Pension Application of Ichabod Meachum (Meacham): S38204
Transcribed and annotated by C. Leon Harris
State of Virginia. towit
On this sixth day of October, in the year one thousand eight hundred & eighteen, before me the subscriber, one of the Judges of the General Court of Virginia allotted by law to the thirteenth Circuit, which comprehends the County of Montgomery, personally appeared Ichabod Meacham, aged fifty nine years, resident in the County & State aforesaid, who being by me first duly sworn according to law, doth, on his oath, make the following declaration, in order to obtain the provision made by the late act of Congress entitled, “An act to provide for certain persons engaged in the land & naval services of the United States during the revolutionary war”: That he the said Ichabod Meacham enlisted, as a private, in the military service of the United States, with Captain Ebenezer Sullivan, and belonged to the Regiment commanded by Colonel John Pattersen, of the Massachusetts line, on Continental establishment, in the month of December of the year seventeen hundred & seventy five [see note below]: That he was taken prisoner at the Indian massacre of the Cedars, in Canada, on the twenty eighth day of May seventeen hundred & seventy six [see note below], and after a captivity of nine weeks, amongst the Savages, he escaped from them, and reached a British post on the River St. Lawrence, where he was detained a prisoner six or eight weeks, and was then sent to Montreal, from there to Quebec, and Halifax [Nova Scotia], where he was put on board a prison ship, which he thinks was called the Bologna, and remained in her until he was exchanged in the month of July 1777: that immediately after his exchange, he enlisted in with Captain Thomas Lamb, of the Regiment commanded by Colonel Henry Jackson, belonging to the Massachusetts line on Continental establishment: that he continued in service two years, the full term of his enlistment, and was discharged at Point Duty, in Rhode Island: that he was in the battles of Monmouth [28 June 1778], & White Marsh [6 Dec 1777]: that he afterwards entered as a marine, on board the ship Trumbull, commanded by Captain James Dickinson, and was wounded in an action with the British ship Watts [sic: see note below], having his right arm broken, and his right side severely injured by a splinter: that he was sent to a hospital in Boston, where he remained until his ship went again to sea, before he had sufficiently recovered from his wound to go on board, and was taken by the British ship of War Rainbow. His engagements being then at an end, he returned to his home: that he has lost his discharge, and has no other evidence of his said services now in his power: and that from his reduced circumstances he stands in need of the assistance of his country for support.
NOTES:
At the time of Meachum’s enlistment Col. John Paterson was Colonel of a militia regiment. It became the 15th Massachusetts Continental Infantry Regiment on 1 Jan 1776.
The campaign at “The Cedars,” some 40 miles north of Montréal, was part of the misguided attempt by Congress to win Canada over to the American cause. While Benjamin Franklin and others were active in Canada on the diplomatic front, some 7000 Americans under the then-loyal Benedict Arnold made a show of military force. The futility of the effort became apparent after the British fleet sailed up the St. Lawrence River. On 21 May 1776 the 390 demoralized troops at The Cedars surrendered to a force of 500 Indians and a small number of Canadians and Britons. Some of the Continental troops managed to reach safety at Fort Ticonderoga, but others, like Meachum, were held by the Indians. Contrary to Meachum’s characterization of the engagement, relatively few were killed by the Indians.
The Trumbull was commanded by Captain James Nicholson (not Dickenson) and engaged the Watt two hundred miles north of Bermuda on 2 June 1780. It was probably the severest sea battle of the war.
The file includes a schedule of property, as required by the act of 1820, that is mostly illegible in the online copy. It appears, however, that in it Meachum gave his age as 67 on 3 Oct 1820, listed his property as one mare age 26 and necessary clothing, and stated that he had no children living with him. He signed his own name as “Ichabod Meachum.”