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Revolutionary Legacy

Tidioute settler with Washington at the river crossing

This painting by Emanuel Leutze depicts Washington crossing the Delaware River on the day after Christmas in 1776.

The court clerk that took a statement in 1818 from James Magee can be forgiven for not recognizing the full contributions of the man he was speaking to.

Magee was 86 at the time and described as an “insolvent debtor” as he gave a sworn statement to Alexander McCalmont, prothonotary for Venango County (this was before Warren County functioned independently).

Magee was working through the process of obtaining a pension for service in the American Revolution. Records for those soldiers are fragmentary and men often served weeks to months before shifting outfits or leaving the service.

McCalmont’s ears had to perk up as Magee spoke… Washington, Trenton, Valley Forge, Monmouth.

Magee wasn’t born here – he appears to have been born in Ireland in 1733.

Times Observer photo by Josh Cotton James Magee - a Revolutionary War veteran with Washington when he crossed the Delaware, at Brandywine and Germantown and at Valley Forge - is buried at the Tidioute Cemetery.

Magee told McCalmont he first “entered the service of his country” in 1776 in an outfit called the Wilmington Greens.

“From there were marched to Perth Amboy and there joined Gen. Washington and was sent over to Staten Island and we took eight Hessians….”

Magee’s statement has been preserved in the book “Revolutionary Soldiers of Warren County, Pennsylvania.”

He then tells of his participation in an event that spawned one of the nation’s most famous paintings.

“The time of my first enlistment being up, by the desire of Gen. Washington went with the troops up to Trenton and on Christmas we took a regiment of Hessian soldiers.”

That was, of course, after Washington crossed the Delaware.

Magee reported he re-enlisted under Col. Grayson who commanded a Virginia regiment before proceeding to White Plains – “and there had skirmishes with the British” – marched through Jersey and then back into Pennsylvania “and was in the battle of Brandywine and the battle of Germantown the 4th of October and not long after went into winter quarters at Valley Forge.”

His unit pursued the British after they left Philadelphia – that led to Monmouth – and “stormed the British Fort at Stony Point under command of Gen. Wayne.”

General “Mad Anthony” Wayne is a subject unto himself, given that part of his remains are buried at Erie. (And, yes, I deliberately said “part.”)

Magee said he functioned as Sergeant Major for a year, went to South Carolina for a time and finished his service guarding Continental supplies.

“Sometimes the British drove us and sometimes we drove them,” he told McCalmont.

Another statement given in 1822 – the year he would die at the age of 88 or 89 – this time in Warren County is largely similar. The pension was ultimately issued.

After the Revolution, he settled in Mifflin Co., Pa. and married his wife Margaret in 1780.

Schenck’s History of Warren County states that Magee came to Warren County in 1812 (he would have been in his 70s) and “settled four miles below the mouth of Tidioute Creek in Limestone, then Deerfield township. His family, consisting of eight sons and two daughters, were mostly grown at the time they settled here and they all afterwards settled in Limestone and vicinity.”

He writes that Henry Magee – the seventh son – “was one of the prominent men of that early day and was instrumental in securing the organization of Limestone township,” serving as justice of the peace and at one time or another holding “all the official positions of the township.”

James Magee’s oldest son, Samuel, was the first justice of the peace for Deerfield Township.

Magee was buried at the first cemetery in Tidioute and moved to the current Tidioute Cemetery by his family, many of whom are also buried there.

Warren County’s most visible connection to the Revolution is undoubtedly the county’s name sake – Dr. Joseph Warren.

But as the country moved west in the early 19th century, Revolutionary veterans like Magee were at the heart of forming communities all throughout this region.

Tidioute wasn’t settled until the early 1800s. Jefferson was president and the Revolution was over 20 years in the past.

But the legacy reaches here.

James Magee is an example of that.

Happy Independence Day.

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