Family-histories and genealogies : containing a series of ...

©fltren=SoJinfiion
present at the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown. He was with the Continental
army at Newburgh in 1783, and on the very day when Washington
announced the signing of the treaty of peace to the army. He was killed
by a tree falling upon him while riding by the edge of
I
a wood.
),
32
246 viii. MATTHIAS,B born in 1754.
" ' He was a brigadier in the army of the United States, took an early
and a decided part in the contest with Great Britain. He joined the army
at Cambridge in 1775, and such was his zeal and resolution that he accom-
panied Arnold in penetrating through the wilderness to Canada in 1775.
He was engaged in the attack upon Quebec, and was carried wounded
from the place of engagement." ^ On his return from this expedition he
was appointed, in 1776, Lieut-Colonel in the First Jersey Battalion. In
August 1776 he wrote to Aaron Burr from Ticonderoga :
'
I shall have the
honor to command the New Jersey redoubt which I am now building with
the regiment alone. It is situated on the right of the whole, by the water's
edge. It is to mount two i8-pounders, two 12-, and four 9-pounders. In
it I expect to do honor to New Jersey.' In 1778, on Lee's retreat at Mon-
mouth, ' Col. Ogden among others, commanding a regiment in Maxwell's
Brigade, who was slowly following his retreating corps, with indignation
so finely intimated in the Latin poet's metaphor :
" iraque leonum vincla recusantum,"
with the fierce wrath of the lion disdaining his chains, when interrogated
by Col. Harrison as to the cause of the retreat, answered with great
' apparent exasperation : By G—d. Sir, they are flying from a shadow.' "
When Washington was at Morristown in 1782, while Prince Wilham
Henry (afterwards King WiUiam IV.) was serving as midshipman in the
fleet of Admiral Digby at New York, Col. Ogden planned a surprise, to
capture the prince and admiral at their city-quarters. The plan was approved
by Washington, who, however, charged Col. Ogden to treat his prisoners
" By Rev. Nicholas Murray.
*' Allen's Biogr. Diet., ut supra, p. 6i8.
255