Halfway Brook

Hannah Hickok, daughter of David and Abigail Johnson Hickok, was eight years old when her uncle Asa Hickok first enlisted in 1775. Scattered throughout Hannah’s 1840s Journals, are her memories from 1783. Hannah’s Father David had a few entries in 1783, also.

“The Revolutionary War did not end till I was near sixteen (August 1783). During those years of war we thought every old nail and every old piece of iron was of consequence, as indeed we did every other thing, for there was none to be bought.”*

Cider, Reading, Trading
In October Hannah’s father David cut and carted wood, gathered corn, took apples to be made into cider, and mended his fence, as usual.

In November David paid his town rate. He took out Hopkin’s Enquiry and Bellamy’s Vindication from the South Britain library and borrowed a French Bible in Newtown. Items David traded (bought) that month included: 16 coat buttons, 1-1/2 yards ribbon, a pound of tea, 1-1/2 yards of green gingham, and a gallon of brandy. (November 25 was the last day for the British to leave.)

End of 1783, Hannah’s Study
On a “very cold and blustering” December day, with “middle leg deep and much drifted” snow, David brought his sheep home from the Ichabod Lot.

Then David completed a study for Hannah. He put in a twelve-pane glass window on the south side, hung the shutter, and put a lock upon the door. And said he had done “nothing about the house.”

Hannah was elated with Thanksgiving** in December. Her cousins Bellaria Hinman and Sally Johnson came to see her and stayed all night.

At the end of December Aunt Amy had a quilting at Hannah’s house. Hannah loved her study and preferred to be by herself: “Bella and Susanna Tuttle came and stayed all night. They went sleighing, but I would not go.”

Hannah Hickok Smith Looks Back at Life in 1783
I am writing in my study as I was 63 years ago; not the same, but about the same dimensions…The sun is going down. I have been about the house looking at things which in my youth would have amazed me. How times are changed.—December 20, 1846.

Sixty-four years ago (1783) I wrote in the evening, “Not having any inclination to spend any time with ‘company’ I have thought fit to betake myself to my study.” And I have thought very much so ever since, I would rather be in my study than anywhere.—December 5, 1847.
—Abby, Laurilla, and Mary Ann, pp. 63–65.

* Hannah Hickok Smith, December 24, 1847.
** Thanksgiving was in December in the year 1783.

Above painting: The defeated British army marches between the Americans on the right, led by General George Washington, and the French on the left, led by General Jean-Baptiste Rochambeau. At the center, on horseback, Major General Benjamin Lincoln, Washington’s second-in-command, accepts the official surrender from General Lord Cornwallis’s deputy, General Charles O’Hara.

Honours of War
Honours of War was a symbolic recognition of a valiant defense, which gave the surrendering Army permission to march out with drums beating, bayonets fixed, and flags flying. Or their band could play a tune of its own choice.

On October 19, 1781 British General Charles E. Cornwallis formally surrendered. Cornwallis claimed to be ill and sent General Charles O’Hara to offer his sword to General George Washington.

General Washington would not permit the British Troops the Honours of War or accept the sword from General O’Hara.

Instead, General Washington sent Major-General Benjamin Lincoln to accept the sword. This helped to undo the indignity the British had caused Benjamin Lincoln when they rejected his request for a surrender with Honours of War after the Siege of Charleston, in 1780.

John Trumbull, an artist, was the second personal assistant (aide-de-camp) to Washington during the Revolutionary War. After the war was over, Mr. Trumbull painted a series on American history.

In 1817 the U.S. Congress commissioned Mr. Trumbull to paint the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams recommended that all the delegates be included—whether they were present or not and whether they signed or not.

Though Thomas Jefferson was the main author, Trumbull’s painting shows John Adams, Roger Sherman, Robert Livingston, and Benjamin Franklin (who had worked on the draft) presenting the document to John Hancock, president of the Second Continental Congress, on June 28, 1776.

John Trumbull worked on the Declaration painting for more than thirty years. Only forty-two of the fifty-six Declaration signers are represented, as Mr. Trumbull did not have likenesses for everyone.

In at least two cases, Trumbull painted sons who resembled their fathers. The 12-by-18-foot painting has hung in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda, since 1826.
—artgallery.yale.edu; wikipedia.org; Abby, Laurilla, and Mary Ann, pp. 60, 61.

…We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

On July 2, 1776 the Second Continental Congress officially declared its freedom from Great Britain. On July 4 the Congress approved the Declaration of Independence and sent it to John Dunlap to be printed.

Thomas Jefferson, the main author, had input from John Adams, Roger Sherman, Robert Livingston, and Benjamin Franklin. On August 2 many members began to sign the Declaration.

The Declaration of Independence stated that the King was a tyrant, “unfit to be the ruler of a free people.” It was not only the right of the colonies, but “their duty, to throw off such Government.”

Under Indictment, the Declaration listed a “long train of abuses” and “repeated injuries” of the King of Great Britain, which included: imposing taxes without their consent; often depriving them of the benefit of Trial by Jury; taking “away their Charters; abolishing their most valuable Laws; and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments.”

At every stage the colonies had humbly petitioned to correct the situation but the other side had “been deaf to the voice of justice…We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.”

Mary Katherine Goddard
Mary Katherine Goddard, at the request of the Continental Congress, printed the second authentic copy of the Declaration of Independence on January 18, 1777. Though Mary Katherine’s was the second printing, it was the first printing to include (all but one of) the typeset names of the signers. Mary took a risk in printing the document, as the British would consider it treason.

Mary, Baltimore’s first Postmaster (appointed by Benjamin Franklin), also published (initially with her brother) Baltimore’s first weekly newspaper, the Maryland Journal and Baltimore Advertiser. Mary continued to print the Maryland paper throughout the War, sometimes paying post-riders with her own money.

There is much more to Mary’s story. An amazing woman, Mary (and her mother) deserve their own book.—constitutioncenter.org, “On This Day,” Scott Bomboy, August 2, 2019; guides.loc.gov; prologue.blogs.archives.gov, Samantha Payne, “Changing the Boundaries,” January 29, 2015.

Asa Hickok, 1775: “In the fall of the year the men at Ticonderoga were attacked with fever and dysentery and many of them died. My brother Reuben was very sick. (He died two years later.)

“I was taken sick with a fever late in the fall. It rendered me unable to go north with the troops to Fort Saint-Jean (John) south of Montreal in Canada, where we had been ordered to march.

“Around December 1, at the start of winter, I was discharged from further service with a view to get to my brother’s who resided near the head of South Bay.”

As Asa Hickok headed home to South Britain, Connecticut, Henry Knox arrived in Ticonderoga.

Henry arranged for 80 yoke of oxen to haul 42 sleds with much of the captured British equipment, including 60 tons of cannons, mortars, and howitzers, to Massachusetts.*

On January 27, 1776 after too much snow, not enough snow, adding oxen, and hiring new workers, the cannons and arms arrived at Cambridge, Massachusetts. Washington used the captured artillery to end the eleven months the British had held Boston hostage.

On March 17, 1776, the British evacuated (left) Boston.—Abby, Laurilla, and Mary Ann, pp. 44, 45.

* wikipedia.org.