America 250: Local Connections | Bedford County holds special place in military history during, after Revolutionary War

Editor's note: This article is an installment in The Tribune-Democrat's ongoing U.S. Semiquincentennial project titled "America 250: Local Connections," about events and people that shaped the region in the years before and after the Declaration of Independence was adopted on July 4, 1776, the nation's birthday. A new story will be published on the fourth Saturday of every month throughout the year.

BEDFORD, Pa. – In the 1770s and 1780s, when revolution was occurring in the American colonies, Bedford County was an expansive territory, covering much of south-central and southwestern Pennsylvania, that was home to people who were by their nature rebellious.

They were immigrants or first-generation citizens who boldly left behind the old world in Europe to live on the frontier of a new continent.

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A good amount of them likely never previously owned property. Day-to-day life was often a struggle in the wilderness of what was known as "Mother Bedford," but they were self-sufficient free pioneers.

So, when the Revolutionary War occurred, many of them sided with the rebels – or patriots – in the fight against Great Britain.

"No. 1, they had a reputation of being very tough individuals that were expert marksmen," said Kevin Mearkle, author of the book "The Revolutionary War Generation of Bedford County."

"And the second thing was the Scotch-Irish and the Germans were very anti-British crown. They went through a lot just to get to the Bedford County region and their land of Canaan, getting away from kings and persecution.

"The last thing that they wanted in their new homeland would be to be suffering under another king."

Mearkle said 2,000-some veterans have been identified who lived in Bedford County – a region that at the time included multiple current counties, including Cambria and Somerset – during or after the war.

First Army unit

Col. William Thompson's Pennsylvania Rifle Battalion was the first Army unit created by the Continental Congress in June 1775, giving it a special place in United States military history. Many of the members came from Bedford County.

"It's something for our region to be proud of," Mearkle said.

It later became known as the 1st Continental Regiment and then the 1st Pennsylvania Regiment.

The 8th Pennsylvania Regiment and 13th Pennsylvania Regiment recruited men from Bedford County, too.

They were among the estimated 200,000 to 250,000 men who fought on the patriot side.

The conflict lasted from the Battles of Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775, until the British surrendered on Oct. 19, 1781, at the Siege of Yorktown. The war involved people from various backgrounds in North America and Europe. And it changed the western world.

"The Revolutionary War is very complex," Cambria County Veterans Museum curator Jeff Pounding said. "It was a world war. It was a revolution against the crown. It was a civil war of loyalists against patriots. It was our first major slave rebellion. Male Black Americans fought for the British to get their freedom. And it was actually an Indian war."

McGwire's Settlement now Loretto

Veterans later migrated to the area that eventually became Cambria County.

Most notably, Capt. Michael McGuire, a devout Catholic from Maryland, purchased land and established McGwire's Settlement in the late 1780s at what is now Loretto.

Solomon Adams, John Baum and Archibald Christy, along with the Nagle and Skelly families, were among those early residents.

"They would come back here and they would set up a farm," Shelby McHenry, a Cambria County military historian and genealogist, said. "Then maybe a small town would build around their farm. It's like they become, I guess, politically important to that part of the county."

The veterans spent their post-war days unassumingly living their lives and establishing small communities that eventually evolved into parts of modern Cambria County.

But one, Richard Nagle, gained national attention.

In 1828, at the age of 83, Nagle, impoverished at the time, left home in the middle of winter and walked more than 100 miles to Harrisburg to get his war pension from the state government.

"So overwhelmed with his story, yet unable to grant him a federal pension, they gathered a small amount of money, bought him new clothes, and gave him a coach ticket to Washington D.C.," according to his biography at cambriamemory.org.

He met with federal officials, even President John Quincy Adams, in the nation's capital, but still did not get a pension.

"But then the awful story of Pvt. Richard Nagle went viral throughout the country," per cambriamemory.org. "Newspapers published his story. A huge public uproar condemned President Adams. It so happens 1828 was an election year and Andrew Jackson was Adams's challenger. Jackson, as part of his campaign for president, used the plight of Richard Nagle and other aging veterans to draw attention to their needs."

Jackson won the election.

Nagle got a pension.

'We just want to recognize them'

Approximately 30 Revolutionary War veterans are documented to have lived in what is now Cambria County.

McHenry has put together their stories, using multiple sources, including county veterans records, an archive book she thinks was likely from the Daughters of the American Revolution, obituaries, and even the Ebensburg War Memorial.

"We just want to recognize them as much as we can," McHenry said.

Historian James Whisker recently updated the book "Revolutionary War Soldiers of Bedford County" that was started by Helen Hill Greenberg in the 1930s and added to by Vaughn Whisker Sr. decades later.

"I think it's primarily a reference book, a place to start if you think it might be your ancestor," James Whisker said. "But then there are probably a good dozen tales in there."

There are also the Daughters of the American Revolution's Joseph Schantz Chapter and the Sons of the American Revolution's Great Glades Chapter in the region that help carry on the legacy of the local Revolutionary War veterans.

"I think it's important to know where we came from and to have that connection to the past and knowing that someone who came before me took a chance to make America what it is," Belinda Lambie, regent of the Schantz chapter, said.

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