12/18/2016
A French and Indian War Officer's Campaign Chest
and its D.A.R. Chapter Catalog Index Card
The catalog card contains some essential nuggets of information, but has connected them in ways that render the history of the chest almost nonsense. It does not help that there is also a slip of the pen.
At first reading, the card seems to assert the chest belonged to Lt. Grant and somehow passed to Lt. Bronk, in the hands of whose descendants, the chest came down to the D.A.R. post. Lt. Bronk is identified as a British prisoner of war, one who apparently remained in this country since, "he later bought 3,000 A[cres] in Dutchess Co." And, the donor of the chest is identified as the daughter of "Charlotte G. Bronk."
This is a bit odd, but not impossible. The writer says that Lt. Grant was at "Fort Bedford, L.I., NY" and that Lt. Bronk was "a prisoner of war held at Fort Bedford , L.I. NY" This then lends a superficial credibility to the notion that Bronk somehow ended up with Grant's chest, whether as a gift of friendship between guard and prisoner or in some other manner.
The story immediately falls apart on several grounds. First, there were no Continental Army or militia units designated the "77th Regt." There was a British 77th Regt. during the Revolutionary War, but it did not see service in America. Nor did any of its officers by those names. The regiment itself was dissolved before the war's end and not reconstituted until much later.
Secondly, the notion that British prisoners were being held at Fort Bedford, Long Island, New York, is rather difficult to believe. No such fort is listed in any sources and even if there was a small fortification at Bedford (now part of Bedford-Stuyvesant) it would be a strange place to hold British prisoners since Long Island was British hands for most of the war, starting in the late summer of 1776.
With those problems in mind, we turn to the provenance. The writer of the card may have mis-remembered information given to her by the donor, but there would be no reason to question the identity of the donor and, indeed, there was a Mrs. E. La Rue Ely. Almost immediately, though, we run into trouble again, for the donor was neither the daughter of Charlotte G. Bronk nor the granddaughter of Minnie Snyder. She was, in fact, the step-daughter of Charlotte G. Bronk and Minnie Snyder was not her grandmother, but Charlotte G. Bronk's sister.
Rather than create a false aura of suspense, we can straighten out some of this fairly quickly when we realize that Mildred Ely was not a member of the D.A.R. chapter, but Charlotte Bronk and Minnie Snyder were, so it makes very good sense that they would be mentioned on the card. The chest was likely a gift in their honor, or at least from their association with the chapter. The donor was not a direct descendant of the original owner, so there was no particular reason for her to keep it. Since the donor died in 1976, the gift was certainly made between that date and the deaths of her stepmother and step-aunt. The card, however, was likely written sometime after 1976, since the donor would certainly have straightened out the family relationships if she had been available.
The provenance for the chest is made clear in the D.A.R. applications of Charlotte Bronk and Minnie Snyder. The one thing that would have clarified it right away is, ironically, mentioned only in passing by the writer of the card: Charlotte G. Bronk's middle initial: her maiden name was Grant. She and her sister were the last two survivors of that line of the Grant family and both are directly descended from James Grant, the owner of the chest. There is one slight wrinkle. Their application for membership in the D.A.R. had to show descent from a patriot soldier of the Revolution. To do this, they traced their lineage directly back to James Grant, Jr., (born 1770) and then through is wife to a N.Y. militia officer of the Revolution. James Grant, Jr., however, was the son of James Grant, Sr., documented in the Settlers of the Beekman Patent as a British officer living on half-pay in Dutchess County, N.Y., during the Revolution.
There is, as is to be expected, some confusion about James Grant's (Sr.'s) rank in the British army and even his regiment in the records left by his contemporaries and recorded in SBP, but they knew him certainly to be an officer on half-pay when the Revolution occurred. The number of his regiment is variously given though, interestingly, in his (second) wife's obituary the number of his regiment is wrongly given, but is designated a highland regiment, which is correct for, knowing him by the genealogical data derived from chest and donor card, we can identify as Lt. James Grant of the 77th Regiment of Foot, otherwise known as Montgomery's Highlanders.
At this point the story becomes very interesting historically, but also loops back to explain some of the mysterious elements of the index card. Lt. James Grant settled in the area on the basis of land grants made to former British soldiers after the French and Indian War. Needless to say, at the beginning of the Revolution he was regarded with some suspicion by various patriot committees. Neighbors and likely relatives joined British and loyalist forces. He is the subject of some correspondence to and from committees on conspiracies, but he is also the author of some letters to Governor Clinton of New York that lay out his position and problems during the war.
Called before one committee convened before the Declaration of Independence he was asked to take an oath of parole and consider himself a prisoner of war. This he was able to avoid by explaining that he was not opposed to the principles evinced by the committee, and whose members had not yet forsworn allegiance to the King. The arrangement they settled on was that he would observe all laws then in effect and that if he in some way violated the agreement they would notify him and he would quit the area.
After the Declaration of Independence, however, he was summoned again before the committee and this time agreed to their terms, which involved considering himself a prisoner of war to the State of New York and limiting his travels to within six miles of his residence (which he conveniently changed to a somewhat broader geographical designation.) Despite some occasional suggestions by neighbors of suspicious activity in his locale, he managed to keep on this rather narrow path, to the extent that he eventually even gained permission from the Governor for a trip to British occupied New York City on personal business. He remained in the county after the war and died in 1796 with some sizable land holdings in Washington and Dutchess Counties.
At this point we can take another look at the index card- in particular the mysterious "Lt. Bronk" in line six. As should be clear by now, "Lt. Bronk" did not exist. The writer has made a slip of the pen. She had just written "Charlotte G. Bronk," and with that last name temporarily in mind inadvertently created a British officer, and one who has appropriated James Grant's acreage in Dutchess County. If she read back over the card, the mistake probably did not jump out at her for it may have seemed to explain the chest's descent in the family of two women whose names were Bronk and Snyder, though it would actually take some explaining to show why the supposed daughter (Bronk) would have the presumed maiden name of the presumed mother (Snyder.) The exercise is, fortunately, unnecessary once we have the DAR applications and the genealogy.
We can also look back at two other points on the index card. The notion that Grant ("Bronk") was a prisoner of war is an interesting memory of his parole to the State of New York. Still unexplained is the mysterious appearance of "Ft. Bedford" and its location on Long Island. For the solution of the first question, and possibly the second, we can look at the first half of Lt. Grant's life and his military service. For, knowing that he was a lieutenant, that he served in Montgomery's Highlanders, and that he survived the French and Indian War and remained in America, we can disentangle him from the three officers named James Grant who served in that unit, and identify him as James Grant (3) in McCulloch's roster and history of the unit Sons of the Mountains.
Our James Grant came to America as a "Gentleman Volunteer" with the regiment in 1757. He was present at the disastrous attack on Fort Duquesne led by his relative, Major James Grant, and was commissioned an Ensign in the regiment as a result of the casualties they sustained. He served with the regiment throughout the war and through Pontiac's Rebellion, leaving the service only in December, 1763. He is possibly the "Lt. Grant" sent as a messenger to Henry Bouquet with word that a composite battalion of the regiment was marching to his assistance, and which reached him in time for the Battle of Bushy Run. He is certainly the "Lt. Grant" (the only one in the regiment at that time) who, in October, 1763, is in charge of Fort Bedford, Pennsylvania, and concerned with escorts for supply wagons on the Forbes Road.
Like the memory of Lt. Grant as a prisoner of war, the memory of his association with Fort Bedford is an accurate one. The placement of the fort on Long Island is an interesting problem, for the specificity of the location suggests there might be an element of truth in it as well, since there seems to have been no real Fort Bedford on Long Island that would have dragged the location into the story. I have no specific solution, but offer two possibilities. The first is that the 77th Regiment was quartered in the New York area at the outbreak of Pontiac's Rebellion. Just as Fort Bedford is a memory of Grant's service at that location, certainly in 1763 and possibly earlier as well, so the reference to Long Island might be a memory of a stay there during the same period.
Another possibility derives from the belief of index card's author that Grant's service took place during the Revolution. It is just possible that reference to a prisoner of war during the Revolution has become conflated in the writer's mind with stories of American prisoners held on the notorious British prison ships in Wallabout Bay off Long Island.
