The Battle of Pelham
October 18, 1776
In the first months of America's War for Independence, things were not going well for the rebelling colonies. After a major victory in forcing the British to evacuate their troops from Boston, the British Royal Navy regrouped and landed in New York. After decimating the Americans in the Battle of Long Island, General George Washington and the Continental Army were pushed into a corner in what is now Washington Heights. Hoping to surround them and cut off any means of escape, British warships sailed north, eventually landing in the Manor of Pelham. Enter one Colonel John Glover and three other colonels in charge of four regiments, upon whom rested the entire American cause. Had it not been for their courage, determination, and Yankee ingenuity, the British would have marched across Pelham, overtaken Washington and the Continental Army, and America's Revolution would have been over.
About John Glover
Born in Salem Massachusetts, John Glover was raised by a single mother in the coastal town of Marblehead, Massachusetts. He worked his way up from shoemaker, to tavern owner, to a merchant mariner. When hostilities began between Great Britain and the American Colonies, Glover owned the kind of fishing and trading vessels that were being menaced by the British, who would board ships and press its crew members into service in the royal navy. Glover joined the Massachusetts Militia in 1759 and served in the French and Indian War. In 1775, he was elected a Colonel of the Massachusetts 21st Regiment and at the start of the American Revolution, raised a regiment of 500 men from Marblehead: the 14th Continental Regiment dubbed the "Marblehead Mariners." Like his own ship crews, the regiment consisted of an interracial group: white, Native American, Spanish, and free blacks (all treated as equals).*
John Glover
November 5, 1732 - January 30, 1797
Marblehead, Massachusetts
John Glover House
built by Glover in 1762
John Glover's Desk
Now in the Jeremiah Lee Museum
Marblehead Harbor
The British Fleet arrives in New York Harbor, June 29, 1776
Hundreds of ships -- over half the entire British Royal Navy -- surrounded New York. It appeared like "all London was afloat," wrote one of General George Washington's soldiers, as though the water had been replaced by a forest of trimmed pine trees.
British and Hessian troops landed in present day Brooklyn and broke through the American lines, pushing Washington and the Continental Army to the edge of the East River. Under the cover of darkness and with a providential fog concealing their actions, Colonel Glover and the Marblehead Mariners evacuated Washington and the troops, ferrying them to Manhattan.
In the ensuing months, the Americans battled the British at Kip's Bay and at Harlem Heights, retreating to the northwest tip of Manhattan.
Image at right: Coffin, Charles Carelton, The Boys of '76 (Franklin Square, NY: Harper & Brothers, 1879)
To cut off any further retreat by Washington, the British landed troops first at Throgs Neck. Finding the route submerged by high tide and the bridge sabotaged by the Americans, the British instead head further north, landing at "Pell's Point." Meanwhile, John Glover's Marblehead Mariners and three other brigades were sent to Eastchester (now Mount Vernon) to keep an eye on the British.
Map from Otto Hufeland, Westchester County During the American
Revolution (White Plains, N.Y.: Westchester County Historical Society, 1926)
The landing spot ...
... where British troops...
... arrived October 17, 1776
“I arose early in the morning and went on the hill with my glass, and discovered a number of ships in the Sound under way; in a short time saw the boats, upwards of two hundred sail, all manned and formed in four grand divisions. I immediately sent off Major Lee to express to Gen. Lee, who was about three miles distant, and without waiting his orders, turned out the brigade I have the honour to command, and very luckily I did, as it turned out afterwards, the enemy having stole a march one and a half miles on us. I marched down to oppose their landing with about seven hundred and fifty men, and three field-pieces, but had not gone more than half the distance before I met their advanced guard about thirty men.”
Letter from Colonel Glover, October 22, 1776
The photo at right shows the location at the "top of the first ridge" where John Glover looked out and saw the British landing at Pell's Point. The spot is now memorialized by the large American flag.
This rock along the road to Orchard Beach may have been the place from which local militia, including a man named Abel De Veau, fired at the British when they landed at Pell's Point. It was not, as the plaque indicates, the place where the Battle of Pelham took place, and although called "Glover's Rock," John Glover was never in this location.*
Shore Road where the British marched after landing at Pell's Point ...
... and continued across what is now the Pelham Bay Golf Course ...
... and onto the old Split Rock Road (or "Pelham Lane') in the location of what is now this service road on the golf course.
The Battle of Pelham Location
There are different opinions on the exact location of the Battle of Pelham. The strongest evidence suggests that the British were positioned on Prospect Hill and that the Americans were positioned behind stone walls that lined the old Split Rock Road. (The old Split Rock Road ran from approximately where Wolfs Lane meets the current Boston Post Road southwest to the current intersection of Jackson and Washington Avenues, there joining with the current Split Rock Road and then continuing south across where I-95 now cuts through).**
“The enemy had the advantage of us, being posted on an eminence which commanded the ground we had to march over." ~ John Glover
Right: topographical map of Pelham with British troops movement shown in red and American blue. The purple dash shows the location of the old Split Rock Road before moved to its current location.
These three colonels (then of equal rank to John Glover) all from Massachusetts, served under Glover's command during the Battle of Pelham. The combined force of these three brigades plus Glover's own Marblehead Mariners was about 750. Estimates of the number of British troops varies, but is believed to have been at least 4,000, including a large number of Hessian soldiers.
Colonel Joseph Read
13th Continental Regiment
Colonel William Shepard
3rd Continental (Massachusetts line)
Colonel Loammi Baldwin
26th Continental Regimant
Glover split up the regiments and had them hide behind a double row of stone walls that lined Split Rock Road to lie in wait for the British and Hessian troops. "I did the best I could, and disposed of my little party to the best of my judgment; Colonel Reed’s on the left of the road, Colonel Shepherd’s [Shepard’s] in the rear and to the right of him, Colonel Baldwin’s in the rear and on the right of Shepherd’s [sic], my own regiment commanded by Captain Courtis … bringing up the rear with the three field-pieces of artillery. Thus disposed of, I rode forward.”
Letter from Colonel Glover, October 22, 1776
Vestiges of stone walls along Split Rock Road of the type behind which the Americans were positioned to ambush the British:
“The enemy gave a shout and advanced; Colonel Read’s laying under a cover of a stone wall undiscovered till they came within thirty yards, then rose up and gave them the whole charge; the enemy broke and retreated for the main body to come up. In this situation, we remained almost an hour and a half, when they appeared about four thousand, with several pieces of artillery; we kept our post under cover of the stone wall before mentioned till they came within fifty yards of us, rose up and gave them the whole charge of the battalion; they halted and returned the fire with showers of musketry and cannon balls.”
Letter from Colonel Glover, October 22, 1776
Above and below: photos of diorama of the Battle of Pelham at St. Paul's National Historic Site in Mount Vernon.
“… they then shouted and pushed on till they came on Shepherd [William Shepard] posted behind a fine double stone wall; he rose up and fired by grand divisions, by which he kept up a constant fire, and maintained his post till he exchanged seventeen rounds with them, and caused them to retreat several times; once in particular so far that a soldier of Colonel Shepherd’s [sic] leaped over the wall and took a hat and canteen off a [British] Captain that lay dead on the ground they retreated from.” ~ John Glover
Ultimately, the sheer number of British troops were on the verge of overtaking the Americans. John Glover wrote that:
“...the ground being much more in their favour, and their heavy train of artillery, we could do little before we retreated to the bottom of the hill.”
Colonel Baldwin estimated the approximate number of casualties in the Battle of Pelham (numbers vary depending on source):
Americans: twenty wounded (including Colonel Shepard who was shot in the neck) and six dead
British: at least 200 dead***
The Americans retreated north back to the old Boston Post Road (now called Colonial Avenue) and across the Hutchinson River (pulling up the planks behind them).
Right: the bridge across the Hutchinson River on Sanford Boulevard as it appeared in about 1976 before significant commercial development in Mount Vernon. Note the Hutchinson Parkway at right with wooden fence guard rails.
Photo from Pelham Town Historian Collection.
The British (as they often made the mistake of doing in the American war) stopped. They made camp at what is now the corner of Ingall's Field, exchanging some fire across the Hutchinson River with little consequence.
The next day the British would cross the river and set up camp at St. Paul's Church where many of their dead (including Hessian soldiers) were buried.
Colonels Glover, Read, Shepard, and Baldwin and their regiments joined Washington and the Continental Army in retreating north to White Plains.
Americans injured in the Battle of Pelham, including Colonel Shepard, were taken to the Miller House in White Plains, where Washington set up headquarters. Shepard recovered from his wounds. He is said to have asked for a canteen and, upon taking a drink and finding that water did not exit the wound in his throat, asked to be bandaged up and retook command of his regiment.
The bravery and pluck of John Glover and the Marblehead Mariners did not end at the Battle of Pelham. The regiment rowed Washington across the Delaware River in the attack on Trenton on Christmas Night 1776. The famous painting of the scene shows a man at the stern who appears to be Native American and the man second from the bow is African American while the man beside him wears a tam o' shanter, suggesting he is Scottish. These are not mythological reinterpretations of the crew, but an accurate representation of the diversity of the Marblehead Mariners.
Washington Crossing the Delaware, Emanuel Leutze (1816-1868), oil on canvas. On display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, American Wing.
image courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Statue in honor of John Glover
Boston Massachusetts
Statue in honor of William Shepard
Westfield, Massachusetts
Statue in honor of Loammi Baldwin
Woburn, Massachusetts
Footnotes:
* For more detailed information about John Glover and the Marblehead Mariners, see Patrick K. O'Donnell, The Indispensables: the Diverse Soldier-Mariners who Shaped the Country, Formed the Navy, and Rowed Washington Across the Delaware (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2021).
** Some have placed the Battle of Pelham near the current third hole of the Split Rock Golf Course. However, the topography of the area indicates that this location would not have given the British command of the area Glover and his troops marched over (as described by Glover). The golf course is at least twenty feet below Prospect Hill. Had the British been stationed there, Glover could have marched south without concern about the British commanding the area they crossed. An important contemporary map prepared by Charles Blaskowitz (a surveyor embedded with the British Army) provides great insight on where the British landed, but is very imprecise in many other respects, including the location of the battle itself. As a tactical strategy, it would be a strange thing if the British, heading toward Pelham and having already stolen a march of a mile and a half and not yet encountering any American resistance from Glover, would have stopped short of a hill just ahead of them and instead set up artillery with a hill blocking their view. Prospect Hill is also identified as the location of the battle by Betsy Pell Webb. Although she was born about ten years after the Revolution, her family owned the property that Glover crossed. In an interview in 1844, she stated that: "The battle was fought on the east side of the road leading to the point [old Split Rock Road] and not far from the present Post road – (three hundred yards?) The old road from the point [Pell's Point] crossed what now forms the present Post road, and running by the south side of our house joined the old Boston Post road [now Colonial Avenue].” Betsy Pell Webb (1786-1860) Interview with John McDonald, September 5, 1844. For additional contemporary accounts of the Revolutionary War given by Westchester residents, see the McDonald Interviews (recently digitized by the Westchester County Historical Society).
*** The British reported far lower losses and are generally considered to have downplayed the battle in official reports. See "America: Operations of the Army under Gen. Howe," Scots Magazine, MDCCLXXVI, Vol. XXXVIII, (A. Murray and J. Cochran, 1776), 646.