Intervals of clouds and sunshine, seasonably warm, but more humid. A late day shower or thunderstorm possible. .
Partly to mostly cloudy and muggy with a few showers or a thunderstorm possible, especially before midnight.
"These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service to their country, but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.” -- Thomas Paine, “The American Crisis” no 1., December 23, 1776
“We must all hang together or assuredly we shall all hang separately.” -- Benjamin Franklin to his fellow delegates at the signing of the Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776.
In our time, cannons from the past, when they are found at all, are usually taken from the bottom of the sea. A recent example is the discovery of the “Duke of Gloucester,” an English warship that sank in 1682 while carrying the heir to the throne, James Duke of York. He survived as King James II, only to be forced from the throne in 1689 in rebellion by his subjects.
But finding buried cannon in northern Chester County in eastern Pennsylvania is not unknown. Seven cannons from the Warwick Furnace were dug up in 1875 and five more in 1895. Historian and early Pennsylvania researcher Dan Graham has noted they were buried along French Creek in 1777 to keep them from the British.
Four huge cannons were found there recently at the French & Pickering Thomas P. Bentley Nature Preserve by crews using 21st century technology like drones and a state-of-the art magnetometer.
As sometimes happens with the past, these cannons didn’t want to give up their secrets easily. It took four hours each, with heavy duty straps and good old-fashioned manpower, to get them up and into a barn. Each is over 7 feet long and fired 18-pound cannon balls. One had a cannonball stuck in its barrel and another had one that rolled out during cleaning.
Ray Bentley, a member of the crew that discovered the four, 4,500-pound behemoths, was impressed.
"Wow. The last people that saw this thing were, you know, in 1777 and they buried it, and it’s been under there all that time. It’s pretty cool," he said.
Now that they have been discovered, the cannons lead to more questions. Why were they buried? Was it to keep them from the British destroying them? Was it to save them for Washington’s army that was desperately short of artillery? Since the war was far from over, why was no attempt made to dig them up? Did someone just forget where they were buried?
Why they were buried was probably the arrival on the 25th of August, 1777, of Major General Sir William Howe’s invasion forces at Head of Elk, Maryland, a fleet of 211 ships carrying roughly 17,000 solders. Howe had beaten Washington in the Battle of Long Island the previous summer and was hoping to compensate for Washington’s victories at Trenton and Princeton by capturing Philadelphia. Howe also may have thought he could round up the Continental Congress and have them executed for treason, a nasty process outlined in British lawbooks, that included hanging and disembowelment while still alive. If so, he never got the chance.
On September 18, two young aides to Washington, Lt. Col. Alexander Hamilton and Capt. “Lighthorse Harry” Lee, had a skirmish with the British outside Valley Forge. Hamilton later got off a letter to Continental Congress President John Hancock suggesting that it would be advisable, as the British were so near, for the legislators to leave the city promptly. Congress may have already been planning that, but they now did so rapidly, eventually setting up a temporary capital first at Lancaster and then at York.
Originally, Howe was also to sail up the Hudson to Albany to meet another army coming down from Canada headed by Maj. Gen. John “Gentleman Johnny” Burgoyne and another from the west and thus split New York state. But he decided he could take Philadelphia and later join the New York plan. But Howe didn’t and the defeat of Burgoyne’s forces at Saratoga that followed in October was a major turning point of the war.
Howe’s invasion fleet had been plagued with problems. Collisions between ships, storms and shortages of food, water and fodder for horses were common. Fodder supplies were so acute that some of the horses were destroyed by dropping them overboard to end their suffering. Howe had been told by the government that Russian mercenary troops might join his army. But historian Richard B. Morris in his book the “Peacemakers” notes Empress Catherine the Great “walked a tightrope of strict neutrality in thought as well as action,” and could be “swayed neither by sentiment nor cajolery.” When the British offered to transfer an island in the West Indies to Russia in exchange for support, her minister replied in horror that it would ruin them as the Russian navy’s aging fleet could barely make its way out of the Baltic. Later Catherine would need the troops to carve up Poland and unilaterally annex the Crimea from the Ottoman Turkish empire. Some things never change.
Made up of a mix of British regulars and Hessian mercenaries, Howe’s invasion force marched inland. No one could be sure where the British would actually go. Would they head toward Philadelphia directly or to the Warwick Iron Furnace? A column of troops led by Lt. Gen. Charles Cornwallis following the British victory at the Battle of the Brandywine split off from the main body and headed for Chester. They then stumbled on Washington’s army. On September 13th, a brief clash known as the Battle of the Clouds began when the two armies spotted each other. While they were maneuvering for position a heavy rain broke out, drenching arms and men. As a result, both armies broke off contact and moved apart. Washington’s troops headed to Warwick and Reading Furnaces. But Cornwallis’s column marched away. Several days later they joined the rest of Howe’s army and moved toward Philadelphia. In 1781 it was Cornwallis’s fate to surrender his army at Yorktown (in fact he had a subordinate, Brigadier General Charles O. Hara, perform that painful duty) to superior French and American forces, virtually ending the Revolution. He went on to serve in Ireland and as a successful Governor General of India where he is buried.
Founded many years earlier, the Warwick Furnace largely produced iron stoves, including Benjamin Franklin’s famous invention. It also employed as a clerk for a time a young, indentured servant from Northern Ireland named George Taylor, later a resident of the Lehigh Valley and a signer of the Declaration of Independence. At that time the furnace was being run by iron master Samuel Potts with his brother-in-law Thomas Rutter who were ardent patriots. During the period of 1777-1778 they produced cannon for the Pennsylvania Navy and for Washington’s Army and munitions during the rest of the war.
Historians believe that fear the British might seize or destroy the cannon caused them to be buried. But there may have been another reason. Since the start of the Revolution in 1775, Washington was in desperate need of cannon and gunpowder. When he took command of the army at Boston the British were busy reinforcing it and there was no way to dislodge them. “The terrible state we are in,” he wrote his brother, “is exceedingly disagreeable.”
The only cannon Washington could think of were those in the recently captured Fort Ticonderoga, 300 miles to the north in upstate New York. He discussed the problem with Henry Knox, his artillery chief, who decided to try. In frigid December weather, Knox traveled to the fort, picked 58 of the most useful artillery pieces, had them disassembled and with the aid of Benedict Arnold and Ethan Allen assembled strong sleds of nearly three tons each, 80 yoke of oxen, and dragged them over frozen lakes and mountains to Boston.
Despite a near disaster outside Albany when one cannon nearly disappeared through the ice in the Hudson River, Knox managed to shepherd them safely to Washington. Surprised to say the least by cannon fire, the British quickly organized a retreat from Boston, taking with them 1,000 Loyalists, aka Tory refugees, to Nova Scotia. That solved one problem.
Warwick Furnace and other iron furnaces were called in to fill the breach. The results were not always satisfactory as cannon making was a delicate art that required skills that not every iron furnace had. And metal was in short supply. Another solution was an old one dating back to the late Middle Ages: round up all the church and other bells in cities and towns and melt them down. The committee of Public Safety in New York at Washington’s direction before the British attacked the city in the fall of 1776 ordered the bells removed so that they might later be used to provide the iron works with cannon for “the sinews of war.”
Even before the British were near the city of Philadelphia on June 16, 1777, the Pennsylvania Assembly, meeting in what is now Independence Hall, authorized that “as soon as they think proper” officials move “all the bells belonging to the several churches and other public buildings be removed to a place of safety.” On September 14, 1777, Congress called on public and military officials “to remove all public bells in Philadelphia to a place of public security on the near approach of the enemy to the city.”
When the rectors of Christ Church asked to be exempt, the public officials were firm; all care would be taken to see the belfries and bells were not harmed but they must be removed. Among them was the State House Bell known later as the Liberty Bell that was taken to Zion’s Church in Allentown. Historian John Bear Stoudt suggests that if things had turned out differently it would have ended up in the Continental Army arsenal at Carlisle to be melted down for cannons.
At roughly the same time, if not earlier, perhaps something similar was going on with Warwick’s cannon. Were they taken by wagon to a site previously dug for them? Although Cornwallis was headed in the direction of Warwick it is doubtful the British would have tried to move the cannon if they came upon them - their destination was Philadelphia- but they certainly might have tried to damage them in some way. That leads to the question as to why in 1778 when the British had left Philadelphia in retreat and with Washington’s army so in need of cannon didn’t someone quickly order they be dug up and used? Well, the chief reason may have been that they were no longer needed.
Benjamin Franklin, in the winter of 1778, had gotten the long-sought treaty of alliance with France. When a French diplomat told him the news that Philadelphia had been captured by the British, the canny Dr. Franklin was ready with a reply. “No, you are wrong,” he said, “General Howe has not captured Philadelphia, Philadelphia has captured General Howe.” While the British occupation went into winter-quarters Franklin went on with negotiations that led to perhaps the greatest factor in the eventual American victory: arms and troops from France. Major John Andre, later hanged for his part in the treason plot with Benedict Arnold, occupied Franklin’s house during the occupation of Philadelphia and is believed to have stolen several valuable items from it.
Soon arms and troops were arriving from the new ally, including a great deal and wide variety of artillery pieces. French artillery was then considered the best in the world. It is perhaps significant that Warwick Furnace spent the rest of the war turning out munitions, not cannons. Another much wanted item from France was saltpeter, an essential ingredient in the making of gunpowder. Perhaps it only made sense then to Potts and Rutter to give up on cannon and focus on munitions.
No longer needed, and with all the time and effort that went into making them and perhaps not always with success, it might have been felt that there was no reason to dig them up. The complete answer might never be known. But over time they were forgotten.
Howe left Philadelphia in 1778 and the city was once more in American hands. Current military historians note that he bungled at least 50 opportunities to crush the colonial cause.
Near the close of the Civil War, the Warwick Furnace was no longer profitable and went out of business. And so, the four cannons slept on as America went from war to peace and war again, not revealing their hiding place until almost 250 years later.
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Intervals of clouds and sunshine, seasonably warm, but more humid. A late day shower or thunderstorm possible.
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