Minisink Valley During the Revolutionary War: The Danger Was Not the British Regulars

MOUNT HOPE, N.Y.—A renowned British captain led a band of loyalist volunteers on two deadly raids in New York’s Minisink Valley, leaving one community so devastated that much of the history was lost.

That’s the story Port Jervis-based historian and author Michael Worden presented in “Joseph Brant’s Raids and the Ultimate Sacrifice,” a talk on the Minisink Valley during the Revolutionary War.

The talk was given on Aug. 29 to about 20 history enthusiasts and residents, young and old, at the Minisink Town Hall Heritage Museum, a wood cabin filled with artifacts from the town’s history, ranging from a delicately carved World War I rifle to vibrant homemade hooked rugs.

Worden, who has lived in the Port Jervis area his whole life, is the deputy police chief in the town of Deerpark. He’s long been interested in history and is the author of “Lynched by a Mob,” which details an 1892 lynching in Port Jervis.

He told The Epoch Times that not much is known about the Battle of Minisink due to a lack of sources.

“The Battle of Minisink is a topic I started researching in the last year and a half, so I put together the presentations to try to bring more awareness to the public about the battle and about the complexities of studying something from nearly 250 years ago that’s largely been told by legends and lore,” he said.

Raiding Parties

The Minisink Valley is the stretch of land along the Delaware River between Forestburgh up in Sullivan County down to Port Jervis in Orange County. The region was the frontier of colonial civilization, with small pockets of farming communities dotting the Delaware River. Military action during the Revolutionary War in the Minisink Valley was sparse, and defenses were made up of untrained local militia minutemen.

The danger in the valley was not the British Regulars, but Indian raids, Worden said. These raiding parties were made up of both British-allied Native Americans and colonial loyalists, or Tories. Minisink Valley, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania were home to many loyalists.

“The Tories would have disguised themselves to look like Indians because they didn’t want anybody to know who they were,” said Worden. “They might be somebody who lives miles up the road who you’ve encountered before.”

Joseph Brant, otherwise known as Thayendanegea, was a renowned British captain and Mohawk leader who led Brant’s Volunteers through the Minisink Valley twice, raiding and burning.

In October 1778, Brant launched raids on the Huguenot, then called Peenpack, area near Port Jervis, where he burned, looted, and killed. Raiders on the frontier had four goals: Steal provisions to continue the fight, disrupt communities by taking away needed supplies and food, gather intelligence on Continental Army defenses, and sow fear in the frontier.

Brant’s forces, which contemporary letters of dubious truthfulness put at more than 500 men, faced little resistance in the Minisink area.

His Volunteers went as far south as Port Jervis, where they chose to not engage Fort DeWitt in the town of Deerpark, which was garrisoned with 25 men. Most forts of the era were fortified homes or simple blockhouses.

After the devastating raids, George Washington sent Continental Regulars to protect the valley between the fall of 1778 and the spring of 1779. Those troops were then sent to participate in the Sullivan Campaign, in which Brant’s Volunteers were defeated.

Before Brant’s men would be beaten, they would make their second appearance in Minisink, on July 20, 1779.

He again struck the valley, burning, looting, and killing. In a letter, Brant noted the failure of the raids to take prisoners and kill settlers, saying, “The reason that we could not take more of them was owing to the many forts about the place, into which they were always ready to run like ground-hogs.”

A Premature Shot

After hitting Minisink a second time, Brant’s Volunteers were followed up the Delaware by a band of militiamen under Col. John Hathorn. Worden estimated the militia to be about 120 men strong, and Brant’s men to be about the same.

The plan was to catch Brant’s Volunteers by surprise on July 22 at the Minisink Ford in Highland, Sullivan County, with a three-pronged envelopment against the Delaware River. A premature shot by one of the militia—sources vary on who exactly fired—gave away the surprise attack.

Heeding the early warning, Brant led some men up a creek bed to flank the patriots. The move brought him behind the patriot’s formation and turned the engagement in his favor.

Worden projected a set of maps with the movements of troops during the battle, detailing for the audience the details and tactics of the engagement.

Brant’s men, more accustomed to the dense forest fighting that characterized the battle, beat the militia back into a square formation. After 5 hours of fighting, both sides were running out of ammunition. The square formation was broken by a bayonet charge, and the militia fled into the woods.

It is believed a physician named Benjamin Tustin stayed behind at a great boulder known as Hospital Rock, where he was tending wounded militiamen. They were killed by Brant’s men.

Brant’s Volunteers continued north and west after the battle, where they would be defeated south of the Finger Lakes at the Battle of Newtown, and forced into Canada.

The Legacy

“From 1779 to about 1820, there’s nowhere to even grieve and remember the fallen,” Worden said. “There are attempts, multiple attempts made, to go back to the battlefield because [the fleeing militia] left the dead there.”

On July 22, 1822, on the 43rd anniversary, bones that were found on the site were buried in Goshen. A plaque listing the names of the fallen sits at Minisink Battleground Park, and a monument stands in Goshen for the patriots who fought at Minisink Ford.

Worden told The Epoch Times that so little is known about the battle partly because of the devastating effect it had on the community.

“It was a tragic loss to the community. In a close-knit community, you would have lost people you knew. [There were] widows overnight, children were left without a father, farms were left without, at the time would have been, the man in charge. … So I think some of it was that there was no way to remember that accurately,” Worden said.

“The survivors, they did reports at the time, they wrote letters. The actual details of the battle were never really, that I found yet, properly documented.”

He added that even the location of the battlefield was still being debated in the early 1900s.

Worden said sharing the region’s history helps people connect with a shared heritage, bringing everyone together.

“Even people that aren’t native to the Minisink Valley that live here today—when you move up here, you become part of that community,” he said.

He has another presentation on the Battle of Minisink set for Sept. 26 in Port Jervis, and will offer a Civil War program on Oct. 18.