Bennington County

ARMSTRONG, Jonathan

Vermont Historical Magazine, No XI, October 1867, p 186

Jonathan ARMSTRONG was born in Norwich [New London County], Connecticut. At 
the age of sixteen, he went with the troops sent out by that colony to assist 
in taking the island of Cuba, and so fatal was that disastrous expedition, 
that only a small number of the 1,000 provincial troops ever survived to 
return. He was one of only four of his company permitted to see again their 
native land. At the Bennington battle he was a volunteer, and assisted by 
another man, after the first action was fought, took seven prisoners, one of 
whom was the notorious Col. PFISTER. Col. PFISTER's commission bearing date 
and various other relics found in his saddle bags are in possession of the 
writer, to whose care they were committed in his boyhood by his grandfather, 
to be handed down in his family as mementos of that trying day. While these 
two soldiers were marching their seven prisoners towards Bennington, they met 
Colonel WARNER [Seth WARNER] with whom ARMSTRONG was acquainted, and 
communicated to him the fact of the coming reinforcement under BAUM, which 
information he had drawn from their prisoners. WARNER ordered them to take 
said prisoners to their meeting house. Col PFISTER was carried part of the 
way on the back of ARMSTRONG. The latter moved into Dorset in the autumn 
succeeding the battle of Bennington, and settled in that part of the town 
known as the "Hollow." He married Abigail HAYNES. Five brothers of his wife 
likewise in the engagement at Bennington. Mr. [Jonathan] ARMSTRONG died aged 
eighty-three years.

Submitted by Cathy Kubly