Asa Hartshorne
BornConnecticut
Died30 June 1794
Fort Recovery, Ohio
AllegianceUnited States
Service/branchArmy
Years of service1787 - 1794
RankCaptain
UnitFirst American Regiment, Legion of the United States
Battles/warsHartshorne's Defeat, Hardin's Defeat, Siege of Fort Recovery †
Signature

Asa Hartshorne was a United States Army officer who died in 1794 during the Northwest Indian War. He was among the signers of the Treaty with the Six Nations and the Treaty with the Wyandot at Fort Harmar on January 9, 1789. Hartshorne became the namesake of a 1790 frontier skirmish near Maysville, Kentucky.

Biography

Hartshorne hailed from Connecticut[1] and joined the Army in 1787.[1]

As an ensign in the First American Regiment, he signed the 1789 Treaty of Fort Harmar[2]

He traveled west from Fort Harmar that August, along with his fellow junior officer Jacob Kingsbury, under the command of Captain David Strong.[3] On 30 May 1790, Hartshorne commanded a party near Limestone, Kentucky, that was attacked in retaliation for an attack on the Shawnee village of Chalawgatha by Charles Scott a month earlier. Hartshorne reported 8 people missing after the attack and 5 killed, including 3 children.[4] This frontier skirmish is known as "Hartshorne's Defeat (1790)."[5]

While stationed in Fort Washington at Cincinnati, Ohio,[6][7] Hartshorne participated in the Harmar campaign, an assault on Native American villages deep in Ohio Territory. He and Captain John Armstrong were the only two active duty Army officers to survive when a force under Kentucky colonel John Hardin approached the Miami village of Little Turtle on 19 October 1790.[8][9][10]

Hartshorne was promoted to lieutenant on 4 March 1791[11] and returned to Connecticut to recruit for the newly-formed Second American Regiment.[12]

Hartshorne was promoted to captain in the 1st Sub-Legion on 1 September 1792.[13]

In January 1794, shortly after the construction of Fort Recovery, Hartshorne was tasked with building a road north to the village of Simon Girty.[14] He was killed on 30 June 1794 during the Siege of Fort Recovery, when he refused to surrender to Thomas McKee.[15] When his body was recovered the following day, it had been mutilated. However, two leather hearts had been placed in his chest as a testament to his courage.[16] Lieut. Thomas T. Underwood made the following entry in his journal regarding the death of Hartshorne:

Capt. Hartshorn was badly wounded the commencement of the action, two of his soldiers tryed to get him to the Garrison, and got him in sixty yards of the Garrison, they were so close parsued the Capt. told the soldiers to lay him down and save themselves, as they laid him down he handed his watch to one of the men. As they left him he said to them boys save yourselves.[17]

Recognition

Christopher W. Wingate in Military Professionalism and the Early American Officer Corps, 1789-1796 (2013) wrote:

Captain Thomas T. Underwood’s journal recounts the representative bravery of Captain Asa Hartshorne during a 1794 attack on Fort Recovery. When a surprise attack by Miami warriors against a convoy resupplying the fort threatened the caravan escorts, Hartshorne rode out of the fort at the head of a small relief party. Hartshorne’s detachment relieved their comrades, driving the Indians into the woods. In the aftermath of this charge however, Indians surrounded and wounded him badly. Ordering his detachment to leave him and escape to the relative safety of the fort’s walls, Hartshorne died, sacrificing himself for the survival of his comrades.[18]


Notes

  1. ^ a b "Asa Hartshorn". Indian Land Tenure Foundation. Retrieved 10 Dec 2021.
  2. ^ "Treaty With the Wyandot, etc., : 1789". The Avalon Project. Retrieved 10 Dec 2021.
  3. ^ Jones, Robert Ralston (1902). Fort Washington at Cincinnati, Ohio. Ohio: Society of Colonial Wars in the State of Ohio. p. 11. Retrieved 13 December 2021.
  4. ^ "Diary entry: 9 July 1790". Founders Online. Retrieved 10 December 2021.
  5. ^ Winkler 2011, p. 15.
  6. ^ James E. Westheider. The History of Fort Washington at Cincinnati, Ohio: A Case Study. Selected papers from the 1989 and 1990 George Rogers Clark Trans-Appalachian Frontier History Conferences, Vincennes University, 1991.
  7. ^ Jones, Robert Ralston. Fort Washington at Cincinnati, Ohio. Cincinnati, Ohio: Society of Colonial Wars in the State of Ohio, 1902, p.47
  8. ^ Sword 1985, p. 108.
  9. ^ Guthman, William H. March to Massacre: A History of the First Seven Years of the United States Army, 1784–1791. New York: McGraw Hill, 1970, pp. 192-194.
  10. ^ From George Washington to Henry Knox, 19 November 1790, Founders Online
  11. ^ Heitman, Francis Bernard (1903). Historical Register and Dictionary of the United States Army: From Its Organization, September 29, 1789, to March 2, 1903. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office. p. 507. Retrieved 10 Dec 2021.
  12. ^ Lytle, Richard M. (2004). The Soldiers of America's First Army, 1791. Scarecrow Press. p. 170. ISBN 0810850117.
  13. ^ "Roster of the Officers of 'The Legion of the United States,' Commanded by Major-General Anthony Wayne". The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography. Historical Society of Pennsylvania. 16 (4): 424. 1893. JSTOR 20083506. Retrieved 10 December 2021.
  14. ^ Gaff 2004, p. 188.
  15. ^ Hogeland 2017, p. 321.
  16. ^ Gaff 2004, p. 251.
  17. ^ Underwood, Thomas T. Journal, Thomas Taylor Underwood, March 26, 1792 to March 18, 1800: An old soldier in Wayne's Army. Cincinnati, Ohio: Society of Colonial Wars in the State of Ohio, 1945, p. 13.
  18. ^ Wingate, Christopher W. Military professionalism and the Early American Officer Corps, 1789-1796. US Army Combined Arms Center, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas: Combat Studies Institute Press, 2013, p. 69.

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