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Promoting Irish Culture and History from Little Rock, Arkansas, USA

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Death of Richard Butler, Irish-born Officer in the Continental Army

Richard Butler, an Irish-born officer in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War, is killed on November 4, 1791, while fighting Native Americans in the United States in a battle that is known as St. Clair’s defeat.

Born on April 1, 1743, in St. Bridget’s Parish, Dublin, Butler is the oldest son of Thomas and Eleanor Butler (née Parker). His father is an Irish aristocrat who serves in the British Army. He is the brother of Colonel Thomas Butler and Captain Edward Butler. All three brothers serve in the American Revolution and in the Northwest Indian War against the Northwestern Confederacy of Native American tribes in the Northwest Territories. His two other brothers, William and Percival, serve in the Revolution but do not see later military service.

In 1748 Butler’s father opens a gun shop in Dublin, but that same year the family moves to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where he learns to make the Pennsylvania long rifles used in the French and Indian War.

By 1760, the family moves to the frontier at Carlisle, Pennsylvania, where Thomas and his sons manufacture long rifles and become friends with Daniel Morgan. The Butler gun shop still stands in Carlisle.

By the 1770s, Butler and his brother William are important traders at Fort Pitt in Pennsylvania and in Ohio. Butler Street in Pittsburgh is named for them.

At the outset of the American Revolution, the Continental Congress names Butler a commissioner in 1775 to negotiate with the Indians. He visits representatives of the Delaware, Shawnee, and other tribes to secure their support, or at least neutrality, in the war with Britain.

On July 20, 1776, Butler is commissioned a major in the 8th Pennsylvania Regiment in the Continental Army, serving first as second in command to his friend Daniel Morgan. He is promoted to lieutenant colonel on March 12, 1777, retroactive to September 1776. On June 7, 1777, he is promoted to colonel and placed in command of 9th Pennsylvania Regiment.

During the war Butler sees action at the Battle of Saratoga (1777) and the Battle of Monmouth (1778). His four other brothers also serve and are noted for their bravery as the “fighting Butlers.” In January 1781 he is transferred to the 5th Pennsylvania Regiment and leads the Continental Army at the Battle of Spencer’s Ordinary.

At the conclusion of the Battle of Yorktown in October 1781, General George Washington confers on Butler the honor of receiving Cornwallis’ sword of surrender, an honor which he gives to his second in command, Ebenezer Denny. At the last moment, Baron von Steuben demands that he receive the sword. This almost precipitates a duel between Butler and Von Steuben.

At the victory dinner for his officers, George Washington raises his glass and toasts, “The Butlers and their five sons!”

Following Yorktown, Butler remains in the Continental Army and is transferred to the 3rd Pennsylvania Regiment following a consolidation of the Army on January 1, 1783. On September 30 of the same year, he is breveted as a brigadier general. He remains in active service with the Continental Army until it is finally disbanded on November 3, 1783.

In 1783 Butler and his brothers become original members of the Pennsylvania Society of the Cincinnati, a military society of officers who had served in the Continental Army.

After the war, the Confederation Congress puts Butler in charge of Indians of the Northwest Territory. He negotiates the Treaty of Fort Stanwix in 1784, in which the Iroquois surrender their lands. He is also called upon during later negotiations, such as the Treaty of Fort McIntosh in 1785.

Butler returns to Pennsylvania and is a judge in Allegheny County. He also serves in the state legislature. He marries Maria Smith, and they have four children, only one of whom lives to have children and continue the line. He also fathers a son, Captain Butler (or Tamanatha) with Shawnee chief Nonhelema. He and his Shawnee son fight in opposing armies in 1791.

In 1791, Butler is commissioned a major general in the levies (i.e. militiamen conscripted into Federal service) under Major General Arthur St. Clair to fight against the Western Confederacy of Native Americans in the Northwest Territories (modern day Ohio). He is killed in action on November 4, 1791, in St. Clair’s Defeat at what is now Fort Recovery, Ohio.

Reportedly Butler is first buried on the battlefield, which site is then lost until it is accidentally found years later. The remains are laid to rest with the remains of the other fallen at Fort Recovery.

Butler County, Ohio, where Fort Hamilton stood, is named for Richard Butler, as are Butler County, Kentucky, and Butler County, Pennsylvania. The city of Butler, Pennsylvania and the General Richard Butler Bridge, located in the city of Butler, are also named for him. A miniature portrait of Butler is painted by “The Painter of The Revolution,” Colonel John Trumbull, in 1790 and is in the collection of Yale University.

Butler is also honored in the name of General Richard Butler KYSAAR, Butler County, Kentucky recognized August 20, 2016. A chapter of the Sons of the American Revolution is named for him as as is the General Richard Butler Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), founded in Butler, Pennsylvania.


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Birth of Edward Hand, Soldier, Physician & Politician

Edward Hand, Irish soldier, physician, and politician who serves in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War, is born in Clyduff, King’s County (now County Offaly) on December 31, 1744. He rises to the rank of general and later is a member of several Pennsylvania governmental bodies.

Hand, the son of John Hand, is baptised in Shinrone. Among his immediate neighbours are the Kearney family, ancestors of United States President Barack Obama. He is a descendant of either the families of Mag Fhlaithimh (of south Ulaidh and Mide) or Ó Flaithimhín (of the Síol Muireadaigh) who, through mistranslation became Lavin or Hand.

Hand earns a medical certificate from Trinity College, Dublin. In 1767, he enlists as a Surgeon’s Mate in the 18th (Royal Irish) Regiment of Foot. On May 20, 1767, he sails with the regiment from Cobh, County Cork, arriving at Philadelphia on July 11, 1767. In 1772, he is commissioned an ensign. He marches with the regiment to Fort Pitt, on the forks of the Ohio River, returning to Philadelphia in 1774, where he resigns his commission.

In 1774, Hand moves to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where he practices medicine. On March 13, 1775, he marries Catherine Ewing. Lancaster is the region of some of the earliest Irish and Scotch-Irish settlements in Pennsylvania. As a people, they are well known for their anti-English and revolutionary convictions. He is active in forming the Lancaster County Associators, a colonial militia. He is a 32nd degree Freemason, belonging to the Montgomery Military Lodge number 14.

Hand enters the Continental Army in 1775 as a lieutenant colonel in the 1st Pennsylvania Regiment under Colonel William Thompson. He is promoted to colonel in 1776 and placed in command of the 1st Continental, then designated the 1st Pennsylvania. Promoted to brigadier general in March 1777, he serves as the commander of Fort Pitt, fighting British loyalists and their Indian allies. He is recalled, after over two years at Fort Pitt, to serve as a brigade commander in Major General La Fayette‘s division.

In 1778, Hand attacks the Lenape, killing Captain Pipe‘s mother, brother, and a few of his children during a military campaign. Failing to distinguish among the Native American groups, he had attacked the neutral Lenape while trying to reduce the Indian threat to settlers in the Ohio Country, because other tribes, such as the Shawnee, had allied with the British.

After a few months, he is appointed Adjutant General of the Continental Army and serves during the Siege of Yorktown in that capacity. In recognition of his long and distinguished service, he is promoted by brevet to major general in September 1783. He resigns from the Army in November 1783.

Hand returns to Lancaster and resumes the practice of medicine. A Federalist, he is also active in civil affairs. Beginning in 1785, he owns and operates Rock Ford plantation, a 177-acre farm on the banks of the Conestoga River, one mile south of Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The Georgian brick mansion remains today, and the farm is a historic site open to the public.

Hand dies from typhoid fever, dysentery or pneumonia at Rock Ford on September 3, 1802, although medical records are unclear with some sources stating he died of cholera. There is no evidence Lancaster County suffered from a cholera epidemic in 1802. He is buried in St. James’s Episcopal Cemetery in Lancaster, the same church where he had served as a deacon.


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Death of Lieutenant Presley Neville O’Bannon

presley-neville-obannon

Presley Neville O’Bannon, first lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps and descendant of Brien Boru O’Bannon (1683) who is apparently the first notable O’Bannon to enter the American colonies, dies on September 12, 1850.

O’Bannon is born in 1776 in Fauquier County, Virginia, to William O’Bannon, a captain of the Continental Army in the American Revolutionary War, and Anne Neville, a sister of General John Neville, commander of Fort Pitt in western Pennsylvania during the Revolution. He is probably named after Neville’s son, Presley, who is aide-de-camp to the Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette.

O’Bannon enters the Marine Corps on January 18, 1801. As a first lieutenant assigned to the USS Argus, he commands a detachment of seven Marines and two Navy midshipmen in diplomatic Consul General William Eaton‘s small army during the Tripoli campaign of the First Barbary War. In the combined operations with the United States Navy, he leads the successful attack at the Battle of Derna, a coastal town in eastern modern Libya on April 27, 1805, giving the Marines’ Hymn its line “to the shores of Tripoli.”

Lieutenant O’Bannon becomes the first man to raise a United States flag over foreign soil in time of war. O’Bannon’s superior, William Eaton, a former Army officer, had raised the American flag several months earlier while traveling on the Nile River from Alexandria to Cairo, but it had not been in a time of war. According to Marine Corps legend, Prince Hamet Karamanli is so impressed with O’Bannon’s bravery during the attempt to restore him to his throne as the Bey of Tripoli that he gives O’Bannon a sword as a gesture of respect. This sword becomes the model for the Mameluke sword, adopted in 1825 for Marine Corps officers, which is part of the formal uniform today.

O’Bannon resigns from the Marine Corps on March 6, 1807. He moves to Logan County, Kentucky, making his home in Russellville. He serves in the Kentucky Legislature in 1812, 1817, and 1820–21, and in the Kentucky State Senate from 1824 to 1826.

Sometime before 1826, O’Bannon marries Matilda Heard, daughter of Major James Heard and Nancy Morgan, a daughter of American Revolutionary War general Daniel Morgan, commander at the Battle of Cowpens in South Carolina in 1781.

Presley O’Bannon dies at age 74 on September 12, 1850, in Pleasureville, Kentucky, where his daughter and nephew live. In 1919, his remains are moved to the Frankfort Cemetery on East Main Street in the state capital of Frankfort, Kentucky.

(Pictured: Oil painting of Lieutenant Presley Neville O’Bannon, USMC, by Colonel Donald L. Dickson, USMCR, from the Official Photograph Album Collection (COLL/2246) at the Archives Branch, Marine Corps History Division)