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Timothy
Murphy (1751 - 1818)
American Patriot, Frontiersman,
Rifleman of the Revolutionary War.
 The
year 1751 saw the birth of Tim Murphy in the Delaware Water Gap
region of Pennsylvania. His parents, Thomas and Mary Murphy
emigrated from County Donegal, Ireland shortly before he was
born.
For many Irish family’s
emigration to America was the only option available to escape
death or starvation, the intended consequences of the Penal
Laws. This mass exodus of the native Irish to America had
unintended consequences for the British in that many of them
ended up in America’s fledgling Continental army. It is
estimated that approximately one third to one half of front-line
soldiers y were Irish emigrants who did not forget the treatment
that they had received under British rule back home in Ireland
and were quite prepared to settle the score with their former
oppressors.
Although Murphy was not one of these emigrants, his parents
were, and their recounting of the despicable treatment they
suffered at the hands of the British instilled in young Murphy
an understandable hatred for all things British. Justice being
the great arbitrator, Britain's rampaging crusade in Ireland
came back to haunt them here in American. It was in the thirteen
colonies that the British military came face-to-face with many
of their earlier victims in a losing war that cost them their
American colonies along with their false sense of invincibility.
In 1759, when Murphy was eight years old the family moved to
Shamokin Flats, now the town of Sunbury. Sometime later he was
apprenticed to the Van Campen family, who, when they relocated
to Wyoming County in western Pennsylvania took him along. At
that time Wyoming County, was a frontier region where
undoubtedly Murphy became adept at using the rifle not alone as
a hunting weapon but also as a means of survival in, what was
then, a very hostile environment.
In
1775
at the onset of America's War
of independence, Murphy enlisted in Captain John Lowdon's
Company of Northumberland County Riflemen. He subsequently
served in the Siege of Boston, the Battle of Long Island, and
skirmishing in Westchester. Later, he became a Sergeant in the
12th Regiment of the Pennsylvania Line and served at Trenton,
Princeton, and New Brunswick.
In 1777, Murphy was one of 500 handpicked riflemen to accompany
General Daniel Morgan to Upstate New York to confront General
John Burgoyne and his invading British Army. On October 7 of
1777 during the second Battle of Saratoga, General Morgan gave
the order for his best marksmen to take out Brigadier General
Simon Fraser who was rallying British troops in a
counterattack. Murphy climbed a nearby tree, rested his rifle
on a notch, took careful aim and from 300 yards shot Fraser in
the abdomen. He fell from his horse and was carried off the
field in full view of his troops. He died the next day. Murphy’s
second shot, from his same perch, felled Sir Frances Clarke,
General Burgoyne's chief Aide-de-Camp as he galloped onto the
field. He was dead before he hit the ground.
The
shooting of the two high ranking Generals, coupled with the
arrival of General Tenbroeck and his 3,000 New Yorkers on the
field of battle, spread panic among the British troops who
scrambled for cover in the entrenchments surrounding the camp
they had built at Saratoga. The American army, now over 12,000
strong, surrounded their positions. On 17th October 1777,
Burgoyne realizing that no relief was in the offing surrendered
to General Gates, commander of the American army.
The consequences of Burgoyne’s surrender were catastrophic for
the British in that it emboldened the American army and gave
France and Spain an incentive to declare war on Britain.
After the Battle of Saratoga, Murphy returned to the main army
and spent the winter of 1777 in Valley Forge. During the early
months 1778 he was engaged in harassing the British as the
withdrew from Philadelphia.
In July 1778, Murphy was amongst the three companies of
riflemen General Washington dispatched north to the Mohawk
Valley in New York to help stem Tory and Indian raids. He was
involved in tracking down and killing Christopher Service the
notorious Tory leader who terrorized patriot settlers throughout
the region. He also participated in the action at Unadilla in
October of 1778, when he and his fellow riflemen caught up with
and annihilated the raiders that sacked the Cherry Valley.
After his period of service with Morgan’s rifles ended in 1779,
he returned to the Schoharie Valley and enlisted in the 15th
Regiment of the Albany County Militia. During a scouting
expedition with a Captain Harper in the Delaware County forests
during the Spring of 1780 both of them were ambushed and taken
prisoner by Indians allied with the Tories. During the night,
the two bound men freed each other while their captors slept.
Before escaping they killed all of their captors except for one
who was allowed to live to tell what happened.
It was during this period of time that he met and married Peggy
Feeck,
his first wife.
When British/Canadian forces and their Indians allies, totaling
approximately 2,000 men, under the command of Col. John Johnson,
raided the Schoharie Valley, Murphy and about 200 other American
Militiaman, were surrounded in the "Middle Fort", located in
what is now Middleburgh. Outnumbered and demoralized, Major
Woolsey, the fort’s commanding officer, decided to surrender the
fort to Johnson’s besieging forces.
Three times Johnson sent an emissary with a white flag to accept
the surrender of the Fort. Each time Murphy sent a bullet
whizzing over the emissary head who made a hasty retreat.
After the third attempt Woolsey ordered Murphy arrested. None
of the officers or men would obey his order. Instead, they sided
with Murphy knowing that surrender would result in the massacre
of all the defenders including the women and children who had
taken refuge within.
Having failed to secure the surrender of the fort Johnson
exchanged fire with the defenders before
headed back north to Niagara leaving in his wake slaughtered
settlers and burned-out homes.
Early in 1781, Murphy reenlisted in the Pennsylvania Line under
General Wayne and was present for the final battle of Yorktown.
He returned to Fultonham in the Schoharie at the war's end.
After Murphy’s wife Peggy, who was with him during the siege of
the Middle fort, died in 1807, he married Mary Robertson and
relocated with her to Charlottesville. Murphy never applied for
a veteran's grant or pension, but nonetheless was able to
acquire a number of farms and a grist mill and become a local
political power. Later, he returned to Fultonham, where he died
in 1818, at age 67.
Murphy was buried there next to his first wife. In 1872, he was
reinterred at Middleburgh cemetery. Although the State
Legislature voted to erect a monument to Murphy in 1819, none
was built until some of his descendants purchased one to be
placed in the cemetery in 1910. In 1913, the Ancient Order of
Hibernians placed a marker commemorating Murphy at the Saratoga
Battlefield, and the state put up its own marker there in 1929.
In dedicating that monument, Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt
said; "This country has been made by Timothy Murphy's, the
men in the ranks. Conditions here called for the qualities of
the heart and head that Tim Murphy had in abundance".
Footnote:
The Ireland his parents left was a sad place indeed, having
endured Cromwell onslaught and the devastation, depravation, and
agony of the British enacted Penal Laws. When the first of
these repressive laws were enacted in 1695, 95% of Ireland's
land was owned by the native Irish. By the time they were
repealed in 1776, the plantation of Ireland was complete with
only 5% of the land left to the Irish. Considering that the
native Irish comprised 80% of the population the resultant
situation was inhumane and genocidal in its intent.
Timothy Murphy never set foot in Ireland; however, it would not
be unreasonable to assume that he was influenced in his decision
to become a freedom fighter by the horrors recounted by his
parents who witnessed firsthand British atrocities in Ireland.
No doubt, his deeds and his love of liberty were an inspiration
to succeeding generations of freedom fighters here in America
and elsewhere throughout the world. He helped create a land of
refuge and liberty for his fellow country men and women and for
countless millions of others from around the world who fled the
yoke of tyranny.
Contributed
by Tomás Ó Coısdealbha
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