Talk:Lochry's Defeat

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Contents

[edit] Thank you...

... for making this! The type and quality of work that gets done on Wikipedia never ceases to amaze me! mstroeck 09:02, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, that's very nice of you to say. —Kevin 15:21, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Notes from a descendant of a participant

Two additional points. In Allan Eckert's "Dark and Bloody River," he states that my ancestor, Maj. Charles Cracraft, lured the Lochry party to the shore. Naturally, I am pleased to see there is a viable alternative explanation. I have an old, typed transcript of an interview with my namesake, Maj Chs. Cracraft's son, copied from the Draper Collection, a series of researches on incidents of the era (see below) that agrees with the version listed here. Second, William, stated that his father had experience, as did many frontiersman, in curing wounds, and was instrumental in curing Chief Joe Brandt's sword cut, which William had been told by his father was due to Brandt's flourishing the sword carelessly. Certainly, it seems unlikely Brandt would have survived a fight with Girty as the three brothers were deadly fighters, according to Eckert's books.

My ancestor, a prisoner before the slaughter began, fully expected to be killed with the rest, but was saved when Brandt told him, "see, you will not all be killed, we are not savages." My ancestor spent some years as prisoner, partly in Detroit, and upon being returned at the end of the war, was offered payment for his service time in Continental script, but refused it, saying what he did was for his country and he expected no payment.

Draper Collection, according to the Wisconson Historical Society website, "covers primarily the period between the French and Indian War and the War of 1812 (ca. 1755-1815). The geographic concentration is on what Draper and his contemporaries called the "Trans-Allegheny West," which included the western Carolinas and Virginia, some portions of Georgia and Alabama, the entire Ohio River valley, and parts of the Mississippi River valley." http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/military/draper/. —Preceding unsigned comment added by User:Billcracraft (talk • contribs)

[edit] Masterful work

Kevin, So well done. I think its fantastic looking. I will be checking it for FA. --Blue Tie 00:32, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Questions about the article

  1. I was under the impression that there was research on the whereabouts for Brandt and he was elsewhere at this time. Are you aware of this and do you have good evidence that he was directly involved? --Blue Tie 00:53, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
  2. I notice that you mention the attacks on the Ohio Valley border by the indians but it does not seem to come across clearly that these attacks were a big motivator for the men who joined the expedition. Maybe it wasn't that big a deal. But it seems to me that the histories suggest it was. Maybe both ways -- wanted to go and fight.. wanted to stay home and defend family. --Blue Tie 00:59, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
  3. Is there a confusion on the two men who were sent out to hunt? I have seen sources that say it was Captain Shannon who sent them out (and it might have been 3 of them). One of those guys stepped on his knife and died. I think the other 1 or 2 made it home. --Blue Tie 01:04, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
  4. I think the deserters were Lt. Baker and company. --Blue Tie 01:05, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
  5. I have been doing research on the names and ages and survivorship of the members of Lochrey's company. Should this be added to your article? Maybe it is too much but I do not think it belongs on Archibald Lochry either. (I am not finished with the research yet). If it should be added, I would want you to add it, because I suspect you have a better eye and gift for attractive format. --Blue Tie 01:11, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
  6. You have referenced several interesting works. I am familiar with one of them. But not with most. However, almost none of your references include links on the web. I am wondering if you would like it if matching citations or on-line books were found that had similar information and were added to your footnotes. --Blue Tie 01:13, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the comments and compliments. Here are my replies:
  1. Historians 100 years ago were skeptical about Brant being involved -- and rightly so, since why would a Mohawk lead Ohio Indians in Indiana? In fact, William Stone's 1838 biography of Brant doesn't mention Lochry's Defeat at all. In the 20th century, historians found documents in British archives which showed that Brant had been briefly transferred to the Ohio Country. If you read the first letter linked in the "published primary sources" section, you'll see that he even sent a letter from the battle site a few days before the battle. There's no longer any doubt he was there.
  2. That's a fair point -- I think it's clear that Lochry himself was involved in order to end Indian raids, but I don't specifically say the same for his men. I'll make an adjustment there.
  3. According to Lt. Anderson's journal, Shannon left on 16 August with 7 men, and the next day Lochry sent out the two hunters who never returned. On 20 August, 2 of Shannon's men (not the vanished hunters) made it back to Lochry's party, and reported the story about them getting split up from Shannon, and the sergeant stepping on his knife. I believe my sources agree with Anderson's journal on this sequence of events.
  4. Yes, Lt. Baker & company were the deserters. (I don't mention him by name in the article because it's probably not needed, and I don't think any of the scholarly sources mention him either.) An interesting possibility, mentioned in Chris McHenry's self-published book but apparently never explored by academic historians, is that the deserters were under arrest (i.e. disarmed and tied up) when the battle took place. Which meant that Lochry had fewer gunmen in the battle than the number of killed & captured (101) would indicate. Personally I think it likely he had just over 70 gunmen in action (after all, Cracraft's and Shannon's men were already in captivity, and Baker's men were likely disarmed), but since no historian has published a careful examination of this matter, I must adhere to Wikipedia policy and not include my own conclusions.
  5. I've been following your work on the list of men in the Archibald Lochry article. This is indeed a topic that should be researched: the primary materials are out there to assemble a detailed roster, corrected from the imperfect lists prepared at the time, but apparently no one has done all of the needed analysis. Because of WP:NOR, we cannot do it here, alas. Battle articles on Wikipedia don't list names of the participants, as far as I've seen, so we probably would not publish the list on Wikipedia anyway. That's okay -- the only people who would want to see a complete roster of obscure names are genealogists and local history buffs, and they have access to the same sources we do.
  6. Depends on the source. I use online history sources with caution, because few of them meet WP:RS. Genealogy websites, which are assembled by amateur enthusiasts (like myself), cannot be used. I made an exception here for Fisher Family Genealogy because, God bless them, they went so far as to include PDF scans of the original sources, and so I linked to them as a reliable convenience link. I looked at a number of other online sources which I decided did not meet Wikipedia standards for inclusion. If you know some that do, let's discuss them and link to them.
Thanks again for the comments. —Kevin 06:06, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
Your answers are as professional as the article you created.
I will be frank about the reasons that I was including the names of the troops: I was hoping that people searching for ancestors would find the names in google and then get to the article and have that interesting info for their records. But you are right, it probably does not really belong. :-( But not because of WP:RS. If you look that over really carefully you can see it does not forbid this sort of thing if you are not advancing a particular POV. That is the key.
As for the links, I agree with almost everything you say there. I do not want to degrade your article with links to bad sites. But sometimes there are sites or areas that quote the same material as what you found. Not necessarily being that same source but a quote from it. I thought that perhaps with the original cite and a link to other places that mirror or quote, it might be ok. But your current cites are fine... I was not complaining. Just looking for greater accessability for web users.
All in all, looks like I had nothing to add! --Blue Tie 06:28, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Why location was changed and should be

I hope I am doing this right, im new to editing wikipedia. I changed the location due to the fact that the state of Indiana says that it occured on Ohio County's side of the creek, there for it should read Rising Sun, ( Its closer to there than Aurora )—User talk:Tacobelldog52 Tacobelldog52 03:30, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Sorry another comment, it is the same distance from each town, but the state of Indiana gives the Ohio County side, the credit, therefore it should read Rising SunTacobelldog52 03:35, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments. Actually, according to my maps, Rising Sun is about twice the distance from the battlefield as Aurora is. Which side of the creek is not as important -- we just need to indicate the closest town. Three of the articles listed in the references mention Aurora as the closest town as well; none mention Rising Sun. We need to stick to what our sources say.
On a related note, you write that "the state of Indiana says that it [the battle] occurred on Ohio County's side of the creek." That's interesting. What's your source? —Kevin Myers 13:19, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

> I'll makew sure to post my sources/finds on here in a little more than a week im currently moving back home to Rising Sun from college. So after I get home I'll post it.Tacobelldog52 06:26, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Cool. If you're into photography, it would be nice to have some pictures of the historical markers for the article -- the historical sign next to Laughery's Creek, the sign at Riverview Cemetery, etc. Right now we just have links to the markers rather than having any actual pictures. —Kevin Myers 11:12, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Captain Brant

The article states Brant was "perhaps the only Indian to be commissioned as a British captain" There were other Indians who fought on the British side who were also called Captain. For example, "Captain John Deserontyon". However, it is difficult to determine if these "Captains" had a commission in the British army. BradMajors 11:19, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, Native war leaders were often called "Captain" even though they had no commission from the British. (Captain Pipe most famously.) This use of the title, common also in the French and Indian War, apparently indicated that the man was a "war chief" (or war leader) as opposed to a "civil chief" (or sachem). Brant was never a sachem, of course, and he was a Mohawk "war captain" even before his British commission, which came, by the way, not from the British army but rather from the Indian Department, a separate service. Brant's biographer Kelsay believes that Brant was possibly the only Indian in the war to formally receive a British commission. —Kevin Myers 15:45, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
Brant was made Captain twice. Once in 1775 by Guy Johnson in the Indian department and again in 1779 by Haldimand. The 1779 Captaincy was a better one since it entitled Brant to a salary. In the 1796 painting of Cornplanter he is wearing a Gorget indicating that he is an officer in the British army. (whether or not he actually was). BradMajors 20:54, 12 November 2007 (UTC)