Resting on a hillside one mile from my home is an old cemetery. Sadly, some headstones are toppled and most unattended too. Walking among the stones grieved me to see all the young children who had died. There are few stones with dates of people living long lives. It was close to an hour before I made it to the top of the garden of stone. From the top of the hill, you can see across the river bottoms for miles. It’s a beautiful setting, serene. Standing here, I noticed the grave of revolutionary soldier Vincent L. Lockman born in 1760.
Lockman was not yet born when the events began that lead up to the War of Independence. The French and Indian war occurred from 1754 to 1763. The French and Indians battled the British colonies. France wanted to expand south from Canada and Britain west of the Mississippi River. It was a slow route for the British victory and the cost of the war high. The backlash to the American colonies began with the Stamp Act, imposed in 1765 by Britain to tax ship bill of laden, newspaper articles, and various other business activity. Britain enacted the tax to pay for the war. The colonies immediately pushed back.
The Townshend Act followed the Stamp Act in 1767, which enacted British authority over the colonies and the right to taxation. Riots broke out in Boston as the people refused to recognize Britain or pay the lengthy list of taxes. Britain sent two regimens of soldiers to Boston. In 1770 the Boston Massacre occurred. British soldiers opened fire, killing five colonials. Vincent Lockman was ten years old.
The Boston Tea Party took place in 1773. Britain had placed a tax on tea, and the colonials refused to pay. Dressed as Mohawk Indians, they boarded ships at night and dumped fourteen thousand dollars (today’s dollars) of tea into the harbor. The colonist pushed back against Britain and the monopoly of the East India Company. Lockman was thirteen, and things were heating up. War was on the horizon.
In 1774 the powder keg was ready to explode when Britain dictated the Intolerable Acts. A measure of four acts to intimidate the colonies. It did not work. The colonist remained stance and determined. In response to the Intolerable Acts, the first congressional Congress convened in Philadelphia. Fifty-six delegates attended. Patrick Henry gave his speech, “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death.” The colonies began to organize and arm.
Paul Revere made his famous ride from Lexington Mass to Concord. A distance of seven miles shouting the British are coming. The same year 1775, the Battle of Bunker Hill took place.
Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence in 1776 but wasn’t official until the Treaty of Paris in 1783 when Britain recognized the United States as a free and sovereign nation.
It’s unclear when Lockman joined the conflict, but he was born in Orange County, North Carolina, and a prisoner of war for four years. If Lockman joined when he was sixteen to twenty-one, it was most likely the Orange County Militia. The militia was an organized army led by five Colonels, seventeen Majors, and eighty Captions. They fought in twenty-four known battles and their fist at Moore’s Creek Bridge.
Moore’s Creek ended up being a decisive battle. An Army of 1600 British loyalists led by Brigadier General Donald McDonald approached the bridge, expecting to exterminate small bands of Patriots. Before the attack, McDonald learned awaiting the other side was 1000 Patriots. They found the bridge partially dismantled and the railings covered in grease. McDonald was ill and unable to lead the army. He did advise caution and recommended they not cross the bridge. Now leading the army was Lt. Col. McLeod, and he and the young officers moved forward. McLeod sent a party of eighty across the bridge with the remaining army ready to advance. The loyalist began crossing the tattered bridge when the Patriots opened fire with two swivel cannons and muckets. Officers and soldiers fell from the bridge. Thirty loyalists died, and McLeod’s army retreated and later surrendered. Eight hundred and fifty loyalists were captured, including the sick General McDonald. One Patriot died in the battle. The battle of Moore’s Creek Bridge and Sullivan’s Island’s battle near Charlestown a few months later led the thirteen colonies to declare independence on July 4, 1776.
Vincent Lockman isn’t listed in any documentation surrounding Moore’s Creek. However, the book “Roster of the Patriots in the Battle of Moore’s Creek Bridge,” by Dr. Bobby Gilmer Moss (1992), said there is no way to 100% accurately identify every participant at this important battle.
If Lockman was not in the battle, he was in the area at the time. It’s known Lockman was a prisoner of war for four years. British prisons resided in New York City, Philadelphia, St. Augustine, Charleston, Savannah, and many other areas. Sometimes the prisoner population was higher than the town population. New York City was a stronghold for prisons. New Bridewell prison had no window panes and no fires for warmth. Liberty Street was the largest and converted from a sugar house along with Van Courtland and Rhinelander. Provost was another New York City prison.
There was no Geneva Convention in place to protect prisoners of war, not that it would have made much difference. Resources were scarce to care for the prisoners and often used as pawns for sale or trade. In 1776 King George III declared POWs as traitors but neglected trial and hanging for death in the prisons.
Patriot prisoners were housed in deplorable situations. The jails were crowded, unsanitary, cold in the winter, and hot in the summer. Striped of their good clothing and covered with rags of garments, their flesh exposed to the elements. Hundreds froze to death and loaded on wagons each morning and tossed into a big hole eaten by swine, rats, and wild animals. The Patriots also faced intolerable cruelty and abuse from the guards.
The Patriot prisons were hell, and the abuse and neglect unbelievable. The British also used ships to house prisoners, a whole different level of hell, unimaginable, an abyss. Unseaworthy ships were stripped of everything usable for the navy, leaving a big hunk of floating wood. The Whitby and the Jersey rested in Wallaby bay off Brooklyn’s shore. Patriots lived with starvation, yellow fever, smallpox, and dysentery in the bottom of the boats. The dead were raised daily by their comrades and thrown overboard. An estimated 11000 men died on those two boats. There were many more boats located up and down the eastern shore. Between the prisons onshore and off, four out of five died. Rather than a hangman’s rope, King George III elected disease, starvation, and brutality to exercise capital punishment.
Lockman lived through four years of hellish conditions and was fortunate to survive. With the war behind him, he returned home and married Anne Kirkland (1765-1873). Anne bore eleven children. Anne passed, and Lockman married Christina Miller (1790-1860). Christina bore six children. When she died, Lockman married Mary Hare (unknown). From Orange County, North Carolina, Lockman moved to Shelby, Kentucky, then Mercer, Kentucky, and finally, Indiana, resting on a hill overlooking the river bottoms.
Vincent L. Lockman died in 1843, having survived a war, disease, and the elements to rear seventeen children. Indiana was no safe haven at that time in history. After all, Indiana means Land of the Indians. I’m proud to have known a little about Lockman’s life and adventures. He helped carve a country out of imperialism, granting America Freedom. I hope you enjoyed this article.
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