A St. Patrick's Day Story

My great great great grandfather was John Hogarty. His granddaughter, Mary Ann Pew Cornish, described him in the following letter:

"My grandfather, John Hogarty, was born in 1796, I think in the central part of Ireland, near Dublin. When 14 years old, he was celebrating St. Patrick’s Day with other boys in the village when the press gang, a company of British soldiers, surrounded them and forced them into the Army. As he was too young & too small to be put in the ranks as a soldier, he was put into the band and was also made an officer’s valet. He never saw his father nor his mother nor his home again.

Like all those of true Irish blood at that time he had an inate hatred for the British; moreover he had never enlisted and since he hated army life he determined to escape. In 1813, after three years in the British Army, he succeeded in his 3rd attempt and reached an American vessel engaged in the War of 1812. He entered the American Army against the British and again served in the band.

He was with Commodore Perry at the Battle Lake Erie and after the American victory on Sept. 10, 1813 at Put-In-Bay when the British officers marched by to surrender their swords, his old Colonel saw him and exclaimed, “Ah, John! I never thought you’d leave me that way.”