Jane McCrea

Born c. 1752
Lamington, New Jersey
Died July 27, 1777
Fort Edward, New York

American captive

As the Revolutionary War (1775–83) raged, dramatic tales were told of how Jane McCrea died. Her capture and murder led people in New York and New England to rally against the British forces stationed there. McCrea's story continued to arouse patriotic feelings among Americans for more than a century after her death.

Jane McCrea (pronounced Ma-CRAY) was the daughter of James McCrea, a Presbyterian minister from New Jersey, and Mary Graham McCrea. Jane McCrea was born the sixth of seven children, and the younger of two daughters. After her mother's death, her father remarried and had five more children.

When her father died (date unknown), Jane McCrea went to stay with her brother, John McCrea, a lawyer living in northern New York State. He served in the Continental army during the Revolutionary War. Few other facts are known about Jane McCrea's early life. Like many families at the time of the American Revolution, her family was divided by the war. Two of her brothers and one half-brother served in the Continental army, while two other half-brothers were Loyalists and fought on the side of the British.

Leaves for Fort Edward to meet fiancé

In 1776 McCrea became engaged to David Jones, whose family lived near Fort Edward in New York State. Jones was a Tory (an American colonist who was loyal to England) and he served in the British army under General John Burgoyne see entry. Some stories say the two young lovers had known each other as children, while other accounts say the couple met as young adults. Even though her brother John, with whom she lived, supported the patriots, Jane McCrea chose to support the cause of her intended husband. In her book White Captives: Gender and Ethnicity on the American Fron tier, June Namias mentions how the stories of Jane's choice differ: "According to most renditions, Jane deliberately did not go with her brother's family to fight for the rebel cause, but chose instead her lover, David, and thus the Tory side. The fiction, histories and biographies of Jane give mixed messages regarding her decision to desert her patriot brother (or father) for her Loyalist lover." Namias also indicates that "many of the [facts of the story] remain in dispute to this day."

In the summer of 1777 Burgoyne launched an invasion against the colonists in New York. His men marched southward from New York's Lake Champlain toward the Hudson River. Fearing for their safety, most people living along the route immediately left their homes and moved elsewhere.

John McCrea urged his sister to go with his family to the relatively safe area of Albany, New York. But she chose not to go, instead setting out for Fort Edward, hoping to meet her fiancé there. David Jones had written her a letter, saying, "In a few days [my unit] will march to Fort Edward,… where I shall have the happiness to meet you." According to popular legend, the couple was intending to marry at Fort Edward after their reunion.

A mysterious death

There are many versions of what happened next, but it seems clear that on the morning of July 27, 1777, McCrea arrived at the home of her friend, Sarah McNeil, an elderly woman and a cousin of the British general Simon Fraser. Together the two women went on to Fort Edward. Their timing was disastrous. They arrived at the fort in the afternoon, at the same time as did a group of Indians scouting on behalf of General Burgoyne, about two days ahead of the main body of the British troops. The Indians seized McCrea and McNeil, not realizing that their prisoners were friendly to the Tory cause. They intended to take the women back with them to General Burgoyne, who was at British army headquarters in New York's Fort Ann, and claim a reward for having caught them.

But when the Indians arrived at Fort Ann, only Mrs. McNeil was with them. The next day, Jane McCrea's scalped and bullet-ridden body was found near Fort Edward. The circumstances surrounding her death remain a mystery.

Differing explanations

In one story describing McCrea's fate, she was stripped of her clothing, shot, and scalped by her Indian captors. That version spread rapidly and was believed by many patriots as well as supporters of the British in America and overseas. Another commonly repeated story of McCrea's death is based on the account of a man named Samuel Standish, who claimed to be an eyewitness being held in the area by Indians. Standish testified that several Indians got drunk and fell into an argument about who would serve as McCrea's guard. In the scuffle that followed, McCrea was shot. According to a third version of the story, as told later by Mrs. McNeil's granddaughter, a member of a party that was pursuing the Indian group accidentally shot McCrea.

Murder shocks both Americans and British

Accounts disagree regarding Jane McCrea's physical appearance. At the time of her death, she was somewhere between seventeen and twenty-four years of age. McCrea has often been portrayed as an attractive young woman, tall, with hair that reached the floor when tied in a braid. In his 1853 biography of McCrea, combining historical fact and romantic fiction, David Wilson refers to her as "a young lady of fine accomplishments, great personal attraction, and remarkable sweetness of disposition."

Whatever the actual circumstances of her death, Jane McCrea apparently was scalped and her long hair displayed in

triumph by the Indians before the British army. Not long after the murder, David Jones, McCrea's fiancé, was said to have applied for a military discharge. When it did not come through, he deserted Burgoyne's army and fled to the Canadian wilderness, where he lived as a bachelor for the rest of his life.

General Burgoyne was said to have been shocked by the violent murder, which reportedly was committed by a Wyandot Indian named Panther, who took the young woman's scalp as evidence for his claim that he had captured her. Although Burgoyne wanted to discipline the man, he did not, because he feared his Indian troops would abandon the British and leave them without guides in a strange wilderness. However, he apparently asked that the Indians stop taking scalps. His request backfired on him when many of the warriors left the battlefields and returned home. Others deserted the British army to make their own war on the New York settlers.

The British, too, were deeply affected by the young woman's murder. The London Annual Register for 1777 wrote that McCrea's death "struck every breast with horror." Edmund Burke see entry, a famous British politician of the eighteenth century, denounced the British policy of making use of Indian allies.

Murder results in growth of the American army

Burgoyne's American enemies used the opportunity presented by the murder of Jane McCrea to whip up anti-British feelings among the American colonists. General George Washington referred to the McCrea death to remind New Yorkers and New Englanders that the British could not be trusted. Horatio Gates (see entries), a general in the Continental army, used the incident to influence popular opinion against the Indians.

The story of Jane McCrea prompted large-scale enlistments in the Continental army. Hearing the account of her death, many Americans who until then had remained neutral (non-involved) in the conflict between the Tories and the American patriots swung to the side of the patriots. They feared that if they did not, enemy victories on the battlefield might expose their own families to similar dangers. In a short time, the American army saw a surge in the number of new recruits to the cause of American independence. Within three months after McCrea's death, Burgoyne and his forces would surrender to the patriots.

McCrea's name becomes an American battle cry

At the time of McCrea's murder, General Horatio Gates had taken command of the American troops in the northern part of the colonies. He quickly did what he could to transform McCrea into a martyr (pronounced MAHR-ter) for her support of the American cause.

In a strange turn, the name of Jane McCrea, the Tory fiancé of a British soldier, became the war cry of many American military men. Burgoyne's British soldiers were often met on the battlefield by patriot soldiers yelling her name as they charged.

General Burgoyne helps McCrea's half-brother

In 1777, with great sadness, Continental army soldier John McCrea buried his sister at Moses Kill, New York, near Fort Edward. Some time later, one of Jane McCrea's half-brothers, who was serving as a captain in the British Army under General Burgoyne, asked the general's help in obtaining charge over a company of soldiers. Shortly thereafter Burgoyne received a letter from the young captain thanking him for the help he had provided.

In the margin of Captain McCrea's letter, Burgoyne noted that he had been accused of encouraging the Indians to act in a savage manner. In his own defense Burgoyne wrote: "It was a great pleasure to me to be thought of so differently by that lady's [Jane's] brother, as five years afterwards, when he had other and more able supporters, to be singled out as the person whom he wished to act as his patron. From a man of Captain McCrea's character, this selection was not only a pleasing evidence of my innocence," it also showed McCrea understood Burgoyne's hatred of Jane's murder.

McCrea becomes a celebrity in death

A short time after Jane McCrea's death, she became a legendary figure—a martyr of the American Revolution. The tale of her murder was retold in songs, poems, plays, and newspaper stories and at patriotic events. Writer Philip Freneau, who had himself been treated cruelly when held captive by the British, used McCrea's story as the basis of an angry poem he wrote in 1778 called "American Independence, an Everlasting Deliverance from British Tyranny." In her 1805 History of the American Revolution,Mercy Otis Warren see entry accused General Burgoyne of being responsible for McCrea's murder. Joel Barlow wrote in his 1807 poem, "The Columbiad": "Eternal ages [should] trace [the incident of McCrea's death] with a tear," and Delia Bacon made it into a play called The Bride of Fort Edward in 1839.

In 1852 a businessman in Fort Edward cut down the tree under which McCrea's body was supposed to have been found. He advertised "elegant canes and boxes manufactured from this world-renowned tree," believing that "an event [filled with] so much interest … will meet with a hearty response from every American." It is not known if he was successful in these marketing attempts.

One hundred years after the murder, Chrisfield Johnson, in his History of Washington Co., New York, pointed out that the power of Jane McCrea's story did not lie merely in her murder: "Thousands of men, women, and children have been massacred during the wars between the Indians and the colonists … [and] during the Revolution and subsequent conflicts, but not another case among them all has attracted so much attention as that of lovely Jane McCrea." Wilson believed that the popularity of McCrea's story could be due to "the youth, beauty, and social position of the victim … [and] the romance that mingled with the tragedy."

Incident inspires artworks

The death of Jane McCrea was depicted in drawings and paintings by many popular artists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. John Vanderlyn's 1804 painting, the Death of Jane McCrea, was praised by art critics of the time as one of the first major American works of art.

In 1822 the remains of Jane McCrea were moved to the old cemetery at Fort Edward amid a patriotic ceremony. Her remains were moved to Union Cemetery near Hudson Falls, New York, in 1852. Throughout the 1890s, supporters raised funds to surround the grave with a decorative iron fence. During a celebration of Fort Edward in 1927, a play by Philip Henry Caroll was presented there entitled Jane McCrea: A Tragedy in Five Acts. Jane McCrea's legend lived on, even 150 years after her death.

The changing, lesser status of women

According to June Namias, who examines relation ships of power between men and women in her writings, one picture of the McCrea murder "after another shows Jane's body pulled, dragged, or thrown from horseback and pushed to the ground by two or more Indians. It appears that they often take turns stabbing her … with knives and tomahawks…. Each works as a reminder of enemy brutality, female weakness, and the need to restrict women's choice."

Namias noted that the legend of Jane McCrea helped to define the role of white women in American life following the American Revolution. She wrote that "creators of culture … centered her in a compelling plot, transformed [McCrea] into a romantic legend, and finally left her as both a local legend and a victim of 'savages' in need of protection and direction." Namias believes that the widespread images and stories about Jane McCrea contributed to the idea that women need protecting and encouraged them to remain dependent on men for generations after the American Revolution.

For More Information

Anburey, Lt. Thomas. Travels through the Interior Parts of America, Vol. 1. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1923.

Boatner, Mark M., III. "McCrea Atrocity." Encyclopedia of the American Revolution. New York: David McKay, 1994, pp. 688–90.

Booth, Sally Smith. The Women of '76. New York: Hastings House Publishers, 1973.

Bush, Martin H. "Jane McCrea." Notable American Women, 1607–1950, Vol. 2. Edited by Edward T. James et al. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971.

Johnson, Chrisfield. History of Washington Co., New York. Interlaken, NY: Hearts of the Lake, 1979.

Leary, Lewis. Introduction to Miss McCrea, A Novel of the American Revolution. Written by Michel Rene Hilliard-d'Auberteuil, 1784; reprinted, Gainesville, FL: Scholars' Facsimiles & Reprints, 1958.

Lunt, James. John Burgoyne of Saratoga. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975.

Namias, June. White Captives: Gender and Ethnicity on the American Frontier. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995.

Wilson, David. The Life of Jane McCrea, with an account of Burgoyne's Expedition in 1777. New York: Baker, Goodwin, 1853.

Zeinert, Karen. Those Remarkable Women of the American Revolution. Brook-field, CT: The Millbrook Press, 1996, p. 53.

Web Sites

Bray, George E., III. "Scalping During the French and Indian War." [Online] Available http://earlyamericacom/review/1998/scalping.html (accessed on 8/1/99.)

The Practice of Scalping

Scalping is the cutting and removal of the scalp. The severed scalp was thought to give the victor the enemy's power and often served as a trophy, something kept in remembrance of a victory. Scalping was practiced in Europe and Asia and among some Native American tribes.

During the eighteenth century the French and British in America encouraged the spread of scalping by offering Indians bounties, payments of goods in exchange for scalps. The number of scalps taken would help the Europeans determine how many enemies had been killed. In time Indians began to make fake scalps out of horsehair, preparing them in the same way as human scalps. Once the French and English figured this trick out, they examined the scalps brought to them more carefully before making payment and reduced the amount of money they would pay for them.

In his diary written in the eighteenth century, a French soldier known only as J.C.B. wrote about the process of scalping: "When a war party has captured one or more prisoners that cannot be taken away, it is the usual custom to kill them by breaking their heads with the blows of a tomahawk…. When he has struck two or three blows, the [Native American] quickly seizes his knife, and makes an incision around the hair from the upper part of the forehead to the back of the neck. Then he puts his foot on the shoulder of the victim, who he has turned over face down, and pulls the hair off with both hands, from back to front…. This hasty operation is no sooner finished than the savage fastens the scalp to his belt and goes on his way. This method is only used when the prisoner cannot follow his captor; or when the [Native American] is pursued…. He quickly takes the scalp, gives the deathcry, and flees at top speed…. When a savage has taken a scalp, and is not afraid he is being pursued, he stops and scrapes the skin to remove the blood and fibres on it. He makes a hoop of green wood, stretches the skin over it like a tambourine, and puts it in the sun to dry a little. The skin is painted red, and the hair on the outside combed. When prepared, the scalp is fastened to the end of a long stick, and carried on his shoulder in triumph to the village or place where he wants it put. But as he nears each place on his way, he gives as many cries as he has scalps to announce his arrival, and show his bravery. Sometimes as many as 15 scalps are fastened on the same stick. When there are too many for one stick, they decorate several sticks with the