A LANDSCAPE OF THE MIND
There are some places that can be readily pinpointed in one’s mental atlas, even though you may never visit them. And the Brandywine Valley in Pennsylvania goes further and gets an entire page write-up in my interior gazetteer.
I began to travel its turnpikes and leafy lanes some years ago, watching the woods glimmer gold and red in the autumn sun as they stood back from the highways, catching views across the ample fields of old farms with their Dutch barns and slip-rail fences.
Let’s hope that someone in West Chester or Lancaster, Pennsylvania reads this and invites me over to experience the ‘reality’!
Picking up what Jessica Kourkounis of the New York Times wrote yesterday:
‘The physician and poet Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. traveled through the gently rolling hills of the Brandywine Valley in southeastern Pennsylvania during the Civil War when he came there to search for his son, whom he feared had been killed in battle.
'It was a grim mission — and luckily, his son survived — but the land made a strong impression. “The grazing pastures were so green ... the houses were so comfortable, the barns so ample, the fences so well kept, that I did not wonder, when I was told that this region was called the England of Pennsylvania".
For Jessica’s more recent tourism promo article, see:
Athough I have never been to this part of the USA, I have written several articles about its early settlers, and the origins that many of them share with me in the North West of England [and rural Cheshire in particular]:
As Barry Levy’s work shows, these Lancashire, Cheshire and Welsh Quakers brought a new vision of family and social life to America--one that contrasted sharply with the harsh, formal world of the New England Puritans. The Quakers stressed affection, friendship and hospitality, the importance of women in the home, and the value of self-disciplined, non-coercive childrearing.’
They also brought with them the frugal habits of ‘North-western English middling families [those who had to work but could keep “some measure of independence by owning a small business or by securely occupying a piece of land)’ and their Quakerism led them to widen their sense of family to the community at large while it promoted their prosperity through the sharing of labour and resources.
QUIET AMID THE CONFUSION
So I read Jessica’s article with delight – and couldn’t resist doing a little more digging around on the internet – especially on the Battle of Brandywine Creek. I hadn’t quite realized that the surnames of two of the Cheshire Quaker families among the 17thCentury settlers were reflected in a couple of locations that figure in the battle. The places are ‘Darlington Corners’ and ‘Dilworthtown’.
My stepfather was a Darlington – and when we went back to Cheshire, UK for a holiday in 2005, we stayed in a vacation cottage at the Dilworth’s farm in Cholmondeley.
Apparently, as the full measure of the American defeat at Brandywine Creek unfolded, Major Generals Anthony Wayne's army fought a series of rear-guard actions against the British which eventually saw the village of Dilworthtown overrun and used as a holding area for American prisoners. See:
Finally a fierce artillery duel bought the retreating Americans enough time to move out in reasonable order:
‘The duel for the guns bought Wayne just enough time to form his division in a strong position behind a stone wall covering the road to Chester. The British advanced rapidly against the Pennsylvanians and were met with volley fire and grapeshot. More and more British troops crossed the ford and joined the battle line, until even the fiery Wayne had no choice but retreat. The Pennsylvania Line began a slow, orderly withdrawal, halting at every stone wall and fence line to loose off a volley or two at the King's men.
'Out of the growing darkness stumbled Armstrong's retreating division of Pennsylvania militia. A soldier of the 3rd Philadelphia Associators remembered: "Our way was over the dead and dying, and I saw many bodies crushed to pieces beneath the wagons, and we were bespattered with blood. As we marched directly under the English cannon, which kept up a continual fire, the destruction of our men was very great."
But the British broke off the action by 7 pm, allowing Washington's army to ‘stagger and stumble’ along the road to Chester throughout the night.’
Of course, the Quakers were pacifists and took no part in the battle, though, as I recount in one of my other stories, a Darlington farm [presumably located at or near Darlington Corners] was commandeered early in the battle by the British army as one of its centres of operations.
When the battle had first commenced, the first encounter between the opposing forces thad taken place at a tavern in Kennett where the British were initially repulsed. This opening battle was fought at mid-morning around the meeting house while the pacifist Quakers continued to hold their midweek service. One of the Quakers later wrote, "While there was much noise and confusion without, all was quiet and peaceful within”.
Quite what the Cheshire Quakers would have thought about contemporary airstrikes and drone warfare is an interesting conjecture. But then again, warfare had a more civilised and gentlemanly guise in those days, at least for the officer class.
Prior to the battle, both the American and British forces had had a hard time figuring out each others’ positions – given the nature of the landscape, the presence of fog and General Sir William Howe’s nimble and crafty tactics. And as I recall from earlier research, at one juncture Washington was spotted within range by a British column as he reconnoitred the lie of the land - accompanied by his aides de camps and Lafayette.
However, the British officer deemed it bad sportsmanship to kill the enemy commander by sniping – and Washington’s party rode on oblivious to their prior peril.
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