Unsung Revolutionary War Heroes: The Corps of Artificers (part 1)

Introduction: In this article, Melissa Davenport Berry writes about artificers and their key role supporting the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. Melissa is a genealogist who has a website, americana-archives.com, and a Facebook group, New England Family Genealogy and History.

During the American Revolutionary War, the Corps of Artificers – consisting of a specialized group of highly skilled craftsmen, mechanics, and other proficient tradesmen – was established to manufacture, supply, and maintain essential resources for the war effort.

First, here is some background about the formation of the artificers from an article I found in the News-Times, a Connecticut newspaper.

This article reports:

Levi Osborne, Danbury weaver, and later co-publisher of the Danbury Times (forerunner of the present News-Times), was one of the unsung heroes of the American Revolution. He was an artificer.

During the winter of 1776-77, General Washington issued orders for the recruitment of three regiments of artillery. One of these was to be a regiment of artillery artificers under the direction of Colonel Flower(s) (1748-1781).

The first such company was to be set up in Pennsylvania consisting of 49 carpenters, 40 blacksmiths, 20 wheelwrights, tinners, and turners, and 12 harness makers. Later, coopers, nailers, and farriers were added to the list of men to be recruited into these corps.

Below is an ad from the Pennsylvania Evening Post for artificers.

To learn more about Revolutionary artificers, check out Manufacturing Independence: Industrial Innovation in the American Revolution by Robert F. Smith.

It is apparent now that by the spring of 1777 such a corps was in existence in Danbury. It also appears that it was never really a regiment or a company, but more a collection of mechanics with a slight military organization.

On Feb. 13 of that year, Washington issued another order indicating that the artificers were to be exempted from serving in the regular militia.

These men were desperately needed to supply the Continental Army with wagons and their accessories such as shoes and barrels.

It is also apparent that at the same time, under the quartermasters’ division of the army, a group of “provisioners” or “commissaries” were working here under the direction of Col. Hugh Hughes of New York state.

Their job was to coordinate the problem of supplying the army with food stuffs as well as other materials, working under Joseph Trumbull, son of Connecticut’s governor. There seems to have been some overlapping of duties between the quartermasters’ companies and the artificers. Eventually the groups would be merged.

The story of these artificers, “provisioners” and the wagoneers who carted supplies into and out of Danbury is a little-known part of Danbury’s role in the war.

Actually, we now know that Danbury played a very significant part in the American Revolution, not just the four days the British spent here in April, 1777, when, as a few history books cryptically relate, “the British came by ship 2000 strong under General Tryon, marched 25 miles from the landing near Norwalk, seized and burned the ammunition, food and tents stored here in Danbury and marched back again – being harassed on the way by American troops hastily called to the scene of the under-supported supply depot in Danbury.”

…We are only in very recent years beginning to break the surface of this dearth of information, and most of the information that has come to light has been through the correspondence of Jeremiah Wadsworth of Hartford, who was a provisioner of supplies under Trumbull and also privately.

These letters are in the archives of the Connecticut Historical Society in Hartford and reveal, as nothing else so far has, the events and the people who were active in Danbury during the years 1777 to 1783.

Letters are there from: Col. Hughes; from John Lloyd, a refugee in Connecticut from the Battle of Long Island [noted in a Washington letter], who was an assistant quartermaster; and from Dr. John Wood, veteran of the French and Indian War, a native Danburian living on Main Street. [Note there were two John Woods living at the time, and this senior Wood died in 1775.] Wood was an assistant to Col. Hughes.

Letters also from: John McLean, who as a “provisioner” brought beeves and pork into Danbury, and whose house on Main Street was burned by the British; along with replies from Gen. Wadsworth, may be read. Today we might call McLean a “wheeler-dealer,” and it was evident that Wadsworth and the quartermasters had a like opinion, but he produced the goods and was tolerated.

Wood asked for masons to complete the chimneys on the hospital buildings that had been started early in 1777 and had survived the British raid. Through his correspondence with Wadsworth, we learn that there were probably four hospital buildings on the hill where Park Avenue now stands. The deeds for the sale of a portion of Samuel Wildman’s property to be used for that military convalescent hospital were conveyed to “The United States of America,” such a new term then, and the subsequent re-sale to Wildman at the end of the war, are recorded in the land deeds in our present City Hall.

Dr. Wood also requested iron for a “grand nailory” evidently located in Danbury.

Levi Osborne and the other artificers worked in an area down the hill from the hospital on Oil Mill Pond. That land belonged to the father of Joel Winter Church, another of the artificers. [Church was a blacksmith and son of Asa Church.] Others who served in the artificers were Aaron and Levi Stone, brothers who later left Danbury to settle in Kent; Hezekiah Roland from Miry Brook; John Guthrie, Isaac Bartram, Stephen Ambler (see below list), John Porter, Daniel Canfield, John Benedict, and Levi Osborne.

Here is a list of officers and men of Colonel Benjamin Flower’s artificer regiment and Colonel Jeduthan Baldwin’s artificer regiment, 1776-1783, page 4.

To be continued…

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Note on the header image: Colonel Benjamin Flower, artificer, by Charles Willson Peale and James Peale. Credit: Star Spangled Banner Flag House Museum, Baltimore.