Private John Vincent's One Battle...Maybe

     In last week's blog I lamented the lack of a source to provide me a definitive answer as to which general my fourth-great-grandfather John Vincent served under during his all too short stint in the US Infantry during the War of 1812?  Was it Wilkinson or Hampton, they being the two major generals in the Plattsburgh area?  My guess was Hampton and I guessed right.  

     After a search on JSTOR* I found an article which included the journal kept by General George Izard during the fall and spring of 1813/1814.  Izard joined General Hampton's division in August of 1813, the same month John Vincent joined the army.  It doesn't get much better than an eyewitness account from grandpa's commanding general!  His journal literally spelled it out for me, General Izard noted in an entry on 16 October 1813, "...my brigade, the 2nd, composed of the 10th, 29th, 30th and 31st regiments of Infantry."  John's enlistment record and his widow's pension application both identified his regiment as the 29th Infantry, now I was making progress.

     From the articles and books I've found and now the journal, I have a fair idea of what John's war looked like.  He enlisted on 10 August 1813, by that time the US Army had moved it's headquarters from Plattsburgh, New York to Burlington, Vermont on the opposite shore of Lake Champlain.

      On October 21st, 1813 General Izard marched from Chateauguay Four Corners to Fort Hickory where he, "...found the infantry and moved into the woods".  It would appear infantryman John Vincent was at Fort Hickory in mid October, which was not really much of a fort.  

     It was instead a blockhouse, a stout building with small apertures through which soldiers inside could fire at attackers in relative safety from return fire.  With General Izard's arrival, the division would now march down the Chateauguay River and cross into Canada.  On the 26th of October the Americans came face to face with Canadian soldiers and their Native American allies on the north bank of the river.  The general's journal gives the positions the 29th took during the ensuing fight and other details.  Unless he was ill on that day, John Vincent fought in that battle.  It did not go well.  Mistakenly believing they were outnumbered the US forces retreated and by November 2nd were encamped back at Four Corners.

     Izard's journal entry on 7 November remarks that a number of sick men were sent to Plattsburgh and that of 15 November notes Izard had been ordered to Plattsburgh to settle his men into winter quarters, "We march with a snow storm at our back. Very cold".  Several entries in the journal refer to the brutal northern winter and rampant sickness in the ranks. The following day's entry recounts selecting the sick to be sent to Burlington which possessed a large hospital.  Could one of those men have been John Vincent?  His Army record states he was sick at Burlington when muster was taken there on December 31st.

     I have to wonder why any soldiers were sent to Burlington?  By the time the men to be sent there were chosen, the division was  halfway to Plattsburgh, why send them to Burlington across the lake, a much further distance?

     While I don't know what illness took John's life, dysentery, brought on by bad food, bad water, and bad hygiene, was one of the most common causes of death during the war.  Another fourth-great-grandfather of mine, Thomas Garner, also fought in the War of 1812 and although he survived his bout with the disease, it left him with permanently damaged bowels.  Doctors of the time had no idea how to treat infectious diseases nor did they understand the mechanism through which they were transmitted. 

     John's last days must have been miserable. Sick, cold and many miles from his loved ones, he died at Plattsburgh on February 27, 1814, only six months after enlisting.  Peter Dox, who was also from Saratoga County, testified on behalf of the Widow Vincent for her pension application and told the court he cared for John during his illness and helped to bury him there at Plattsburgh.  John is quite probably among the one hundred and thirty-six unknown solders who were discovered during excavations at the post over the years.  They are honored by a monument in the north corner of the cemetery, but it saddens me to think he died such a lonely death and now rests in obscurity.


*JSTOR is a worthwhile resource for scholarly articles that can be searched and read, (six articles per month), for simply registering. For a fee you get unlimited use and the ability to download text.