December 27, 2024 A Prisoner of War
EventsWhile this blog is dedicated to local Jefferson County history, people, places, and events, I am making an exception to bring to you Samuel Woodsum’s story. It’s pretty incredible.
Samuel Woodsum: Prisoner of War, Survivor
In the last post, I focused on a document signed by George Washington in 1782, which proclaimed Private Samuel Woodsum of the Continental Army was honorably discharged after serving a nine-month tour with a Massachusetts regiment. The document came to the Jefferson County Historical Society archives by way of John Ballard Lane, who lived here for a few years until his death in 1915.
As far as can be determined through “scratch the surface” research of Woodsum’s life and Lane’s family tree, there seems to be no other connection between the Revolutionary War soldier and Madison or Jefferson County, Indiana. Woodsum was born, raised, and is buried in Buxton, York County, Maine.
Though a native of Maine, Woodsum served in Massachusetts regiments because York County was part of that commonwealth during the Revolution. It wasn’t until 1820 that Maine attained statehood. (This is a good example of why it’s important to know timelines of the formations of states, and the counties within them, when doing early American research.)
In a matter of minutes, I was able to find Woodsum’s military records on microfilm at Ancestry.com under the “U.S. Revolutionary War Pension and Bounty-Land Warrant Applications,” the originals of which are held at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. The online version of the document includes about 26 handwritten pages, and tells that Woodsum first enlisted at Saco, York County, Massachusetts, in Spring 1775 and served under Capt. Jeremiah Hill in Col. James Scamman’s 30th Regiment and discharged at Cambridge, Massachusetts, in January 1776. With no discharge papers in hand, he then re-enlisted and served in Capt. John Lane’s company under Col. John Bradley Varnum’s regiment for three months. (Varnum went on to serve as president pro tempore of the 13th U.S. Senate from 1813-14.)
“I was stationed at Cape Ann, at the expiration of said time I enlisted again into the company and regiment last mentioned for one year, which time I served out and was stationed the greater part of said time at Long Island, from there marched to Philadelphia when we […] a few days and marched to Albany where I was discharged. Five or six months before I was discharged Capt. Jabez Lane had command of said company. About the first of June 1778 I enlisted again under Capt. Daniel Lane in Colonel [Ichabod] Alden’s Regiment for nine months and marched to Cherry Valley. Before my time expired I was taken prisoner and marched to Fort Niagara where I was detained till the next spring 1779, when I was marched to Quebec where I remained till Peace was declared between Great Britain and America.”
His testimony clarifies the handwritten note scribbled on the right side of his 1782 discharge, which described him as having been a prisoner of war; it tells us exactly where he spent his time while imprisoned. His testimony is confirmed in sworn statements also included in the application from other soldiers who served with him at Cherry Valley: John Banks of Hollis and Isaac Lane, also of Hollis, who said Woodsum was part of a scouting party when taken prisoner there.
At the age of 61 when applying for his pension, Woodsum stated that he had never yet received pension and “from my circumstances in life I stand in need of assistance from my country for support. I am a citizen of the United States.”
By all accounts, Woodsum was one of the few survivors of what is known as the Cherry Valley Massacre, an attack on the town and nearby Fort Alden by British soldiers and Seneca warriors on Nov. 11, 1778.
Though the attacking force, comprised of hundreds of British rangers and several hundred more Senecas from the Iroquois Nation, failed to take the fort, they burned the village to the ground, killed almost all of the settlers living there as well as most of the 260 men from the 7th Massachusetts Regiment garrisoned there under Col. Alden’s command.
From Americana Corner, a history blog written by historian Tom Hand, comes this description of the aftermath:
“Captain Daniel Whiting, the senior surviving militia officer, reported finding thirty-three women, children, and infants murdered and scalped amid the rubble [of the burned village] and another one hundred soldiers killed. One observer wrote, ‘I was never before spectator of such a scene of distress and horror. The first object that presented was a woman lying with her four children, two on each side of her, all scalped…There were only three men of the place killed, all the rest being women and children.’”
That included all 12 members of the John Wells family, whose home was occupied by Col. Alden as his headquarters and was in the town and not inside of the fort. Alden, who ran from the house to the fort, was killed with a tomahawk to the head just outside the gates. Alden allegedly had turned at that last moment to fire on his attackers, but his gun misfired, according to an account written in 1831 by William W. Campbell in “Annals of Tryon County; or the Border Warfare of New-York During the Revolution.”
