Title: A History of the Iron Hill Area Newark, Delaware
Source Type: Book View Title Page
Author: James Richardson Owen and James Bishop Owen
Publisher: A community service by the Greater Newark Chamber of Commerce
Year: Unknown
Database Type: Complete
Page 1
The episode which identifies the Iron Hill area most intimately with the struggle for American independence had its genesis in a new British strategy to win control of a vital river valley some 125 miles northeast of Newark. In the spring of 1777 General John Burgoyne outlined to the British War Office plans for a three-pronged attack to seize the Hudson River valley and isolate the New England states from the others. The main army, under Burgoyne, would drive south from Canada past Lake Champlain and down the upper reaches of the Hudson. An auxiliary force, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Barry St. Leger, would push eastward along the Mohawk River from Oswego on Lake Ontario. From the New York City area, where he was encamped with a minimum of 27,000 men, General Sir William Howe would send a detachment up the Hudson. George III personally wrote the instructions that the tree armies were to rendezvous at Albany.
Sir William Howe had his own plans, however. He regarded Philadelphia as a center of Loyalist sentiment. Having failed to so in 1776 and believing that he could capture the city of Brotherly Love and still have men to spare for the Hudson Valley campaign, he set sail for the Chesapeake Bay with the best of his British and Hessian troops. Foolishly, the War Office had approved both Burgoyne’s plan and Howe’s plans, and Burgoyne left Canada expecting how to come up the Hudson after completing his Philadelphia business. (Howe dispatched a force under Sir Henry Clinton, who started late and then turned back after burning Kingston). Burgoyne’s defeat and surrender to General Horatio Gates’ forces at Saratoga, after St. Leger’s men had been turned back toward Oswego be Benedict Arnold and Burgoyne’s own spearhead had been blunted by John Stark and his Vermont militiamen at the Battle of Bennington, became the turning point of the Revolution for the patriot cause.
Meanwhile, Howe’s transports, escorted by the fleet of Admiral Sir Richard Howe, his brother, had left mysteriously from New York on July 4 and posed the threat of an attack anywhere along the Atlantic coast. After an agonizing wait both for the men on board the transports and for Washington’s scouts on land, the ships finally appeared at the upper end of the Chesapeake Bay on August 22. Now it was apparent to the patriots that their Delaware River defenses for the Quaker City had been too formidable for a frontal attack from that direction, and Howe was about to launch an overland assault from the rear on the provisional capital of the United States. Two days later the continental army, led by the Commander-In-Chief himself, George Washington, accompanied by the Marquis de Lafayette, recently arrived from France, was streaming through Philadelphia’s streets on the way south from its encampment near Neshaminy Bridge in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.
Moving up the Elk River to Head of Elk (Elkton), Howe’s forces began to disembark on the day after Washington’s men moved toward Delaware through Philadelphia. The Continentals proceeded to Wilmington, where they set up camp. John McKinley, President of the Delaware State, ordered General Caesar Rodney to move into Cecil County, Maryland with the Kent and New Castle County units of the Delaware militia and Washington sent the nearest militia units from Pennsylvania. These were to delay and harass the British in any way possible. Several small skirmishes resulted in the outnumbered Americans being constantly pushed back towards Iron Hill.
On August 26, accompanied by Lafayette and General Nathaniel Greene, Washington went first to the top of Iron Hill and then to Gray’s Hill further west to observe the British as they were advancing. He moved his troops to a camp on Red Clay Creek to prepare to fight to defend the area. General Greene thought the battle should be fought at Cooch’s Bridge, but it was decided to hold on at Red Clay Creek. Washington did, however, station about 720 men under Brigadier General William Maxwell at the Chrsitiana crossing to delay the enemy advance now moving toward Aiken’s Tavern at Glasgow.