[Editor's Note: This article appeared in the 2002 Issue of the Journal of the Orange County Historical Society. It is being republished on the website as part of the ongoing activities surrounding the 250th Anniversary of the Revolutionary War. The footnoted version is contained in the 2002 Journal which is available for purchase. JAC]

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Major General John Hathorn, a Quaker by religious conviction, was also a devoted family man. He married Elizabeth Welling, from one of Warwick’s first and most prominent families, and together they had eleven children. Hathorn counted among his friends the Marquis de Lafayette, George and Martha Washington, and George Clinton. He was an architect of government at all levels, from town, to state, and nation. But, perhaps, John Hathorn should be best known as an unwavering patriot for the cause of independence.

How sad that one of our town’s most eminent citizens is almost unknown today! When one thinks of the name ‘Hathorn’ his mind conjures a currently famous Warwick gourmet restaurant, not a great fighter for our freedom. Also, when one considers the word ‘landmark,’‘Chateau Hathorn’ comes to mind, not the venerable and richly historic Hathorn homestead that is in an advanced state of decay some few hundred yards away. There are no monuments to honor this great patriot, and no portraits in the town hall or at the state capitol in Albany. Yet in the early post-revolutionary days his compatriots must have held Colonel John Hathorn in very high esteem or he would not have been popularly elected to so many public offices and for so many years. As one reflects for a moment, how many community leaders anywhere and at any time in history have remained in leadership positions before and after revolutionary upheavals? Most have gone the way of Robespierre and Patrice Lumumba. John Hathorn survived the transformation and eased us into the post-revolutionary era.

Today, however, Major General John Hathorn is the nearly forgotten hero of our town, our state, and our nation. Yet his commitment to the cause of independence was unquestioned. Without the John Hathorns of grassroots America we would never have liberated ourselves from the bonds of colonial domination. During the critical middle years of the Revolution, many local farmers laid down their arms and returned to the fields in despair and ennui. Many Warwickians had rallied to the revolutionary cause in 1775 as the struggle began to unfold and the numbers in the militia swelled after the stunning victory at Saratoga in October of 1777. Then came the brutal winter at Valley Forge in 1777-78. By then, Americans were not only at war with the English, but were in the midst of a bloody civil war, between the Patriots and the Loyalists. Warwick families were deeply divided, father against son, neighbor against neighbor. The revolutionary committees on Public Safety had begun to confiscate the lands of local Tory farmers and to burn their homes. All this only contributed to bitter divisions within the community itself. Hathorn, himself, a member of the committee, must have agonized over its excesses.

Military discipline was always a problem as the sons of many prominent Warwick citizens were court-martialed in 1778 for refusing to follow orders. Morale was low, ammunition was short, pay was poor, and many weapons were defective. We often forget that surprisingly few Americans were steadfast in their support of the revolution. Many wavered, sat on the fence, or remained in the Tory camp. Still others who had crops to plant and harvest and families to feed could only devote small portions of time to the cause of independence. Our local farmers were not trained for war, and certainly not in the use of the deadly bayonet which inflicted agonizingly painful wounds on its victims.

In the darkest days of the Revolution, after the disastrous and humiliating defeat in the Battle of Minisink on July 22, 1779, when many Warwickians had given up hope for independence and abandoned the militia, General Hathorn persevered. Faced with the massacre of as many as forty-three men from the regiment he commanded at Minisink, he returned to Warwick, repulsed an assassination attempt on his life from a band of Indians and Tories, and built a blockhouse to defend his community from future attacks. Over the next eighteen months, he turned his energies to recruiting fresh troops for the war effort. He faithfully adhered to the mandate of Orange County’s militias “to repel invasions and to suppress insurrections”. Through the winter months the Warwick militia drilled four hours each week in the toasty-warm attic of Francis Baird’s Tavern. In its day, it was probably the largest enclosed space in the community. The room today is exactly as it was 225 years ago and its atmosphere is heavy with the very spirits of our forefathers. The heel marks of the militiamen’s boots may still be seen in the wooden floorboards.

Under Hathorn’s command the Warwick regiment was instrumental in preventing a British invasion of the lower Hudson valley via the Ramapo Pass. For a time, Warwick patriots seemed everywhere …from the turkey fields of Paramus, New Jersey, to the fortress at Fort Montgomery high above the strategically vital Hudson River near West Point. Eventually, the tide turned and the region was secured. Our beleaguered forefathers began to retrieve the fragments of their broken lives. In 1781, sensing the war was ending, and only six months before the decisive Battle of Yorktown, Colonel Hathorn apparently resigned and returned to his farm in Warwick to care for his family and businesses. He had commanded the regiment for nearly six years...a remarkably long wartime commitment for any individual at any time.

John Hathorn was more a statesman than he was was a businessman as his greatest achievements were in public service to his new nation. History books had always told us that taxation was a major cause of the revolt against Britain, thus it is remarkable that this colonial Warwick tax assessor emerged from the revolution with even greater stature than before. If this were indeed the case, why would the local tax assessor survive the revolution? We all have come to realize that taxes in themselves are not bad…it is the manner in which they are assessed and levied that causes the most acrimony. Clearly, Mr. Hathorn must have been extremely fairminded in this endeavor or he would have been among the first in town to be tarred and feathered. Hathorn was a humanist, too. This personality trait was revealed when he dug the remains of the chief of the Minisink Indians and gave them a permanent resting place in a prominent location on his farm, only a few minutes walk from the Mistucky Indian village. This settlement had been completely abandoned after the great Indian exodus from our community in the 1740s.

After the Revolutionary War, the farm operation in his beloved Warwick, along the sparkling Wawayanda Creek and the old Kings Highway, took second place in his priorities. When this great Warwick patriot retired from his political life, like Thomas Jefferson and others, his finances were practically exhausted and the new nation that he had helped to create had few funds for pensions and back pay. Obviously, there was no social security in those days. Proudly, Hathorn still owned the farm and continued to live in the stone house he and his wife had built in the early 1770s before the war. Postwar times were difficult, and the old General declined an invitation in 1824 to dine with Lafayette on his visit to Newburgh because his clothes were too tattered, and he was too proud to borrow someone else’s vestments.

John Hathorn’s last public act was in 1822, just three years before his death. At a large gathering in Goshen, he participated in the dedication of a monument in memory of the patriots who died in the Battle of Minisink. Remarkably, in the forty-three years that had elapsed, the remains of the fallen militiamen had never been recovered from the battlefield. Finally, they were collected and interred in Goshen, Orange County’s capital, and a monument was erected. The ceremony was a moment of joy and sorrow, of painful reflection and of long overdue healing. At its dedication, John Hathorn, the seventy-three-yearold patriot intoned:

“Monuments to the brave are mementos to their descendants: the honors they record are stars to the patriot in the path of glory.”

He concluded:

“May this monument endure with the liberties of our country: when they perish, this land will be no longer worthy to hold within its bosom the consecrated bones of its heroes.”

Let this be a warning to all of us. We must forever be indebted to our fellow citizens who, over the centuries since the founding of our republic, have given us of their life in the cause of liberty. John Hathorn and his followers must not be erased from our memories and let us also hope that some day his homestead will be a living monument to those brave Americans who gave us the “stars” that have guided future generations along the path of glory. Should we forget the John Hathorns of America we will surely risk losing all the freedoms that we so fervently cherish and have worked so hard to achieve.