Ned Dobb was an American patriot who served in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War.
Biography[]
Ned Dobb was born in the Province of New York, one of four children of fur trapper Tom Dobb. His mother and three of his siblings died while Ned was young, and he helped his father run his fur trading business, boating into New York City to sell his father's goods. In 1776, as the British Army neared New York City, Ned signed up to serve as a drummer for the New York militia against his father's wishes (hoping to win 150 acres of land after the war and good money), and his father was forced to join the militia due to his refusal to be separated from his only surviving family member. Father and son fought together at the Battle of Long Island and the landing at Kip's Bay, and Daisy McConnahay gave them food after Long Island and rebuked them for deserting the militia after the British victory at Kip's Bay.
Ned retained his patriotic ideals and was embittered towards his father for dragging him along in deserting the militia and working in a Manhattan rope factory, and, in 1777, Ned became involved with the "Mohawks" youth gang, which stole food from the British officers' mess tents and engaged in other resistance activities. Ned and his friend Merle Miller were both imprisoned by the British for their activities and were impressed into the British Army as drummer boys, with Sergeant-Major William Peasy taking them to a camp up the Hudson River. There, Ned refused to shine the shoes of the predatory Lord Henry Darling, resulting in Darling ordering him to be tortured with "the gunner's daughter" - Peasy had Dobb strapped to a cannon before whipping his feet. Shortly after, Tom Dobb - told of Ned's kidnapping by Daisy - stealthily rescued Ned and Merle from the British camp and took them upstate, killing two Mohawk scouts sent after them and taking them to Tonti's Huron village, where Dobb recovered over the next several months.
In 1778, the Dobbs joined the Continental Army at its camp at Valley Forge, where Tom became a scout and his son fell in love with Bella Davis, the daughter of the Jewish artilleryman Israel Davis. The two married in 1781 before the Dobbs departed the North for the Siege of Yorktown, and, during the siege, the Dobbs ambushed and wounded Peasy, only for Ned to decide against shooting him a second time. After the war, the Dobbs returned to New York City, where they found that the Continental Congress had sold off their promised lands to speculators to help pay off America's war debt. However, Tom Dobb encouraged his son to travel north to the open frontier of Upstate New York and start a new life with Bella as he remained in New York and learned to read, while potentially starting a new life with Daisy.
Gallery[]
