October is the month we celebrate Halloween and the anniversary of General John Burgoyne’s surrender at the Battles of Saratoga. It is also the month which precedes a much anticipated national election, which many look forward to, yet others fear the consequences.
One of the candidates seeking office has used a term, which for better or worse, has entered the American lexicon, “childless cat women.” Intended as a rather nasty insult, it has been seized upon by some as a mantra of opposition.
In Upstate New York, where Halloween includes spooky local lore, and where Burgoyne’s surrender took place, it might be interesting to consider a “childless cat woman” of the past who had also been considered a witch.
Her name was Angeline Tubbs, and she was born in Great Britain. The King’s commander, John Burgoyne, was dispatched to North America to put down the revolution in the colonies. General Burgoyne was also a practicing politician in the House of Commons, who was known as “Gentleman Johnny” in the court of George III. Yet he allowed his officers to exercise some ungentlemanly practices, such as allowing young, unmarried women to join their bivouac.
Angeline Tubbs, said to have been a brown-eyed blonde teenage girl, sailed with General Burgoyne’s Redcoats to British Quebec. During the American Revolution the Province of New York, due to its unique geography, became a strategic focus to those rebelling English rule and to those interested in crushing the revolt.
With the monumental insurgent success of installing artillery at Dorchester Heights, the British fleet needed to depart Boston, and sailed for the city of New York. The King’s forces landed on Long Island, and invaded through nascent Brooklyn, routing Washington’s ill-prepared army from Manhattan, the greatest port in the New World.
Being firmly in control of the city, the British strategy turned to the tried-and-true technique of armies from the beginning of time, divide and conquer the foe. For the English, it was desirable to launch this action as soon as possible, to prevent another European nation, namely France, from joining the American cause.
The plan of the Royal commander, General John Burgoyne, was to invade at two locations from the King’s colonies in Canada during the summer of 1777.
The natural waterways that would in the future allow the Empire State to construct its marvelous canal network would be the conduit for the invasion force. Angeline Tubbs was part of a large detachment led by Burgoyne from the St. Lawrence River, through the valley of Lake Champlain and the northern Hudson River, with the objective being Albany.
A second army, commanded by Colonel Barry St. Leger, would invade from Lake Ontario, at the Port of Oswego. His troops would move along the Oswego and Oneida Rivers, Oneida Lake and the eastern flowing Mohawk River, rendezvousing with Burgoyne near Albany.
From Albany, the combined forces would move south along the Hudson, to occupied New York. The planned invasion would divide New England from the rest of the colonies.
The short interruption in the waterway course between Oneida Lake and the Mohawk River, long known to native people as “the great carry,” became a defensive bastion for the Americans at Fort Stanwix. St. Leger’s invasion began in July of 1777, and Upstate New Yorkers were drawn into the conflict.
On August 3, St. Leger’s assault of the Fort began, as British forces would need to secure the critical portage. General Nicholas Herkimer rallied his Tryon County Militia, and they marched west toward Rome from their Mohawk Valley homes to aid Fort Stanwix.
Unfortunately the dreaded “slip-of-the-lip” occurred, with word of Herkimer’s march reaching St. Leger, who planned a trap. Royal troops and Mohawk warriors were stationed along Herkimer’s likely route. The two forces met near Oriskany on August 6, in a battle that has been described as the bloodiest of the Revolutionary War.
The American reinforcements were repulsed by the British, who returned to their attack on Fort Stanwix, following the rout.
The Battle of Oriskany imposed a crippling toll on the British, and their capture of Fort Stanwix was no longer viable. On August 22, realizing that his company could not succeed in their assault and did not have the ability to resupply for likely battles further eastward, St. Leger ceased his attack and, fearing famine fostered from freezing temperatures, retreated along his path of entry.
The American patriots in the Mohawk Valley had prevented His Majesty’s forces from accessing the only corridor to the east, denying Burgoyne his flanking reinforcement and dooming the Royal war plan. General Burgoyne’s invasion was thwarted in the Upper Hudson, and he capitulated following the Battle of Saratoga on October 17.
The battles in New York State during that pivotal year of 1777 proved to be a turning point in the revolution, and convinced France to join the colonists’ struggle for liberty.
Burgoyne’s Redcoats grounded their weapons in Schuylerville, on the banks of the Hudson River, and marched away from the fight. Although her abandonment by the officer of the King’s force was probably involuntary, perhaps due to his death in fierce combat, it was no less cruel.
According to the lore, Angeline Tubbs was separated from the army which had been her support, leaving her in the wilds of what would become Saratoga County.
If true, most likely Angeline had nothing more with her than the clothes on her back, and it is doubtful she would have received much support from the patriotic Americans, who resented English loyalists across the Colonies. This may have been especially true in Angeline’s case as the conquerors would view her, a camp follower, as an immoral and dissolute woman.
With the winter harkening wind chilling her to the core, Angeline would have needed all her survival skills, and likely learned many more. Her claimed longevity proved she was either a capable woodsman or a quick learner. She would have relied on the locally abundant small fur bearing creatures for both subsistence and protection from the elements.
It is not known when Angeline Tubbs is supposed to have relocated from the banks of the Hudson to the area north of High Rock Spring in Saratoga Springs, once known as Glen Mitchell, presently the location of Skidmore College.
The Knickerbocker Press on March 7, 1915 published a illustration of Angeline in the plaid hooded shawl she was frequently seen in, and termed her an “ancient mystery of Saratoga.” This illustration (above) is a fake, derived from an 1840 play Moll Pitcher, The Fortune Teller of Lynn.
They further wrote, “This strange old woman had a score of cats, her only companions, and she lived alone in a hovel at the foot of the mountains north of the village. She managed to eke out an existence by begging and telling fortunes. She made frequent trips to the village and those who ran across her in the wilds near her home found that she attempted to draw a portion of her precarious living by trapping.
“She was generally shunned by the persons living in that vicinity as her general appearance was as peculiar as her habits of life were erratic and unusual… Despite her advanced age she was erect and elastic in her movements. Her features were sharp, sallow and wrinkled; her nose high and hooked like the beak of an eagle, while her sunken coal-black eyes flashed with piercing glances.”
The harsh elements in which she survived were said to have taken a toll on her appearance, and she shunned association with most other inhabitants, who were frightened by her crone-like appearance and solitary ways, lending to rumors of sorcery and witchcraft.
This unkind treatment was reinforced by Angeline’s alleged habit of being outdoors during storms, moving from glen to glen and down the mountainside, sometimes with arms raised aloft, while sonorously incanting in a gibbering voice. No one was ever sure if her beldam behavior was praising or cursing the elements.
Former City Historian Evelyn Barrett Britten, in her legendary Chronicles of Saratoga, wrote extensively of Angeline Tubbs, placing her on the Palmerton Range, sometimes allegedly referred to by nearby residents as Angeline Hill.
Mrs. Britten detailed other early settlers such as John and Ziba Taylor, who were the first merchants in Saratoga Springs, opening a small store in the Dirck Schouten House, just north of High Rock Spring.
The Taylor Brothers were married to sisters, Polly and Sally Searing, and along with Mrs. Washington Putnam were said to be the most frequent acquaintances of Angeline Tubbs.
She did in fact exist. “Her information given for the 1850 and 1855 censuses confirm the basic information about her,” writes occult historian Travis McHenry, “she was old, she was poor, and she was an outcast. As for the rest, most of it seems to have been fabricated by William Stone [Jr.].” Stone was the Secretary of the Saratoga Monument Association.
Nonetheless, inspired by Mrs. Britten’s chronicles in 1959, the Saratoga High School drama club presented their Christmas play titled It Is Better, an imagined production about the founding fathers of the community and how they generously included the resident witch Angeline Tubbs in their 1817 holiday celebration.
The ideal of inclusivity is a powerful ethos. The anniversary of the patriotic success in the Battle of Saratoga, and the enjoyment of Halloween are important parts of the month of October.
The myths and legends of hauntings by Native American spirits in the forests, the night-marching Hessian Troopers, witches in the woods, goblins in every dark corner and ghosts of those who went before us are all part of the spooky imagined fun of the annual holiday.
Editors Note: The folklore surrounding Angeline Tubbs recalls similar stories from the same period, such as that of Agnes of Glasgow.
Illustrations, from above: The only known period depiction of a American Revolutionary War woman camp follower with the Continental Army (Library of Congress); an alleged photo of the Angeline Tubbs provided by the Saratoga Springs Public Library to The Glens Falls Post-Star in 1996; and the image from which the alleged photo of Angeline Tubbs is based in Moll Pitcher’s Dream and Fortune Telling Book, 1840.
John Warren contributed to this essay.
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