Daniel Monteith
The first we know of him, he was joining Colonel John Andrews' Regiment of York County Militia as a Lieutenant in 1778.1 It's not surprising that he'd be suffused with patriotic fervor then, since men that had marched off to Boston in 1775 with their Pennsylvania rifles to impress John Adams and George Washington with their prowess as marksmen (and to send many Officer-sons of prominent British families to their reward in the siege of Bunker Hill*) were just returning home, after participating in just about every significant battle Washington's army had fought up to that time.2 Indeed, the citizens of York County had been straining for any news of the war through those years.
The county's devotion to the Patriot cause did not abate after that first round of enlistments and 're-ups.' In 1775, 3,349 militiamen went to fight from the county. In 1778, the count of militiamen at war rose to 4,621 out of a county population of 25,000, according to a chronicle compiled by the York Daily Record.
"York Town seems quite deserted." a diarist wrote in 1776,"on account of the departure of all men under fifty years of age. Our young men had to leave for the army in Jersey." – York's daily routine was at a standstill. – "All business and every occupation are prostrate, all shops are closed," the diarist wrote.3
Before Daniel's enlistment, the quiet of York was decidedly interrupted from September 30,1777 to June 27, 1778, when Congress escaped to the town before British General Howe's advance on Philadelphia. Belief in the Cause permeated York.
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That Daniel Monteith enlisted as a 28-year old Lieutenant suggests that he was a substantial member of York society, inasmuch as officers were generally drawn from the ranks of civic and commercial leaders in those days.
We have yet to learn any particulars about Monteith's service – or even how long he served – but it is notable that the York Rifles under Captain Joseph McClellan joined with the army commanded by General "Mad Anthony" Wayne in May, 1781, to "form a junction" with the Marquis de Lafayette's troops in the siege of Yorktown, Virginia.4
On the other hand, as the Revolution proceeded, British incitement of the Indians west of the Alleghenies and in the Ohio Valley through 1777, along with colonist reprisals against natives, escalated the violence and number of raids on the frontier. In February of 1778, General Edward Hand led a campaign of Pennsylvania militia out of Fort Pitt against Mingo towns along the Cuyahoga River, an unsuccessful campaign that was soiled by an attack upon peaceful Delaware women and children.5 Frontier militia were mustered throughout Pennsylvania to protect against Indian raids. Whether the York County militia were deployed to western outposts through 1778, we don't know for certain. However, there is a confusing reference at MotherBedford.com that says the York County militia was ordered to Bedford on February 23, 1782, and then on west to Fort Pitt to "join in the expedition led by General Hand against the Indians in that vicinity." To the best of our knowledge, Hand was long gone from Fort Pitt by 1782, so perhaps the author mixed the dates up?6
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Daniel Monteith was born in 1750, in Chester, Pennsylvania. (This means that Allie Monteith, his sister, and his brother John may have been born in Chester, too? We hope a Monteith family genealogist shakes out of the bushes and lets us know.)
Our man appears to have spent his middle years building a life in York County, being there (along with his brother) to answer the census taker's call in 1790. Just when he married Sarah Leckey7 we still don't know. His biographical note in Revolutionary Soldiers Buried in Ohio hints that he (and possibly his brother John) were in Lawrence County, Pennsylvania, on that state's extreme western frontier, in the very early 1790s.8 At some point, he followed his sister and her frontiersman husband, William Templeton, to the Mahoning Valley, just over the border into what is now Ohio at the end of the "Old Youngstown and Bedford Road." William Templeton II laid claim to some land in Austintown as early as 1795, and had been carrying mail to Warren since 1798 according to family chronicles. Whether Daniel Monteith came as early as the Treaty of Greenville (1795) placated Indian resistance, or waited until the influx of settlers to Coitsville Township in 1801 is unknown at this writing. He was in the territory early enough to become known to Governor Edward Tifflin as a reliable stalwart of his community and be commissioned Justice of the Peace on September 25, 1806 – three months before the township he served was officially organized – and, it was a position he held for six years.9
He certainly was a respected man in the area. Coitsville was settled in the main by Scotch-Irish emigrants from the adjacent Beaver and Washington Counties in Pennsylvania where titles to land were proving uncertain. Most were "moral and Church-going people," of the many Presbyterian stripes that were splintering off the old practice. Daniel joined his brother's Hopewell Presbyterian Church in New Bedford, just over the line in Lawrence County, Pennsylvania, where Daniel was a deacon and elder for thirty-five years. [See note 8, above.]
Daniel died in 1826, in Coitsville, Ohio, according to the DAR recorders. He is buried at his home church in New Bedford, Pennsylvania, along with his brother John, who was "also a Revolutionary soldier."
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* 'These Pennsylvania Riflemen "use a peculiar kind of musket, called a rifle," John Adams wrote a correspondent after the action at Boston. "It has a circular bore or groove within the barrel and carries a ball with great exactness to great distances. They are the most expert marksmen in the world."
In fact, when Captain Doudel's Company passed through Bethlehem, Pennsylvania with young Lieutenant Henry Miller in command, the 24-year old Lieutenant answered the clamor of that town's men to join his company by chalking a small 'nose' on a barn door. "I'll take only the men that can hit that nose at one hundred and fifty yards," said he.
"Take care of your nose, General Gage," said the newspapers of the time. [Loucks, History…, in 'Notes'.]
1. Official Roster of the Soldiers of the American Revolution Buried in the State of Ohio, Vol. I, p. 260. [Captain Holmes Stockton's 8th Company, 4th Battalion, York County Militia in Colonel John Andrews' Regiment.]
2. Loucks, Augustus, History of the York Rifle Company From 1775 to 1908, York, PA, 1908. Transcribed for USGenWeb Archives by Judy Banja, proofread by Abby Bowman, © 2004. http://ftp.rootsweb.com/pub/usgenweb/pa/york/military/rifles1.txt 2007.07.22
3. "Call to Arms Empties York," York Daily Record, Jan. 25, 2005. http://www.ydr.com/ntbf/ci_4336786 2007.07.22
4. Loucks, op. cit.
5. "Western theater of the American Revolution," Wikipedia.org, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_theater_of_the_American_Revolutionary_War 2007.08.12.
6. "timeline," http://www.motherbedford.com/Revtime.htm 2007.07.22.
7. Official Roster…, (op. cit.) Vol. 1, p. 260.
8. Official Roster…, Vol. II, p. 418 (ref. note to Official Roster…, p. 260).
9. "Historical Collections of the Mahoning Valley," p. 20. http://ohiolineage.com/Mahoning/histcol/page20/index.htm 2007.07.22.
© 2007, R Templeton & Associates
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