Ohio History Journal

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A Surgeon's Mate at Fort Defiance:

A Surgeon's Mate at Fort Defiance:

The Journal of Joseph Gardner Andrews

For the Year 1795

 

Edited by RICHARD C. KNOPF*

 

 

On May 4, 1792, Joseph Gardner Andrews enlisted in the army

of the United States as a surgeon's mate. His qualifications for the

position were considered adequate by the standards of his day: he

had graduated from Harvard College in 1785 and, since that time,

had been employed as a schoolmaster at Dorchester, Massachusetts.

Perhaps partly from a spirit of adventure, perhaps in part from a

desire to learn by actual experience the practice of medicine, he had

taken this step.

At the time Andrews joined the army it was stationed at Legion

Ville, a few miles down the Ohio River from Pittsburgh. There it

was being rigorously trained for an expedition against the hostile

Indians of the Northwest Territory. The commander-in-chief of the

Legion of the United States, as the army was then called, was Major

General Anthony Wayne, a hero of the American Revolution and,

more recently, an Indian fighter in the South.

Wayne had replaced Arthur St. Clair, also a Revolutionary officer

of note and, at this time, governor of the Northwest Territory, as

commander of the army, March 5, 1792. This change came as a

result of St. Clair's disastrous defeat, November 4, 1791, when

three-quarters of his army were killed or wounded in a major action

on the banks of the Wabash River, some ninety-five miles north of

his base at Fort Washington (Cincinnati). This, however, was not

 

*Richard C. Knopf is historical editor and research historian of the Anthony Wayne

Parkway Board, which has its offices at the Ohio State Museum, Columbus.