What Tecumseh Fought For-- Part 5: Aftermath of Tecumseh's War

The Battle of Moraviantown (Battle of the Thames) produced a considerable array of elected officials, among them three Kentucky governors, a vice president (Richard Johnson), and a president, an aging William Henry Harrison, who campaigned in 1840 under the slogan of "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too").

And because Tecumseh had died in a British fight, near a river that borrowed its name from England, his doomed war was  easily swallowed up by the larger War of 1812 between the British and Americans.

And then, an unrelenting stream of Americans poured into the Old Northwest Territory and Indians began fighting an increasingly lost war to delay them.  Tecumseh's War presaged  the Black Hawk War of 1832 in Illinois and Wisconsin; the deadly removal of Potawatomi people from Indiana to the Great Plains in  1838; the Dakota Uprising of 1862, in Minnesota.

Trace such conflicts back to Pontiac's Rebellion and what emerges  is not a picture of  innocent pioneer settlement in the continental heartland but a full century of Midwestern dispossession and resistance.

--Brock-Perry

Illinois' 200th-- Part 3: The War of 1812

In September 1813, Americans built Fort  Clark in Peoria.  In June 1814,  William Clark built Fort Shelby  at Prairie du Chien in Wisconsin Territory.  This was the William Clark who was in the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

The British captured Fort Shelby in July and renamed it Fort McKay.  Two American attempts to recapture it were turned back at Rock Island Rapids and Credit Island, which I have written about before.  Click on the labels.  These were the final actions of the War of 1812 in this area.

Hostilities between Indians and Americans would continue, reigniting in the Winnebago War of 1827 and the Black Hawk War of 1832.

Five million acres of land in the Illinois Territory between the Illinois and Mississippi rivers, below Rock Island were set aside as the Military Tract of 1812 to pay soldiers land grants for their War of 1812 service.This is over one-eighth of the land in present-day Illinois and some of it was in Indian occupied area, causing many to side with Black Hawk in the forthcoming hostilities.

--Brock-Perry

Texas War of 1812 Veterans-- Part 19: Eleazor Louis Ripley Wheelock

By 1820, he was investing heavily into Texas real estate.  In 1823, he visited Texas and spent a year surveying the town of Tampico.  During his second trip he met Sterling C. Robertson.

Returning to Illinois, he answered the call of Illinois Governor Reynolds in 1832 and served in the Black Hawk War.  Throughout his adult life he was active in militia organizations and had risen to the rank of colonel by 1833.

In 1833, he moved his family to Robertson's Colony in Texas and established the town of Wheelock in what is now in Robertson County.  He served as a surveyor, lawyer, rancher, farmer and soldier.

--Brock-Perry

Texas War of 1812 Veterans-- Part 17: Colonel Eleazor Louis Ripley Wheelock

COLONEL ELEAZOR LOUIS RIPLEY WHEELOCK (March 31, 1793 to April 20, 1847)

Buried at the Texas State Cemetery.

Born in New Hampshire, the grandson of the founder of Dartmouth College.  Officer in the War of 1812, the Black Hawk War and the War for Texas Independence.

Founder of the town of Wheelock in Robertson's Colony.

Captain in the Texas Rangers.

Quite a list of accomplishments for this man.

I have also already written about a General Eleazor Wheelock Ripley in this blog and I imagine these two men have to have had some relationship.

--Brock-Perry

William McHenry, McHenry County (Illinois) Namesake-- Part 2: Fought the Indians

In 1811, William McHenry served in the Illinois militia during Tecumseh's War, which culminated in the Battle of Tippecanoe in the Indiana Territory.  In the War of 1812, he participated in the attack on the Indian village at Peoria, which was allied with the British.

After the war, he was a delegate to the Illinois Constitutional Convention in 1818, which led to statehood in 1819.  Then he was elected to the first Illinois House of Representatives.

During the Blackhawk War in 1832, he was a major of the Mounted Spies.  He became ill during the campaigning and was mustered out at age 61.  Immediately, he was elected to the Illinois Senate.

He died in 1835 in a boarding house in Vandalia, Illinois, which was then the capital of Illinois.

When McHenry County was formed in 1836 out of Cook (Chicago) and LaSalle counties and it was named after him.

What's In a Name.  --Brock-Perry

Last Survivor of the Battle of Fort Stephenson-- Part 3: Participated in Black Hawk War and the Civil War.

After the battle, William Gaines returned to Fort Seneca until after the news of Perry's victory at the Battle of Lake Erie.  They marched past Fort Stephenson, got into boats and crossed over into Canada.

They landed at Colonel Elliot's wharf and from there went to Fort Malden, then to Sand Beach and on October 5, fought at the Battle of the Thames.

Gaines remained with the Army after the war and participated in the Black Hawk War.

During the Civil War, he was in charge of the quartermaster's store at the Madison Barracks in New York.

--Brock-Perry

War of 1812's Ichabod Crane-- Part 5: Buried on Staten Island

From Find-A-Grave.

Ichabod Bennett Crane

Born July 18, 1787 in Elizabeth, New Jersey.  Death Oct. 5, 1857, Staten Island, new York.

Buried at Asbury Methodist cemetery, New Springville, Staten island.

Served 48 years in the military.  Served and commanded troops during the War of 1812, Black hawk War and the Seminole Wars of the 1830s.  His last assignment was commander of Governors Island, New York.

His wife Charlotte Crane (1798-1878) is also buried there as is a son, William M. Crane, who died in 1880.

--Brock-Perry

War of 1812's Ichabod Crane-- Part 2: Sackets Harbor and Black Hawk War

During the War of 1812, Ichabod Crane served on the Northern Frontier and commanded an artillery battery at Fort Pike which he helped construct at Sackets Harbor, New York.  He was involved in the capture of Fort York on April 27, 1813, and Fort George at the end of May.

While he was at Fort George, a joint British-Canadian force attacked Sackets Harbor in the Second Battle of Sackets Harbor, but were unsuccessful.

After the war, he continued to serve in the Northern department.  In 1820, he was made the commander of Fort Wolcott, Rhode Island.  In 1825, he transferred to Fort Monroe in Virginia.  He led five companies during the Black Hawk War and also served in the Second Seminole War (1835-1842).

--Brock-Perry

Edmund P. Gaines-- Part 1

From Wikipedia.

I mentioned that Gen. Edmund P. Gaines ordered Duncan Clinch to attack Negro Fort which resulted in the July 27, 1816, battle.

Edmund P. Gaines (March 20, 1777 to June 6, 1849) was an American Army officer who fought in the War of 1812, the Seminole Wars and the Black Hawk War.

Born in Virginia, he enlisted in the Army in 1799 and was a first lieutenant by 1807.  He surveyed the Mississippi Territory and helped lay out the Natchez Trace.  While commander of Fort Stoddert, he arrested Aaron Burr in Wakefield, Alabama.  After that he took leave from the Army and practiced law.

--Brock-Perry