Jeremiah Olney
After its commander was wounded early in the action, he led Varnum's brigade in bitter fighting at Monmouth in June 1778.
Later he assumed command of a company of infantry in Colonel Daniel Hitchcock's Rhode Island Regiment.
[3] At the time of the Battle of Long Island in August 1776, John Nixon's brigade of Nathanael Greene's division included Hitchcock's Regiment with a strength of 368 men.
After Charles Mawhood's initial attack routed Hugh Mercer's advance guard, George Washington rallied the Americans on the hill where Thomas Clark's house still stands.
Hitchcock's small brigade joined with forces under Edward Hand, Thomas Mifflin, John Cadwalader, and others to defeat Mawhood.
[1] The Rhode Island Assembly voted to recruit two full regiments when the terms of enlistment of the 1776 units ran out.
[12] On 22 October 1777 Olney fought at the Battle of Red Bank where 500 Americans successfully defended Fort Mercer against the attack of Carl von Donop's 2,000 Hessian soldiers.
He said, "The King of England orders his rebellious subjects to lay down their arms, and they are warned that if they stand battle, no quarter will be given".
The British officer pressed further and Olney remarked that, "seeing Colonel Greene was altogether needless," because he would defend the fort "as long as he had a man and as to mercy it was neither sought nor expected".
An eyewitness reported that during the fight, Olney used the flat of his sword on soldiers who fired over the parapet without aiming their muskets.
The RI General Assembly proclaimed, "Every slave, so enlisting, shall, upon his passing muster before Col. Christopher Greene, be immediately discharged from the service of his master or mistress, and be absolutely FREE as though he had never been encumbered with any Kind of Servitude or Slavery".
[15] Though every "negro, mulatto, or Indian man-slave" was eligible to enroll and the bounty was the same as for white men, fewer than 200 signed up.
[11] At the Battle of Monmouth on 28 June 1778, Olney led the two consolidated Rhode Island regiments in Varnum's brigade which was temporarily commanded by Colonel John Durkee.
Some British light dragoons attacked a party of militia horsemen but were driven off by volleys from infantry detachments under Richard Butler and Henry Jackson.
The matter was quickly straightened out and Durkee was shifted to support two guns commanded by Eleazer Oswald on the left flank.
However, he soon relented and permitted Lee to organize a holding action while he deployed the American main body into a defensive line.
Oswald's other two guns took a position where they could cover the detachments of Nathaniel Ramsey and Walter Stewart on the left flank.
Lee directed Henry Livingston Jr. to protect Oswald's two guns on the right, but instead he took position behind the hedgerow on Olney's left.
In the melee, 16 grenadiers found themselves surrounded by Olney's troops, but the Americans were so bent on retreating that they paid no heed to their enemies.
After this action, which occurred about noon, Olney joined the rest of Lee's division which was reorganizing in the rear of Washington's main body.
In the combat, the 2nd Rhode Island under Angell held up Wilhelm von Knyphausen's greatly superior British-Hessian force at the Springfield Bridge for 40 minutes before withdrawing in good order.
[24] At the Siege of Yorktown in October 1781, his regiment belonged to Colonel Elias Dayton's Brigade of Benjamin Lincoln's Division.
[26] After the war, Colonel Olney served as Distributor of Pensions for Rhode Island's invalid soldiers.
For his political support, he was rewarded by being appointed in 1790 to the lucrative position of Customs Collector for the Port of Providence by President George Washington.
