On this day 250 years ago in New York, the Continental Army pulled back from its entrenchments in White Plains and the British Army occupied the American works. This movement brought the British and Hessians within artillery range of the new American lines and the two armies traded cannon fire. Maj. Gen. Major-General William Heath writing in the third person explained the action that day:
In the morning, the British advanced, with a number of field-pieces, to the north of the road near late headquarters… and commenced a furious cannonade on General Heath’s division, which was nobly returned by Captain-Lieutenant Bryant and Lieutenant Jackson, of the artillery.
Heath added that after the Americans opened fire with their cannon, the British
made off with their field-pieces as fast as their horses could draw them. A shot from the American cannon, at this place, took off the head of a Hessian artilleryman. They also left one of the artillery horses dead on the field.
. . .
The two armies lay looking at each other, and within long cannon-shot. In the night time the British lighted up a vast number of fires, the weather growing pretty cold. These fires, some on the level ground, some at the foot of the hills, and at all distances to their brows… seemed to the eye to mix with the stars, and to be of different magnitudes. The American side, doubtless, exhibited to them a similar appearance.
In all the British lost at least three men and the Hessians six men killed, plus other British and Hessians were wounded that day. In contrast, the Americans lost one man killed in Levi Paulding’s New York militia regiment and two other New Yorker militiamen were wounded. As usual, I could not find the names of the Americans killed and wounded in the skirmish that day.
The Hessian soldier who lost his head in the American cannonade was supposedly an inspiration for the Legend of Sleep Hollow by Washington Irving. Although there is no proof the headless Hessian was buried in the Old Dutch Burying Ground in Sleepy Hollow, that cemetery contains the graves of many Continental Army and New York militia soldiers.
Sources: https://www.facebook.com/HistoriaObscurum/posts/on-november-1-1776-continental-army-major-general-william-heath-noted-in-his-jou/417241485712183/; https://miniawi.blogspot.com/2011/11/november-1-1776.html; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Dutch_Church_of_Sleepy_Hollow#Old_Dutch_Burying_Ground
On this day 250 years ago in Williamsburg, Thomas Jefferson introduced in the Virginia Assembly a “Petition of the Descenters from the Church of England, and others, in the Counties of Abemarle and Amherst” lamenting “the great Iniquity, contained in the Establishing of any one religious Denomination of People worshiping the same God, and all strugling in the same common Cause, in preference to all others,” and asserting
that to put every religious Denomination on an equal footing, to be supported by themselves independent one of another, would not only be a reasonable and just Mode of Goverment, but, would certainly have an happy Influence, on the greater Purity of the several Churches; on their more free and friendly Intercourse with each other; on suppressing any thing like Feuds, and Animosities amongst the People, and on attaching all, of every Denomination to Goverment.
Source: “Petition of Dissenters in Albemarle and Amherst Counties, [before 1 November 1776],” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-01-02-0233. [Original source: The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 1, 1760–1776, ed. Julian P. Boyd. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1950, pp. 586–589.]
