This week, as I have watched the new Ken Burns documentary on the American Revolution, I’ve been reminded what a complicated time that was, and probably no more so than for those who refused to embrace the fight for independence – those who preferred the status quo and maintained their loyalty to the King of England. Although I have a few other Loyalist relatives, one in particular – a 6x great-grandfather, to be precise – has been on my mind, and this is his story.

John Eagles resided at White Plains, in Westchester County, New York. In March 1776, four months before his state’s approval of the newly drafted Declaration of Indepenence, John, at the direction of Gov. William Tryon, raised up 52 like-minded men for the York Volunteers in support of the British cause. In recognition of this, Gov. Tryon recommended him to Sir William Howe, commander of the British troops. Howe issued a warrant for John to raise a company for the Queen’s American Rangers (QAR), a Loyalist military unit named in honor of King George III’s wife, Queen Charlotte. Howe also asked John to carry dispatches to Sir Guy Carleton, who was commanding British troops in Quebec. As John would later recall, though the distance was great between New York and Quebec, and though he had to travel through armed rebel territory, he carried the dispatches securely and faithfully. On his return, though risking his life, he brought with him 143 men. Consequently, on August 25, 1776, Howe commissioned John as one of the captains of the QAR. Although John was to have had a commission as a lieutenant in the York Volunteers, he resigned that opportunity for the QAR commission, serving under Lt. Col. Robert Rogers. 

In September 1776, near Flushing Bay, New York, the QAR apprehended Nathan Hale, who had volunteered for an intelligence-gathering mission for the Americans. The British found him guilty of espionage and hanged him. 

In October 1776, Gen. Howe landed troops at Throg’s Neck (aka Frog’s Point), New York in a flanking maneuver intended to trap George Washington’s American forces in Manhattan. As part of Howe’s movement, the QAR was ordered to take the right flank of the British forces to New Rochelle in Westchester County. There, John and elements of his company were ordered to attack the town and were the first Rangers to enter it. They successfully took it without opposition or shots fired. 

The following day, Lt. Col. Rogers and the bulk of the QAR were ordered to capture Mamaroneck (also in Westchester County), and they encountered little opposition from the local militia. Meanwhile, John and 60 of his men remained at the New Rochelle outpost. That night, a detachment of 750 Americans was sent to attack the QAR at Mamaroneck, but in the pre-dawn hours, they unexpectedly encountered John and his men, who had just settled in. The Americans called on them to surrender; some were willing, while others resisted. Confusion ensued as the forces tangled in the darkness, and while John directed his unit’s defense, he sent some of his men to warn Rogers of the impending attack. “The attack was overwhelming, and the Rangers were in danger of being overrun…. Some Rangers adopted a ruse that worked very well in the dark – in the midst of almost hand-to-hand fighting, they began shouting curses at Rogers and the other Rangers as they withdrew. This tactic fooled the American raiders and pulled them closer to the main body of Rangers as they chased the withdrawing Rangers.” John and about a third of his men fell back to their main camp. The remainder were overpowered, and John’s lieutenant and 23 other men were killed. Still, the Americans’ advantage of surprise had been thwarted, and they retreated. According to John, he was afterwards publicly thanked by Gen. Howe for his “spirited behavior” in this endeavor. 

That same month, Gen. Washington’s Continental troops clashed with Gen. Howe’s British and Hessian forces in John’s hometown of White Plains, and it was there that John was wounded.

Later that fall, elements of the QAR conducted a patrol in Bedford, New York and returned with several naval prisoners, captured en route, and with a 120-man company of Ranger recruits, which they met on the way back. In mid-November, the QAR were camped east of New York, where they resisted an attack by Gen. Charles Lee’s forces, which included Gen. John Glover's Marblehead Mariners. In mid-January 1777, elements of the QAR were located at Fort Knyphausen when it was attacked by an American force. When the British rejected the American demand to surrender, the Americans withdrew.

Over the course of the winter of 1776-1777, the QAR’s force was reduced – mostly by desertion – to one-fifth of its original strength. In January 1777, a new Inspector General of Provincial Forces, Alexander Innes, was appointed by the British Army to review Loyalist units, including the QAR. Innes sometimes incorrectly reported the backgrounds of the QAR officers and complained that its ranks included “Negroes, Indians, Mulattos, Sailors, and Rebel Prisoners.” Innes was also believed to have agreed with the sentiments of the regular officers who looked down on Lt. Col. Robert Rogers and his Rangers. “The regulars held Ranger officers in low regard since they, unlike the British ‘gentlemen,’ had not purchased their commissions but had earned them from Rogers based on his assessment of their worth.” Rogers’ “resulting battalion comprised men who were nowhere near the standards of the Rangers from the French and Indian War…. What [he] ended up with were farmers and townspeople who scarcely knew one end of a gun from another” and few had any experience as soldiers.” With no uniforms and serving in the clothes on their backs, “the Rangers…pretty much looked like the troops they were fighting.” Innes wrote that many of the officers recommended by Rogers had been bred as mechanics; others had kept public houses (inns), “and one or two had even kept bawdy houses in the City of New York.”

In February 1777, Innes reported to Gen. Howe that Rogers had brought persons into the QAR who were very improperly qualified to hold commissions, and Innes found their conduct to be flagrant “in a thousand instances.” Innes thought these men to be of lowly background, who allowed their men to rob and plunder, and whose conduct was so much despised by the rest of the army that no other officer would be seen with them. Innes deemed the QAR to be in a “wretched situation” and recommended that Howe reform it. That same month, Howe decided that Rogers should retire and relieved him of his command. Although Rogers had been a celebrated hero of the earlier French and Indian War, he had become an alcoholic, his honesty and financial integrity had suffered as a result, and his loyalties were sometimes questionable.

Another fallout of Innes’s report was that John Eagles and 26 other officers, including Capt. Daniel Frazer, were, without benefit of court martial, replaced in March 1777. Sworn testimonies of men from their companies stated that both John and Frazer had cheated them out of their pay. Innes wrote that Frazer was “an illiterate, low-bred fellow. Another, Captain John Eagles of Westchester County, New York, was still more illiterate and low bred than Frazer.” 

John was incensed by his dismissal and spent the next several years seeking the restoration of his commission. In 1779, he wrote to George Germain, 1st Viscount Sackville, who was England’s Secretary of State to the American Colonies. John entreated Germain, telling him that his “company was most ungratefully and unjustly taken from him” and begging him “to consider the extraordinary outlines of his case.” John told Germain that, from the beginning of the rebellion until the present time, he had “risqued [sic] his person, employed his interest, and sacrificed his property in support of the Laws and Constitution of England.” John stated that he had behaved himself in a soldier-like manner, and that Gen. Howe had publicly recognized him for it. John further stated that he had raised nearly 200 men for the British cause and had “hazarded his life in the open and secret services of his King,” but in the end, he was stripped of his company and bestowed with “unmerited infamy.”

It is unknown if Germain responded to John, but John and others proceeded with a lawsuit at some point. In the midst of it all, John remained loyal to the Crown, although he stated he was distressed by the rebels. He lost four cattle at the Battle of White Plains but thought British troops had taken them. He also lost fifteen sheep, three hogs, furniture, and farm utensils. One of his mares was stolen from Manor of Fordham, New York. In 1780, the French and rebels destroyed his crop of wheat at Morrisania, New York, where a Dutchman stole a fine mare from him and sold it to a rebel officer.

In the end, John received no satisfaction or reparations for these injustices. Although the Siege of Yorktown effectively ended the war in 1781, the Treaty of Paris would not be signed until September 1783. That July, the same month that his daughter ironically married a Patriot, John Eagles, no doubt disillusioned by it all, left New York, bound for Annapolis County, Nova Scotia. Distressing weather, however, drove the ship to Bermuda, a British island territory in the mid-North Atlantic, just before Christmas. He remained there until April 1784 and would have gone from Bermuda to England, but because he could not catch a ship to Europe, he reverted to his original plan, went to Nova Scotia, and arrived in Annapolis in May 1784. The following year, he petitioned for land in Queens County, New Brunswick, just across the Bay of Fundy from Nova Scotia. Based on documents, he appears to have settled at Saint John and to have been granted 271 acres of land in Sussex Parish, Kings County, New Brunswick in April 1787.

This is the end of my knowledge of John Eagles, who is my only known Canada-dwelling ancestor. So, how did I manage to descend from him? That daughter of his – the one who married a Patriot former soldier in New York City, soon after traversed down the Great Wagon Road to North Carolina and carved out a new life and home in the wilderness of the Blue Ridge Mountains. These were my 5x great-grandparents, Nathan and Elizabeth Eagles Horton, and we’ve been here ever since. 

I consider it a privilege to be a citizen of the United States of America, a great, albeit imperfect, nation. I am also thankful for my forebearers who fought for independence. And even though I don’t espouse the Loyalist views of John Eagles, perhaps that is easy to say almost 250 years post revolutionary victory. Choosing sides when things were so fragile and tentative, so tense and risky had to be difficult. I am not his accuser nor his judge. At this point, I am merely a teller of his story, and without him, I would not be here to do so. 

Rest in peace Grandpa Eagles.