Browsing named entities in Harper's Encyclopedia of United States History (ed. Benson Lossing). You can also browse the collection for William Johnson or search for William Johnson in all documents.

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Harper's Encyclopedia of United States History (ed. Benson Lossing), Wyoming Valley massacre. (search)
Wyoming Valley massacre. Among the Connecticut settlers in the Wyoming Valley were some Scotch and Dutch families from the Mohawk Valley. About thirty of them, suspected of being Tories, were arrested at the beginning of the war, and sent to Connecticut for trial. They were released for want of evidence, returned to the Mohawk, joined the Tory partisan corps of Johnson and Butler, and waited for a chance of vengeance on their persecutors. In June, 1778, a motley host of Tories and Indians, under the general command of Colonel Butler, gathered at Tioga, on the Susquehanna River. They entered the Wyoming Valley July 2. Among them were the vengeful Scotch and Dutch. Butler made his headquarters at the fortified house of Wintermoot, a Tory. Two full companies, out of 3,000 inhabitants, had been raised in the valley for the Continental army, and its only defenders were old men, brave women, tender youths, and a handful of trained soldiers. These, 400 in number, Col. Zebulon
Harper's Encyclopedia of United States History (ed. Benson Lossing), Yankee Doodle, (search)
come from Central Asia with the great migrations? A secretary of the American legation at Madrid says a Spanish professor of music told him that Yankee Doodle resembled the ancient sword-dance of St. Sebastian. Did the Moors bring it into Spain many centuries ago? A Brunswick gentleman told Dr. Ritter, Professor of Music at Vassar College, that the air is that of a nursery-song traditional in the Duchy of Brunswick. A surgeon in the British army, who was with the provincial troops under Johnson at the head of Lake George, being impressed with the uncouth appearance of the provincial soldiers, composed a song to the air, which he called Yankey, instead of Nankey, Doodle, and commended it to the motley soldiers as very elegant. They adopted it as good martial music, and it became very popular. The air seems to have been known in the British army, for it is recorded that when, in 1768, British troops arrived in Boston Harbor the Yankee Doodle tune (says a writer of that time) was t
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