Christopher Scott, Seaman

Christopher Scott. According to his pension application #S-23890, Christopher Scott was born in Philadelphia on 3 April 1756. He resided there until his enlistment on 1 or 2 August 1776 as a Private in the 4th Battalion of Philadelphia Militia in Captain Whitehead Humphrey’s Company and Toner’s Company of Colonel Thomas McKean’s PA Regiment. He served six months, marching to Amboy where they formed a camp. On 11 September 1777, Scott joined Captain Brown’s (and Faunce’s) Company of Colonel Emanuel Ayer’s Regiment where he served two months in the artillery company stationed at Billings Port, NJ. He participated in the Battle of Germantown. In 1778 he served two months in Captain Brown’s Company and in 1779 two more months in Captain Lazarus Pine’s Company of Colonel Bradford’s Regiment, again at Billings Port working on the fort. On or before 1 July 1780, Christopher Scott enlisted as a seaman on the Confederacy and “sailed before the mast.” In testimony given in 1825, Scott declared “he enlisted in the City of Philadelphia in a company of marines under the command of Captain Harvey (Hardy) of the ship Confederacy belonging to the Continental Service in the month of August 1780 and that he continued on board said ship or Frigate until the month of April 1781, when said ship was captured by his Brittanic Majesties vessels Roebuck and Orpheus; that he remained a prisoner to the British about six months, until Cornwallis was taken with his army at Yorktown in Virginia.” Confined on the Jersey prison ship in the East River about 1-1/2 miles from New York, Christopher Scott was held until 15 October 1781 when he was exchanged. After the war, he resided in Philadelphia until 1784, then Lancaster until about 1796 and Huntingdon for 3-4 years prior to moving to Morison’s Cove, Bedford County, PA where he resided for 25-30 years. Genealogical sources indicate that his daughter Hannah Minerva Scott was born in Wilmington, DE in 1800. In 1825, Scott testified that “he resided in Woodberry Township for the last twenty years, and is very much afflicted with rheumatism and unable to support himself by labor, and is in such reduced circumstances that he is unable to gain a living. He had seven children, two of whom are dead, the rest in different parts of the country. He has no person living with him except his wife, 60 years old and a granddaughter, age 8.” Christopher Scott removed to Derry Township, Mifflin County, PA about 1831 where he was living in 1833 with his wife, son, daughter and grandson John W. Wonder. An 1835 act for the relief of sundry soldiers and widows of soldiers of the Revolutionary War granted Christopher Scott of Mifflin County an annuity of forty dollars for life. A resident of the county seat of Lewistown, Christopher Scott died on 20 January 1839 with his final pension payment of $30.21 paid to his daughter Hannah on 24 May 1839. Grandson John W. Wonder (1817-1899), son of Hannah (1800-1877) and Jacob Wonder (1785-1884), was a farmer and boatman on the Leech Line of the old Johnstown Canal. Scott’s gravestone reads “Light is Sown for the Righteous And Gladness for the Upright in Heart.”