The Westmoreland Rangers and “The Suffering Fruntears”

Warfare during the American Revolution could be brutal; this brutality took on entirely new dimensions in the frontier, and could be devastating, unrelenting, and all-pervading. Threats came in many forms—isolation, starvation, exposure; labor took countless forms as well, demanding never-ending toil and dogged perseverance. Like many whose charge was to defend America’s back door, the men and women from Pennsylvania’s westernmost county of Old Westmoreland were called to duty well before war broke out in Boston, and remained on duty long after the British surrendered at Yorktown.

In 2022, the Daughters of the American Revolution memorialized a handful of these resilient defenders of the American frontier, placing a monument at the Poke Run Presbyterian Church. Most distinct about this memorial is that it features Mary Erwin Lochry Guthrie, the wife of Archibald Lochry, a captain of the Westmoreland Rangers, and one of the most prominent officers killed at the end of the American Revolution. Poke Run, located east of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is just fourteen miles north of Hannastown, which the Erwin’s considered home in the years prior to the War for Independence.[1]

Payment of Pennsylvania’s Supply Tax to support the war effort qualified Mary as worthy of recognition in her own right, but a closer look at the events across the back country places the service of each one of these men and women in a much richer hue. Mary Erwin, from their beginning, was at the heart of the Westmoreland Rangers, and like so many wives and daughters within the frontier communities, supported their infrastructure and defense in every way possible.

Mary was a familiar face around Hannastown. Her father, Joseph Erwin, was one of its best-known personalities. A Westmoreland magistrate, he also kept the tavern in Hannastown, where the county court and local business were conducted. Mary, in her early twenties, helped her father in the tavern, and by 1774, had attracted the attention of many of the region’s eligible men, including another of its leaders. Archibald Lochry, though considerably older, was a friend of the family and had recently been widowed.[2]

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Hannastown was dubbed by some of its early settlers “the Star of the West,” though this characterization was likely associated more with its promise than its reality. Even at its height, Hannastown was but a humble yet blossoming village consisting of just twenty homes, situated on the Forbes Road between Fort Pitt and Fort Ligonier. But Hannastown’s glory, like the frontier’s re-established peace, would be short-lived.

The choice of Hannastown as the new county seat had been based more on convenience than protection, and was selected by a split vote. Arthur St. Clair, who held the leading offices of Westmoreland County, preferred the location of Pittsburgh, which though further west, anchored the seat of authority within the most populated and contested area.[3]

Hannastown had been slow in constructing a fort or blockhouse, but there was little urgency at its outset, for the region had been enjoying a carefully-cultivated peace. The Stanwix Treaty, completed in 1768, had addressed many of the lingering grievances following Pontiac’s uprising and Bouquet’s expedition earlier that decade. It had established the Ohio River as a firm boundary for settlers moving west, and had enabled amicable trade relationships to resume.

This delicate peace was shattered from within when a persuasive and audacious Pennsylvanian went rogue. John Connolly, conspiring with Virginia Governor Lord Dunmore, agreed to press toward opening the lands to the west for settlement, in exchange for a parcel of two thousand acres at the Falls of the Ohio, at present day Louisville, Kentucky, granting Connolly his own lucrative fiefdom. Aware of its illegality, Dunmore deeded this land to Connolly in December 1773; Connolly issued his proclamation in Pittsburgh a few weeks later, commanding “all Persons in the Dependency of Pittsburgh to assembly themselves there as a Militia on the 25th instant.”[4]

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Arthur St. Clair, leading magistrate for Westmoreland County, seeking to prevent the gathering of an armed assembly in Pittsburgh, authorized Westmoreland sheriff John Proctor to arrest Connolly before his activity provoked a riot. But St. Clair’s intervention merely delayed the intended mischief. Released on a promise of good behavior, Connolly fled straight to Dunmore. Armed with the authority of Virginia and a handful of blank military commissions, Connolly returned to Pittsburgh with a vengeance in March 1774, at the head of nearly two hundred armed men.[5]

Connolly declared all Pennsylvanian authority over the region invalid, and arrested the Westmoreland magistrates. He occupied the location of Fort Pitt, renaming it Fort Dunmore, and began holding regular military drills. Having established control of the area, Connolly continued to press toward his agenda, aggravating the partisan divide between Virginia and Pennsylvania, and ushering in what became known as Dunmore’s War.[6]

The Westmoreland Rangers

War had been anything but inevitable. Westmoreland magistrate Richard Butler, whose trading responsibilities placed him regularly in contact with the various tribes throughout the region, detailed an abundance of evidence demonstrating the peaceful intent of the Shawnee prior to Dunmore’s War. He declared they had been “as friendly as I have known them,” dismissing the few recent incidents as “the intent of some ill-minded people.” Instead, Butler predicted, Connolly’s activities threatened to “bring in a general war!”[7]

By May, Pittsburgh more resembled a military base than a civil community, placing the neighboring peoples on guard. To many in the surrounding community, this re-militarization of the Ohio country was deeply unsettling, undermining several years of diplomatic reconstruction. To the neighboring Indians, still relishing the peace established under the Stanwix Treaty, these activities were particularly disturbing.

Pennsylvanian officials soon determined it prudent to organize protection across its western settlements, so the decision was made to organize several companies of rangers to patrol the region to monitor any hostile intentions and to promptly respond should any trouble arise.[8]

Raising the Westmoreland Rangers was a collaborative affair. Authorization was needed from the Pennsylvania Assembly, and this was facilitated by William Thompson, Westmoreland County’s sole representative, who worked closely with Pennsylvania Gov. John Penn. Thompson’s efforts were supported by his friend and ally, attorney John Montgomery, a representative from Cumberland County. Arthur St. Clair was appointed colonel of the ranger companies, and served as the point person in Westmoreland. St Clair’s experience in the British military made him a worthy leader in this role. He was, however, a relative newcomer to the region, and less familiar with the capabilities of the frontier leaders.

This expertise was offered by William Thompson, whose had a long history of leadership in the frontier, and whose relational network extended from Philadelphia to the Mississippi River. Thompson’s leadership over most of these men can be traced back to the French and Indian War, to his command of the post at Fort Loudon, and the cavalry troops patrolling the Forbes Road. As need arose again for military protection, Thompson knew which experienced veterans could be trusted to fulfill the responsibilities accompanying the rank of captain, to choose worthy officers to serve alongside them, and to fill their ranks with capable men.[9]

Mary Erwin also found herself at the center of the flurry of activity of these companies being pulled together. The largest company, consisting of seventy men, was organized at Hannastown and belonged to her father. Her soon-to-be-husband, Archibald Lochry, also raised a company, as did his brother, Jeremiah Lochry. Two other well-known frontier stand-outs, Westmoreland magistrates James Smith and Van Swearingen, created the others.

The extant accounts of these ranger companies are written largely in William Thompson’s handwriting. Though they provide a measure of detail concerning the rangers, they leave many questions unanswered. They primarily provide a record of the costs of pay and rations provided to all five companies between May and December 1774. Captains were paid between seven and ten shillings per day, with sergeants receiving two shillings and the soldiers one shilling sixpence per day. Daily rations were priced at one shilling per man. Two hundred rations were allotted to the Indians engaged in assisting these companies.[10]

The majority of these expenses, amounting to 3,684 pounds Pennsylvania currency, were advanced by William Thompson, who was reimbursed the following year by the Pennsylvania Assembly “for mustering and paying the rangers.” John Montgomery also fronted funds in the amount of 728 pounds. Arthur St Clair received sixty pounds for his role as colonel, and Thompson paid fifty pounds for his oversight and coordination.

Two full rosters, those of James Smith and Jeremiah Lochry, have survived. Smith’s roster notes that his company was organized on May 30, 1774, with ten men enlisting that day. By June 4, the company was up to forty men, and continued to swell throughout the month of June, eventually numbering sixty-seven men.

Little is known about the specific instructions given to these rangers, or of the particular activities in which they were involved. St. Clair reported that rangers had initially been stationed at Turtle Creek, Bullock-Penns (present day Churchill), Ligonier, Proctors (present day Latrobe) and Hannastown. Jeremiah Lochry reported that his company had been sent by St. Clair for three months to Kittanning, though he offered few other details.[11] Most noteworthy is that the Westmoreland Rangers were created purely for defensive purposes, to discourage the outbreak of a general war in the west, a function distinctly different from the companies raised by Connolly and Dunmore, which were employed for an offensive campaign against the Shawnee.

Despite the continued disruptions around Pittsburgh and the outbreak of hostilities in Dunmore’s War, these Westmoreland Rangers never saw combat, as their role was strictly preventative. Accordingly, Pennsylvania’s insistence on preserving the peace under the terms of the Stanwix Treaty was successfully upheld, as is reflected in Jeremiah Lochry’s cogent summary of their service resulting in “no war!”[12]

This peace would again be short-lived, however, as this non-combative service of the Westmoreland Rangers proved merely a prelude to the incessant demands, during and after the American Revolution, upon the people across the frontier.

Revolutionary Service

Dunmore’s War concluded with the Treaty of Camp Charlotte and the armies dispersed, but John Connolly found himself no closer to achieving his designs. He found that much of his local support was vanishing, as winds were shifting dramatically! Blood had been spilt at Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts, and America’s War for Independence had begun.

The men and women from across Westmoreland met at Hannastown in May 1775, drafting a series of resolves in support of those in Boston. “Animated with the love of liberty,” they declared it their duty “to maintain and defend our just rights (which, with sorrow, we have seen of late wantonly violated in many instances by a wicked Ministry and a corrupted Parliament) and transmit them to our posterity!”[13]

The following month, the Continental Congress began to take steps to create an American army, authorizing the creation of rifle companies from Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia. Thirteen companies of riflemen quickly made their way to join Washington in Boston, demonstrating to the British that they were not facing just New Englanders, but an army of the United Colonies.

Assemblyman William Thompson was the first from Westmoreland to be called into the continental effort, being commissioned a colonel and named to command this battalion of riflemen known to history as the 1st Continental Regiment.[14] Only one of these rifle companies was drawn from western Pennsylvania, and none from Westmoreland. Likewise, Virginia offered only two companies of riflemen at this time, for the turmoil in the back country had hardly gone away and these men were still needed to protect the frontier.[15]

This enthusiastic support for the Continental cause flew in the face of John Connolly, whose freely-shared royalist sentiments and coercion of native Americans to support the British led St. Clair to once again have him arrested. Escaping in the middle of the night, Connolly hastened to Virginia, where he joined their exiled royalist Governor, Lord Dunmore, on board his ship.

His flight from Pittsburgh, however, in no way eliminated the threat in the west. Connolly had made a strategically critical observation, leading to an entirely new conspiracy! Securing the support of Lord Dunmore in Virginia and British Gen. Thomas Gage in Boston, Connolly plotted to collect a substantial army in Detroit, unite with British regulars stationed on the Mississippi, proceed up the Ohio River to Pittsburgh, and invade Virginia from the west. Though Connolly again was arrested, his strategy for utilizing Detroit to harass the Americans through the back door would be one that the British and their agents relentlessly exploited for years to come, tormenting and torturing the American interior.[16]

Meanwhile, in the months leading up to the Declaration of Independence, several of these Westmoreland leaders took advantage of the brief respite across the frontier to offer their service in support of the campaigns in the east. In January 1776, Arthur St. Clair was named to command the Pennsylvania’s 2nd Battalion. William Butler was commissioned captain, and led a company from Westmoreland in this battalion. These men would accompany the American army into Canada under William Thompson, now a brigadier general. Though the Canadian campaign would collapse, St. Clair and his men would subsequently participate in the pivotal battles at Trenton and Princeton.[17]

In March 1776, Joseph Erwin raised a company of Westmoreland rifleman to serve in the newly created Pennsylvania State Rifle Battalion. He survived the devastating battle at Long Island, only to be taken prisoner in the surrender at Fort Washington, New York, that November.[18]

In July 1776, the 8th Pennsylvania Regiment was organized to patrol the frontier and guard against enemy Indian attacks, with Richard Butler serving as major, and Van Swearingen commanding one of its companies.

In the winter of 1777, Washington ordered the 8th Regiment to march to Philadelphia immediately. This torturous January trek, nearly three hundred miles on foot through the frigid wilderness, cost the lives of their two commanders, Aeneas MacKay and George Wilson, along with fifty other Westmoreland men, leaving Richard Butler in command.[19] Soon afterward, Butler was tapped to assist Daniel Morgan in creating an elite company of riflemen, comprised primarily of men from Pennsylvania and Virginia. Swearingen was named to command one of the companies in Morgan’s elite corps. These were sent to New York and played a central role in the battles at Saratoga, which proved a critical turning point in the war.[20]

Famously, Van Swearingen, wounded and captured by Indians near Bemis Heights, was interrogated by British Gen. Simon Fraser. Frustrated at Swearingen offering no useful information, the general threatened to hang him, to which Swearingen boldly responded. “You may, if you please!” Not long afterward, Swearingen was released, General Fraser lay dead on the battlefield, and the British surrendered a significant portion of their army to the Americans.[21]

The “Distressed Situation” of Westmoreland

Archibald Lochry, now serving as Westmoreland’s county lieutenant, remained closer to home. Newly married to Mary Erwin, the couple celebrated the birth of their first daughter in April 1776. When John Proctor organized the Independent Battalion of Westmoreland, boasting the famous “rattlesnake flag” with the warning “Don’t Tread On Me,” the ranger companies found new expression as militia companies. Archibald Lochry was named lieutenant colonel in Proctor’s 1st Battalion, and James Smith served as major in the 2nd Battallion.[22]

These forces soon saw more action than they could handle as the frontier communities were met with a renewed threat. In 1777, the British initiated the strategy of employing their native allies to penetrate into American communities throughout the Ohio valley. Fort Detroit’s superintendent Henry Hamilton published and widely distributed broadsides aimed at coercing frontiersmen to defect to the British, offering that any who wished “to withdraw from the Tyranny and oppression of the rebel committees,” would be “lodged and victualled,” paid a comparable wage, and receive “his Majesty’s bounty of two hundred acres of land.”[23]

Several men, including the notorious Simon Girty and former Westmoreland magistrate Alexander McKee, fled Pittsburgh and accepted commissions with the British army. They took a number of soldiers with them, and redirected their experience and expertise to launching attacks across the frontier.[24]

Archibald Lochry wrote to the president of Pennsylvania in 1777 to report the “raskely Proclamations” sent from Detroit. He also communicated the “Distressed situation of our Cuntery [country],” saying that “there is very few Days there is not some murder committed.” He insinuated the need for “more Effectual Measures,” like an expedition toward Detroit. He informed the president that two stockade forts had been erected, at Hannastown and Ligonier, as a “place of retreat for the suffering Fruntears.”[25]

One by one, those Westmoreland officers serving in the eastern campaigns were discharged and returned to Westmoreland, just as the attacks from Detroit began to intensify. James Smith had proposed to General Washington a battalion of rangers “acquainted with the Indian method of fighting” for the purpose of annoying and harassing the enemy in their marches and encampments in the eastern campaigns. Though offered a place in the rifle corps, Smith preferred returning to the west, commanding men that he knew and employing the tactics for which he was best suited.[26]

Joseph Erwin stepped back into his familiar role commanding a company of rangers in the 8th Pennsylvania, alongside that of the celebrated Captain Samuel Brady. He also took command at Fort Crawford, near present day New Kensington. Jeremiah Lochry commanded at Fort Armstrong, about two miles from Kittanning. And several more stockades were soon erected across the frontier communities.[27]

By 1780, despite the seemingly endless troubles, Mary and Archibald Lochry were celebrating the birth of their second child. With their family expanding and the western regions increasingly under attack, Lochry constructed a strong two-story log blockhouse at his own expense. Strategically situated on the Forbes Road between Hannastown and Fort Ligonier, Lochry intended this blockhouse to serve as a supply depot for the troops frequently patrolling in the region, with a regular guard to be posted for protection.[28]

While neither the blockhouse or the posting of a guard were officially sanctioned by Pennsylvania, what was authorized was Lochry’s request to raise a company of men to accompany George Rogers Clark on an offensive campaign against Detroit, the expedition for which Archibald Lochry is best known.

Understanding the value of such a campaign, Lochry was eager to take the lead in raising a company of Pennsylvanians, and he invited his father-in-law, Joseph Erwin, to join. Lochry had intended to meet up with Clark at Fort Henry, at the present site of Wheeling, West Virginia, but Clark had trouble with his men. Impatient and threatening to desert, they convinced Clark to leave Fort Henry before Lochry had arrived, a decision that sabotaged the campaign from its beginning.

Unknown to the Americans, the enemy at Detroit had known of their plans. A force led by Joseph Brant and George Girty had positioned themselves on the Ohio River to intercept them. Choosing to allow Clark to pass by unhindered, they surprised Lochry’s company when it stopped to eat and rest, killing nearly a third of Lochry’s men.[29]

Lochry’s death was soon to follow, and came swiftly. Seated on a log with his head in his hands, he was stealthily approached from behind by Shawnee warrior, who plunged a tomahawk into his head. This posed an ill omen for the other prisoners, especially the wounded, who were soon dispatched in the same way. Those well enough to travel were marched as captives to Detroit.[30] Among these captives was Mary’s father, the fifty-year-old Joseph Erwin, now a prisoner of war for the second time! After being processed at Detroit, he was sent on to St Mary’s, midway between Detroit and Niagara. Here he would remain until officially released.[31]

So as Richard Butler and the rest of Washington’s army were making their way to Yorktown and the surrender of the British army, his compatriots from Westmoreland, a thousand miles away, were being marched as freshly captured prisoners of war, as if the war was anything but over. For those in the west, it most certainly was not!

General William Irvine reported to Pennsylvania president Joseph Reed on December 3 that “this Country has got a severe stroke by the loss of Colonel Lochry and about one hundred … of the best men of Westmoreland County.” “This misfortune, added to the failure of General Clarke’s Expedition,” he continued, “has filled the people with great dismay!” He warned that there was good reason to believe that “the Savages, & perhaps the British from Detroit will push us hard in the Spring, and I believe there never were Posts—nor a Country—in a worse state of defence.”[32]

General Irvine knew well that regardless of the British surrender, hostile attacks across the frontier would return with the spring. In this, he was not mistaken!

The siege of Fort Henry and the burning of Hannastown mark two of the last battles of the American Revolution, both of which occurred the year after the British surrender at Yorktown. They present vivid examples of frontier men, women, and children fighting alongside each other in defense of the western communities.

Fort Henry, where Lochry was to have met Clark, was attacked on September 11, 1782, by a loyalist detachment of Butler’s Rangers and nearly three hundred native Americans assembled by Simon Girty. The small group of men, women, and children within the fort successfully repelled two days of assault until they were relieved by local forces.[33]

Two months earlier, Hannastown had also been attacked by a combined party of Canadian militia and Seneca warriors. While those within the fort were likewise successful in repelling the attack, they watched helplessly as Hannastown itself was burned to the ground, the “Star of the West” being snuffed out forever. But Hannastown’s survivors and the people of Westmoreland were the real “stars of the west,” and immediately set about the work of rebuilding their lives once again.

While Mary Lochry had been informed of her husband’s tragic death, she had received no news about her father’s plight. Eventually, however, the fifty-year-old Joseph Erwin returned home, having walked nearly four hundred miles, only to find Hannastown in ruins.

Also finding his way home from Canada was another captive, Lochry’s ensign, a young officer named Jack Guthrie. He made a point of inquiring about Lochry’s young family, finding that Mary and her two daughters had remained safe in Lochry’s blockhouse. Shortly afterward, Mary was granted a widow’s pension by the state of Pennsylvania. Six years later the resilient young widow, now in her thirties, married that young officer, Jack Guthrie, who had so faithfully served her husband, and who, like other men and women from Westmoreland, had so sacrificially served their community and their country.

Mary Erwin Lochry Guthrie was last seen in the pages of history at the end of nearly twenty years of ongoing conflict in Westmoreland, being involved in one of the final major Indian attacks in the Pittsburgh area. In 1794, she and Jack Guthrie spent three days in a boat soaked in blood alongside the bodies of four friends and their grief-stricken wives. Mary, who was nine-months pregnant at the time of the attack, was safely delivered of her baby at Fort Pitt shortly after their rescue.[34]

Old Westmoreland, like the Ohio valley that we know today, resembles nothing like these “suffering fruntears” of early America. As we look back upon those who diligently safeguarded their liberties and defended their interior communities against the relentless invasions of the British and their allies, Americans owe to them a tremendous debt of gratitude! A memorial naming these brave men, along with courageous women like Mary Erwin Lochry Guthrie, is a fitting step toward helping to remember their faithful and self-sacrificing service!

[1] Patrick Varine, “Daughters of American Revolution to dedicate marker for 18 veterans interred at Washington Township cemetery,” Tribune-Review, Greensburg, PA, October 3, 2022.

[2] For more on Mary Erwin, see Julia Jewett, A Brief Genealogy of the Loughry Family (St. Louis, MO: n. p., 1923).

[3] For an overview of Hannastown, see Ed Hahn, Hannastown: The Founding of a Village on the Pennsylvania Frontier (Greenburg, PA: Westmoreland County Historical Society, undated).

[4] Minutes of the Provincial Council of Pennsylvania, volume X (Harrisburg, PA: Theo. Penn & Co., 1852), 140-41.

[5] Pennsylvania Archives, First Series, IV (Philadelphia, PA: Jos. Severns, 1853), 477-484.

[6] Ibid., 523.

[7] Ibid., 568-70.

[8] Ibid., 501ff.

[9] Papers of Henry Bouquet (Harrisburg, PA: The Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 1972), 1:382, 3:161.

[10] Westmoreland County Rangers, Hamilton Papers, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

[11] Pennsylvania Archives, First Series, IV, 514.

[12] Jewett, A Brief Genealogy of the Loughry Family, 14.

[13] These “Hannastown Resolves” were published in the Pennsylvania Gazette in August, 1775.

[14] Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774-1789, II 1775 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1905), 85.

[15] Thompson’s original colonel’s commission, dated June 25, 1775, is in the possession of the Cumberland County Historical Society in Carlisle, PA.

[16] For an overview of this conspiracy, see Eric Sterner, “The Connolly Plot,” Journal of the American Revolution, October 28, 2020, allthingsliberty.com/2020/10/the-connolly-plot/.

[17] Pennsylvania Archives, Fifth Series, II, 79-109.

[18] Ibid., 391.

[19] Pennsylvania Archives, Second Series, XIV, 675.

[20] George Washington to Van Swearingen, August 18, 1777, founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-10-02-0646.

[21] E. G. Williams, “A Revolutionary Journal and Orderly Book of General Lachlan McIntosh, 1778,” Western Pennsylvania Historical Magazine, 43, no. 1 (March, 1960), 175.

[22] Pennsylvania Archives, Fifth Series, II, 79-109

[23] Pennsylvania Archives, First Series, V, 402.

[24] Pennsylvania Archives, First Series, VI, 445.

[25] Pennsylvania Archives, First Series, V, 741-2.

[26] Archibald Loudon, A Selection of Some of the Most Interesting Narratives of Outrages Committed by the Indians in their Wars with the White People (Harrisburg, PA: Arno Press, 1971), 229-32.

[27] Pennsylvania Archives, Eighth Series, 42, 79-80. See also Second Series, XIV, 679.

[28] Pennsylvania Archives, Ninth Series, 79-80.

[29] Pennsylvania Archives, First Series, IX, 458.

[30] Pennsylvania Archives, Second Series, XIV, 685-7.

[31] For Joseph Irwin’s prisoner details from the Haldimand papers in the British Library, see Chris McHenry, The Best Men of Westmoreland (Lawrenceburg, IN: n.p., 1981), 102.

[32] Pennsylvania Archives, First Series, IX, 458.

[33] For the letters from James Marshall to William Irvine on September 12 and 15, 1782 reporting this attack, see J. H. Newton, The History of the Panhandle of West Virginia (Wheeling, WV: J. A. Caldwell, 1879), 125-31.

[34] The Narrative of the Sufferings of Massy Harbison (Pittsburgh, PA: S. Engels, 1825), 50-51.