Bennington

HURD, Lewis

Vermont Historical Magazine, No. XI, October 1867, p 230
(extracted from a section on the history of Sandgate, Bennington County, 
Vermont)

Capt. Lewis HURD was a native of Roxbury [Litchfield County], Connecticut. In June 1776 he was drafted to serve 
his country in that struggle which 
resulted in our independence. The first term of service continued but six 
months, but this period saw him with the army in New York City, in July 1776, 
when the shout of freedom was raised in the land. He was with WASHINGTON in 
his memorable retreat from Long Island, but soon after taken sick with camp 
fever, was carried in that condition across the North River into New Jersey, 
where he was left for some weeks, enjoying such luxuries as could be procured 
(including attendance) for six cents per day. In May 1777 he enlisted to 
serve during the war, and was at the taking of Fort Montgomery, at Valley 
Forge in the winter of 1777 to 1778, when the sufferings of the army were 
almost unparalleled, at the battle of Monmouth in 1778, with Gen. WAYNE at 
the battle of Stony Point in 1779, and at Jamestown in July 1781, besides a 
number of encounters of minor importance. He was a member of Gen. WAYNE's 
military family, as a personal attendant, from January 1780 until the 
treachery of ARNOLD made it expedient to change the official relations, as 
far as possible, through the army. 

Captain HURD was with LAFAYETTE during his journeyings through Virginia, and 
with him at the ever memorable battle of Yorktown, the closing scene of the 
Revolution, on which occasion he was one of a party under LAFAYETTE who 
scaled the walls of the forts during that siege, where he received a severe 
wound in the arm, from which by loss of blood he was brought so near to death 
that the surgeons abandoned his case as hopeless, and left him without 
surgical attention for fourteen days, when LAFAYETTE visited the hospital 
where he lay, and directed special attention to be given to his case and 
furnished him with a nurse. He was soon so much improved that he was sent 
with forty others in covered wagons on straw beds to New Windsor [Orange 
County], New York, where his wound was opened and sixteen pieces of shattered 
bone taken from the joint, when he soon recovered.

In the winter of 1783, Captain HURD settled in Sandgate [Bennington County, 
Vermont], where he resided until his death. He was a decided advocate of the 
cause of temperance, and attributed the unusual health which he enjoyed for 
the last twenty years mainly to his abstinence during that period. In the 
summer of 1844, then in his eighty-sixth year, he traveled upwards of four 
thousand miles, visiting a daughter at Prairie du Chien [Crawford County, 
Territory of Wisconsin], and missionary stations still farther west. Captain 
HURD was connected with the Congregational Church in Sandgate about forty 
years, an exemplary member, manifesting a strong interest in the institutions 
of religion, and an earnest desire that the gospel might be regularly 
dispensed in the place where he resided, and was a liberal supporter of the 
gospel according to his means. Two years since the Congregational Society 
made a successful effort to rebuild their house of worship, to which 
enterprise Captain HURD contributed $450. Captain HURD died 18 December 
1848. He drew a pension from the close of the war to the time of his death.

Submitted by Cathy Kubly