Warminster During The Revolution

The Township contributed many names to the roster of those who served in the War of Independence - Darrah, Longstreth, Yerkes, Hart, Beatty and many more - all familiar in Warminster history.

During that war, the township saw Washington's army pass through on York Road several times in its travels between Philadelphia and Coryell's Ferry, now New Hope. The new flag of the Republic was first flown in the encampment a half mile above Hartsville along the Neshaminy Creek. The Battle of the Crooked Billet started in Hatboro and ended in the woods of Warminster. During that engagement, blood was spilled upon Warminster soil over the whole southeastern part of the township.

The details of this battle - if it can be termed thusly - are given in a paper presented by Mr. Charles Harper Smith before the Old York Road Historical Society on February 20, 1945. Mrs. Smith has kindly permitted the use of the paper in this township history. A condensed version is presented herewith depicting "-a skirmish which took place 166 years ago [in 1945], involved fewer than 1200 men, failed of its purpose, and reflected little glory on either the staff work or the valor of the contestants." While these words of Mr. Smith may be a blow to local pride, history has a way of being, above all, necessarily  practical and objective. Mr. Smith's review is one of the most authoritative that I have come upon and I prefer to put it in his own words. Its compact form has left out none of the details so interesting to the casual reader and I regret having to condense it further hoping that, in so doing, I have not destroyed the continuity and flavor of authority which pervades the original text. The brackets are my own and are used for my own comments and to provide continuity;

The Battle of the Billet was fought on the morning of May 1, 1778, near the town of Hatboro, then commonly known as "the Billet," a short form of the name of its widely known Crooked Billet Tavern.

It was one of several minor engagements between American and British soldiers fought within the present borders of Montgomery County during General Howe's occupation of the City of Philadelphia. It is undoubtedly the best known of these minor actions, although it cannot be said to have been the most important. On the contrary, it had a purely local and temporary objective. The greater publicity given to the Battle of the Billet is due largely to the fact that it ended in Bucks County and became a favorite theme of that county's historians [of which there were many]. General Davis' interest was carried forward to recent years by the late Warren S. Ely of Doylestown. In 1928, he joined with Dr. John B. Carrell of Hatboro and Howard T. Hallowell of Jenkintown in placing a second monument [the first being on Monument Avenue in Hatboroj beside the Jacksonville Road, in Warminster Township, near the scene of an atrocity perpetrated by the British during the battle.

The battle was the culminating event in a six months campaign to prevent the British from receiving food and other supplies from the rich farming district north and northwest of the city. The campaign had been entrusted to the Pennsylvania Militia and its [23 year old] commander, Brigadier General John Lacey, Jr., of Bucks County. It was the only independent campaign assigned to the State Militia during the Revolution, and it demonstrated the futility of putting untrained civilian conscripts against seasoned veterans. But while the British were able to raid Lacey's territory with impunity whenever they chose to come out in force, he succeeded in cutting off a large proportion of their potential supplies by intimidating those farmers who preferred to exchange their produce for British gold instead of depreciated Continental currency. The British were willing to pay enormous prices for supplies. One blockade runner testified at his court martial that he had sold a pair of turkeys for 18 pounds, nearly $75.00 at the present rate of exchange.

The British finally decided to put an end to this nuisance by sending out a force large enough to kill or capture Lacey's entire brigade, and to do so at a time when his men would be unarmed and practically defenseless.

Lacey had been promised a constant minimum of 1,000 men but the Supreme Executive Council was handicapped by the Militia Law of 1777, which limited each man's tour of duty to six week's active service. The result was that Lacey at times had only several hundred men in his command, and at others was reduced to a mere handful, incapable of defending even his headquarters post. The second half of April was one of the latter occasions. Lacey was compelled to abandon his forward outposts and withdraw with his few remaining men to his Billet camp, there to await reinforcements. The camp lay immediately north of the village in a wooded tract of some 20 acres. Its west end flanked the York Road, and its south side paralleled the present East Monument Avenue.

By April 27th the long awaited reinforcements had begun to arrive. Detachments of two battalions straggled into camp from day to day. General Davis records that "a body of militia" arrived on the evening of April 30th. Davis makes the further statement that the new soldiers were "without arms" and in this he is undoubtedly correct for the shortage of muskets and ammunition was so great that no supplies were available for county commands and were issued only when the men reported for duty in the combat zone.

By taking Lacey's official return of May 14th and adjusting it for battle losses, it is possible to make an accurate estimate of his strength on the evening of April 30th. The tally is as follows:

Of this total, 33 were either sick, on furlough, or had already been discharged, leaving an even 300 present and fit for duty.

Lacey took the usual precautions for the protection of his camp overnight. He appointed Colonel Watts officer of the following day, posted sentries about the camp, and detailed scouting parties to patrol the roads in the direction of the city. [In the meantime] the British had been kept informed of the American troop concentration through their network of Tory spies in the neighborhood and were convinced that this was the opportunity for which they had been waiting. Accordingly, they sent out two columns from the city at about 11 o'clock on the night of April 30th, intending to attack Lacey at daybreak from two sides in the classic pincers movement.

One column was made up of 10 companies of the notorious Queen's Rangers, recruited largely among American born Tories in Philadelphia and commanded by Major John Graves Simcoe of the British Army. The other column consisted of 14 companies of Lieutenant Colonel Robert Abercromby's regiment of light and heavy infantry. Simcoe's force numbered about 325, and Abercromby's 525, a total of 850 officers and men.

The strategy decided upon called for Simcoe to make a surprise attack on Lacey's camp just as dawn was breaking, having circled it from the east and northeast to cut off his line of retreat into Bucks County. Abercromby was to approach from the west and lie in ambush along the probable line of American retreat, thus trapping the rebels between two fires.

[Simcoe approached Hatboro from Bethayres along Pioneer Road so that he could approach the camp from the northeast and cut off escape toward the Neshaminy. Abercromby approached by way of the Easton Road, turning right into Horsham Road.] This was then a densely wooded section, where the road ran for some distance through a narrow defile between an embankment and mill pond of Daniel Thomas' Mill. This was the spot chosen for the ambuscade.

Both columns fell behind schedule but neither knew the other was late and day was now breaking and civilians were beginning to move about. Abercromby was sighted just above Willow Grove by young Joseph Hallowell.

Abercromby became afraid that Simcoe would drive the enemy past the point of ambush before his own slow moving troops could reach it so he sent Major Crewe and his dragoons ahead. Crewe found nobody at the ambuscade and patrolled down the road as far as the York Road intersection, where he was fired upon by Lacey's sentry, posted on the Pennypack bridge. According to tradition, the sentry was Abraham Sutphin of Warminster, brother-in-law of Cobe Scout. Realizing that the alarm had been given, Crewe galloped to the west end of the village where his men took their station at York Road and County Line. By this time, Simcoe was approaching the intersection of Davisville and Pioneer Roads. As soon as he heard the gunfire at the bridge, he sent Kerr and his light horse company directly across the fields to the American Camp.

The American scouting parties had not reported and the camp was not aroused until Crewe's men were almost upon it. Simcoe's men were still some distance away, however, and the road to Bucks County remained open. Without hesitation, Lacey decided to make a run for it. The County Line was about a half mile away, with a cultivated field nearest the camp. Beyond it to the right was open country to and across the County Line, but to the left was a dense thicket along Warminster Creek, on what was long known as the Goentner property.

Lacey had marched his column part way across the field when his baggage train and rear guard were set upon by Kerr's light horse from the right and Crewe's infantry from the left and rear. All the baggage wagons were cut off, and few of the guard escaped death or capture. The main column then veered to the left and as it reached shelter, Simcoe attempted a well known military ruse. Riding far ahead of his Rangers, he dashed to the edge of the thicket and in a loud voice called upon the Americans to surrender, at the same time ordering his own troops to charge. But Lacey was not deceived; instead he closed his ranks, broke through Crewe' s dragoons [who had dashed up from the York Road intersection], crossed County Line Road in close formation, and plodded doggedly ahead across fields and along by-roads for a distance of a mile and a half until they reached a woodland near the Bristol Road, where they dispersed and shook off their pursuers. Their line of retreat followed the valley of Warminster Creek, crossed the Jacksonville Road, then the Street Road near Johnsville, finally taking the Newtown Road until they turned left into the woods. [These woods are believed to have been on what is now Munro Park.]

[The British failure to capture Lacey was due to several reasons, Crewe's disastrous errors in judgment being one.] After destroying the entire British battle strategy by failing to halt at the ambuscade, thus causing Simcoe's plans to miscarry, Crewe had suddenly reverted to that strategy on his arrival, and by lying inactive instead of rushing the camp, and had given Lacey his chance to escape. [Lacey's youthful daring and his knowledge of the area were another large factor in his escape.]

Lacey's casualty list, as reported in his official return, totaled 92 men, almost one third of his command. Of this number, 26 were killed, 8 were wounded, and 58 were missing.

After the tide of battle had passed, Simcoe's Rangers swept across the field and mutilated many of the American wounded. Nine bodies, some of them said to have been alive, were burned on a straw pile which stood in a field near the present monument on Jacksonville Road. This atrocity was witnessed by neighbors who flocked to the scene as soon as the British withdrew, and was attested by several prominent citizens before Justice Andrew Lang of Warminster. It was also admitted by [a British commander] Baurmeister, who attributed it to Abercromby's dragoons. Eyewitnesses said, however, that the British regulars behaved correctly, while the renegade Tories acted like savages. Several of the American dead were buried in the Noble family graveyard, and others in unmarked graves where they fell along the line of retreat.

The British claimed that their losses were seven men wounded and a few horses killed. If these figures can be accepted as even approximately correct, it must be concluded that the Americans either had no weapons, or were too demoralized to use them at any time, in an action that lasted for two hours or more. But almost all of them were frontiersmen, accustomed to firearms and it is inconceivable that they would have failed to fire their muskets if they had had them. Any suspicion of cowardice is refuted by their conduct later in the day; they reformed their lines near Hartsville and marched down the York Road back to their camp. The only reasonable explanation of their failure to offer more effective resistance is that few of them had any weapons other than their fists to fight with.

They found the campsite deserted. The British had already rounded up their prisoners, set fire to the camp, gathered all the booty they could lay their hands on and started back to the city. Most of the robberies occurred at farmhouses along the line of retreat and several residents of
Warminster later filed claims for horses or household goods taken. Some citizens were also maltreated, notably the aged Thomas Craven, on whose farm the burned straw pile had stood. As he hobbled on his cane outside his doorway, returning troopers rode up and demanded his silver shoe buckles and other valuables. When he demurred, he was called a "d-d old rebel rascal" and was struck several blows over the head with a sword.

Council's reaction to the battle was expressed by Secretary Matlack in the following eulogy: "Your conduct is highly approved and your men have justly acquired great reputation for their bravery." Washington, however, was more realistic, his comment being: "You may depend that this will ever be the consequence of permitting yourself to be surprised."

Although it served no military purpose, the battle deserves a place in our history as a noteworthy local event and as a reminder of the minute scale on which operations were conducted during the Revolution, and the deplorable lack of staff work and individual efficiency on both sides, when compared to modern military standards.

While Mr. Smith treats the Battle of the Billet from the standpoint of strict history and military strategy, the present author wishes to point out that it did accomplish a purpose. Our country is very young and, in the robustness of its youth, the spirit of tradition, which is such a strong motivating force
in the face of adversity such as war and depression, has had little time in which to become ingrained into us. Tradition is made by men and events and in contributing to local tradition, this particular event and these few men who fought and died for an ideal have given their small quota toward the
eventual sum total of national tradition. With all its faults, this is a great country, and the ideals which inspired it are bravely shown in the courage and resourcefulness of men like those American men of the Billet.