Continental Navy

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.”

Jesse Sip. According to his pension application #S-36316, Jesse Sip of Middletown, CT was “a black man” born between 1768 and 1770 who entered on the frigate Confederacy at New London during the Winter of 1779. He is recorded on Confederacy’s roll as a “boy” in the crew’s power of attorney filed at Philadelphia on 3 November 1780. Sip served until July 1781 as a mariner and waiter “during which period the ship Confederacy adventured on many Cruises, took some valuable prizes, met with many accidents, sailed in Company with the United States’ ships Dean and Saratoga and sundry other armed vessels.” After returning to Philadelphia from Martinique, the Confederacy “under went repairs, recruited and sailed again for Cape Francois where we arrived with a very valuable prise.” On the return voyage, the Confederacy was captured by a British squadron on 14 April 1781 and Sip was put on board the HMS Roebuck and subsequently the Jersey prison ship on 20 April where he remained until regularly exchanged in July 1781. In 1818 he was described as a “day labourer” who was “aged and rheumatic.” An accounting of his assets included “one old house or hut” located on “half an acre of land.” In 1818, Sip’s family consisted of his wife Tamar born about 1775 and children; Sefrona born 1804, Abigail born 1809, Ezekiel born 1811, Frederick born 1813, Chester born 1815 and a 7 month old unnamed infant. Phineas Hyde and Nathaniel Richards were declarents for Jesse Sip’s pension application. According to the Ledgers of Payments 1818-1872 for Revolutionary War pensioners, Jesse Sip died on 30 December 1847, with his heirs continuing to collect his eight dollar per month allowance until April 1848.  Author Vicki S. Welch in “And They Were Related, Too: A Study of Eleven Generations of One American Family!” (2006) appears to associate Jesse Sip’s identity with Jesse Caples or Cables of Middletown, CT who was married to Tamar Carter and bore a son Ezekiel about the same time as Sip’s son of the same Christian name.  Jesse Cables and Tamar Carter were recorded as married in Chatham, now East Hampton, in 1797 by the Reverend Joel West of the Congregational Church of East Hampton. No other documentation to support this claim is included in Welch’s book and the mariner’s name in the pension records is consistently recorded as Jesse Sip.