leave to lay our pitiful Circumstances before you & intreat your Favour. we would hope from your Elevated Station & Goodness that something may be done in our Favour. In the Month of August in the present Year, Messiers Robert Fulton, Robert Clarke, Joseph Berry, Thomas Harvard, our Husbands, with John Patten, William Patten & David Fouke young Men, went in a Sloop eastward as far as St Mary’s Bay, in the Province of Nova-Scotia, to get food Hay for themselves & were unfortunately taken by two Sloops of War, Cap. Douson, Cap. Graves, being Commanders of them, & sent them to Boston —We have, some of us, large Families of Young Children & are unable to help ourselves or them—our Friends & Neighbors, tho’ never so willing, can afford us but little Relief—by reason of the great Scarcity of Provisions occasion’d by the Drought, the Sterility of the Land, & Trade being stopped—We would humbly Intreat you, honor’d Sir, to give our Petitions a gracious hearing; & if you please, upon the Redemption of Captives to favor the above mention’d Persons, it will Cause our Hearts to sing for Joy.

We should today remember the suffering of not just the crew of the Merry Meeting imprisoned for their service to America but their wives and families who also suffered on behalf of American liberty.

Source: “Sarah Fulton, Alenar Clarke, Jannet Berry, and Hannah Harvard to George Washington, 12 October 1775,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-02-02-0139. [Original source: The Papers of George Washington, Revolutionary War Series, vol. 2, 16 September 1775 – 31 December 1775, ed. Philander D. Chase. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1987, pp. 145–146.]