Squire Cheyney and the Battle of Brandywine and other patriots

A view of Brandywine Creek from about 1906.  You are looking south toward Baltimore Pike. The pike is the bridge you see just right of center.
 

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 Many soldiers etc. have been forgotten in the 250 years since the American Revolution. Among them was Squire Thomas Cheyney of Thornbury Township, who was not a soldier and did not take an active part in the Revolution, but, on the day of the Battle of the Brandywine, he was able to warn Gen. Washington that the British troops under Cornwallis had made a wide circle to the north, had crossed Brandywine Creek, and were approaching rapidly from the north while the Americans were expecting an attack from the west.  It happened this way:

Squire Cheyney who was well-known as a Whig, or one of the party siding with the Americans, had been warned by his friends to keep out of the way of the British for fear of arrest, when they approached Kennett Square in September 1777.  Washington’s army was posted at Chadds Ford prepared to fight the British if they tried to cross Brandywine Creek.

Cheyney heeded the advice of his friends and on Sept. 10 went to visit a relative who lived at Marshalltown in Chester County.  The next morning the two men started out on horseback to visit a relative who lived at Marshalltown in Chester County.  The next morning the two men started out on horseback to visit the American camp.  On the way, they caught a glimpse of a large body of soldiers in scarlet coats, marching toward Jefferis ford on the east branch of the Brandywine.  When the two men realized that the British were on their way to make a surprise attack on the American army, they set off at top speed to warn Gen. Washington.

Squire Cheyney was mounted on a sorrel pacing-mare which soon left his companion’s slower horse far behind.  When Cheyney reached the camp, he tried at first to warn Ge. Sullivan but was so rudely treated that he asked where he could find Gen. Washington.  When he found the general and told what he had seen, Washington seemed unwilling to believe him, and some of the staff officers sneered at the story.  Then the squire said to Washington, “If you don’t believe me, sir, put me under guard until you can ask Anthony Wayne or Persie Frazer if I am a man to be believed,” and to the officers he said, “I would have you to know that I have this day’s work as much at heart as e’er a one of you.”

Finally, Cheyney drew a map in the dust with a twig, showing where the British probable were at that moment, and this convinced Washington that the story was true.

Scarcely had Washington accepted the warning, when a message came from Gen. Sullivan that the British were approaching the rear of his right wing.

Washington set off at once for the danger point and gave orders for disposing his forces to meet the attack but it was too late to drive back the British and the Americans were compelled to retreat, leaving the battleground in possession of the enemy.  Squire Cheyney’s warning had come too late to prevent defeat but it had saved the Americans from a complete surprise which might have ended in the capture of their whole army.

Squire Cheyney’s warning to Washington was not his only service to the American cause.  Soon after this incident, he was made a commissioner to seize the property of persons found to be disloyal.  Later he served as a civilian agent to collect and distribute supplies for the Continental Army, as the American troops were called.

When Cheyney mentioned Persie Frazer as one who could vouch for his truthfulness, he was speaking of Colonel Persifor Frazer, one of his neighbors, who was an officer in the American army.  Frazer lived on the site of Sarum Forge in a part of Aston which later became part of Thornbury.  He had served on several committees formed to protest against British treatment of the English colonists...  When war seemed certain, he began to organize small groups to be ready for military duty, and soon joined others in recruiting and drilling militia under the leadership of Anthony Wayne.

Colonel Frazer was captured by the British after the Battle of the Brandywine, along with many other officers, and forced to march with the enemy until they took Philadelphia.  There the captured officers were locked up, first in the State House, then in an inn from which Frazer escaped and slipped through the British lines to rejoin the American army.

Another local patriot was Captain Thomas Levis, who was well known in old Chester County for his support of the struggle for independence.  He was born in the Levis Homestead still standing in Springfield, which was built in 1686 by his great-grandfather, Samuel Levis.  He was active in his own community and held various including those of assessor, treasurer, and county commissioner.

In June 1776, Levis represented Chester County in the Provincial Conference of Committees of the Province of Pennsylvania, held in Carpenter’s Hall, Philadelphia, and with four men from other counties was appointed to draw up a Declaration of Rights.  This set forth the grievances that had been put upon the English colonists by the British king.

It is a tradition in Levis’s family that when the Revolution began, he said he would hang up his Quaker garb, put on the clothes of a soldier, and fight for his country.  He became a captain of militia and served throughout the war.

Cheyney, Frazer, and Levis were all aiding the Continental army in some way, but there was another kind of help which was just as important.  This was the raising of money.  When the war broke out, the Americans did not have an army.  Money was needed to buy arms and ammunition, to pay for the food, clothing, and blankets being collected for an army, and to pay the soldiers who were being recruited and trained.

As the Continental Congress did not have power to lay taxes, funds were raised by asking people to give or lend money to Congress to pay the expenses of the war.  In Pennsylvania, Robert Morris was the leader in raising funds.  One of those who assisted Morris was Thomas Leiper, who subscribed large sums of money.  Leiper lived in Philadelphia at the time, but had mills and quarries near Crum Creek and later built a house and lived there.

The financing of the war was aided also by the skill and honesty of Thomas and Mark Wilcox, owners of Ivy Paper Mill in Concord.  To them was entrusted the task of making to pay the debts of the new nation.  The Wilcox’s’ had reason to be proud of their record of accounting for every sheet of banknote paper made in their mill.  None was ever lost or stolen.  For their loyal service to their country, they belong on a list of Delaware County patriots.