Page:Encyclopedia of Virginia Biography volume 2.djvu/342

 PROMINENT PERSONS

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Caldwell, John, born in Prince Edward county, Virginia. He removed to Kentucky in 1781, served against the Indians, and be- came a major-general of militia. He was a member of the Kentucky state conventions of 1787 and 1788, and of the state senate in 1792 and 1793. He was lieutenant-governor ai the time of his death at Frankfort, Ken- tucky, November 9, 1804.

Caldwell, James, born in Charlotte coun- ty, \'irginia, in April, 1734. He graduated at Princeton College, New Jersey, in 1759, and became pastor of the church in Eliza- bethtown. During the agitations preceding the revolution, he took an active part in arousing the spirit of rebellion, thereby in- curring bitter hatred on the part of his Tory neighbors. As chaplain in the New Jersey brigade, he earned the nickname of the "soldier parson," and suffered for his pa- triotic zeal by having his church burned in 1780 by a party of British marauders and lories. His family sought refuge in thfe village of Connecticut Farms (now Union), New Jersey, but before the close of the war a reconnoitering force from the British camps on Staten Island pillaged the place, and Mrs. Caldwell was killed by a stray bullet, while in a room praying with her two children. Her husband was at the time on duty with the army at Morristown. Shortly after (June 23, 1780), he distin- guished himself in the successful defense of Springfield, New Jersey, which was at- tacked by a heavy British force. During the engagement he supplied the men with hymn- books from a neighboring church, to use as wadding, with the exhortation, *'Now put Watts into them, boys!" He was shot by an American sentry during an altercation vu-ii

concerning a package, which the sentry thought it his duty to examine. The soldier was delivered to the civil authorities, tried for murder, and hanged January 29, 1782. It was commonly believed at that time that the sentry had been bribed by the British to kill the chaplain. A handsome monu- ment commemorating the life and services or Mr. Caldwell and his wife was erected at Elizabethtown in 1846, on the sixty- fourth anniversary of his untimely death.

Boucher, Jonathan, born in Blencogo, Cumberland, England, March 12, 1738. He came to America at the age of sixteen, and was for some time a private teacher, in 1762 took orders in the Anglican church, and was appointed rector of Hanover parish. King George county, and two years later of St. Mary's parish, Caroline county, Virginia. Gov. Eden gave him in 1771 the rectory of St. Anne, Annapolis, and that of Queen Anne, in St. George county. He was tutor to John Parke Custis, but opposed the measures looking to independence, and gave such offence to his congregation that he was obliged to return to England in 1775. He was appointed vicar of Epsom, and during the last fourteen years of his life was en- gaged in compiling a glossary of provincial and obsolete words. This was purchased from his family in 183 1 by the proprietors of the English edition of Webster's "Dic- tionary," for use as an appendix to that work. He published in 1799 "A View of the Causes and Consequences of the American Revolution," dedicated to Gen. Washington, * consisting of fifteen discourses delivered in North America between 1763 and 1775, ^^^ containing many anecdotes illustrating the

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