Revolutionary Soldier

I thought this would be a fitting post for #throwbackthursday. The image is rather eerie to me; maybe it’s the age. Below is a little history about the Soldier. I think this is a pretty cool find! Enjoy.

George Fishley was a soldier in the Continental army. When the British army evacuated Philadelphia and raced toward New York City, his unit participated in the Battle of Monmouth. Later he was part the genocidal attack on Indians who had sided with the British, a march led by General John Sullivan through “Indian country,” parts of New York and Pennsylvania. Fishley’s regiment, the Third New Hampshire, was in the midst of the campaign’s only contested battle. After the Battle of Chemung, August 28, 1779, the Americans had devastated forty Indian towns and burned their crops. Later Fishley served on a privateer — a private ship licensed to prey on enemy shipping — and was captured by the British. Fishley was a famous character after the war in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where he lived. He was known as “the last of our cocked hats” — Continental soldiers wore tall, wide, Napoleonic-looking headgear with cockades. He marched in parades wearing the hat, which his obituary said “almost vied in years with the wearer.” Fishley is wearing the hat in the daguerreotype,  taken in 1850 when he was 90 years old.

Birth: Jun. 11, 1760, USA
Death: Dec. 26, 1850, USA

George Fishley, entered the Continental Army in 1777, under Gen. Poor and Col. Dearborn. He served three years and was among the men who marched near Valley Forge wearing no shoes or stockings. He was at Monmouth, the New Jersey confrontation led by George Washington. After the Revolution, he served aboard a privateer, was captured and imprisoned in Halifax. He later commanded a coaster shipping between Portsmouth and Boston. He was one of the few surviving veterans to attend the opening of the Bunker Hill Monument in Boston in 1843. He commanded a miniature ship that was transported from Portsmouth inland to Concord, NH. He was among the three longest-surviving Revolutionary War veterans in Portsmouth, NH. He was among hundreds of elderly New England pensioners who applied to an early veteran’s relief program sponsored by the federal government in 1840.

via: find a grave

Read more: http://lightbox.time.com/2013/07/03/faces-of-the-american-revolution/#ixzz2YBPCEOa8

Source: http://lightbox.time.com/2013/07/03/faces-of-the-american-revolution/?iid=lb-gal-viewagn#4