One of the most important Revolutionary War documents from the Waterbury area is a journal kept by Josiah Atkins during his time in the Continental Army. His journal is now part of the New Haven Museum collection. A scan and transcription of the journal is available on their website. A transcription of the journal was published by the Mattatuck Museum in 1954.
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The journal provides important insight into the Revolutionary War era, both in terms of his military experience and in terms of his thoughts on slavery and on the fact that many of the founding fathers who claimed to care about the rights of all mankind and claimed to support the principal of liberty kept people enslaved for their own profit.
Josiah Atkins was born in 1749 and moved to Waterbury with his family ten years later. They lived in Waterbury’s Farmingbury Society, which later became part of Wolcott. As an adult, Atkins worked as a farmer, school teacher, and blacksmith. He was married twice: his first wife died in 1778, and he remarried the following year.
Atkins’s house is still standing at 49 Center Street in Wolcott. It was sold in 2023 to a flipper who made significant changes to the house, covering the wood floors with generic fake wood slats and doing other similar quick modifications. The flipper then listed the house for sale four months later for nearly three times the purchase price. It eventually sold for just over twice the purchase price.
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| Josiah Atkins's house in Wolcott, 2024 (from Realtor.com) |
In January, 1781, Atkins enlisted as a private for three years of service. He started the journal in April that year. Mindful of the dangers of military service, Atkins intended the journal to be a keepsake for his wife if he died. The journal opens with “A Patriot’s Prayer,” a plea to the omnipotent “Parent of all” to teach him to set aside “private aims” and to avoid the temptations of “Grandeur... gold... [and] vain applause.” With the prayer, Atkins pledged himself to “Freedom’s sacred cause” and hoped to maintain a resolve to be serene and cheerful while defying “the tyrant’s power.”
The next pages in the journal serve as his will, a letter to whoever might find the journal after his death. Atkins was mindful that “as we are drawing near ye enemy, I can expect nothing but fighting; as in every action some may fall & as my life is as uncertain as any other; so should it be my fate to drop & yours to survive...” He offered his personal possessions found on his body to whoever should find them, on condition that the journal be sent to Waterbury to be given to “my dear wife, whom I have left at home to mo[u]rn myself.”
On April 5, he marched with his fellow enlistees to join up with Captain Benton’s Company in New York, part Connecticut’s 5th Regiment, led by Lt. Col. Sherman. His journal details life in the military: training, the quality of the food rations (which was not good), and notations of where they camped each night.
On May 25, 1781, Atkins and Benton’s Company arrived at Philadelphia, which he described as the “most magnificent city I ever saw.” Despite the city’s beauty, Atkins was unsettled by his time in Philadelphia. On May 26, he witnessed the execution of three men convicted of robbery. Atkins wrote a prayer to God in an effort to reconcile himself with the inevitability of death.
Atkins reached Baltimore on June 3, 1781, calling it “a large & elegant town.” He was pleased to see people observing the sabbath, but regretted that he was unable to do so himself. Seeing the people of Baltimore going about their regular lives sparked homesickness in Atkins. He wrote about missing his friends and the peacefulness of life at home. Atkins also added a note that the inhabitants of Baltimore were “chiefly unfriendly.”
On June 3, Atkins wrote about marching past General George Washington’s plantation, Mount Vernon, “which is of large extent.” Atkins was unsettled by the contrast between George Washington’s vast wealth and supposed support for the rights of mankind, and the suffering of the people enslaved by “his Excellency.” Atkins was keenly aware of Washington’s hypocrisy, claiming to be fighting for liberty while continuing to keep people enslaved.
Atkins’s thoughts on slavery were laid out in his journal
Some men in these parts, they tell me, own 30,000 acres of land for their patrimony & many have two or 300 Negroes to work on it as slaves. Alas! That persons who pretend to stand for ye rights of mankind for ye liberties of society, can delight in oppression & [that] even of ye worst kind! These poor creatures are enslav’d: not only so, but likewise depriv’d of [that] which nature affords even to ye beasts. Many are almost without provision having very little for support of nature; & many are as naked as they came into ye world. What pray is this, but ye striking inconsistent character pointed out by ye apostle, While they promise them liberty, they themselves are ye servants of corruption?
While Atkins reflected on the unjustness of slavery, his thoughts turned to his own sorrows. He appears to have struggled with severe homesickness and depression, made worse by seeing the suffering of others.
But when I speak of oppression, it readily suggests to my mind my own troubles & afflictions. Am not I opprest as being oblig’d to leave my own state of peace & happiness friends & relations, wife & child, shop & tools, & customers, against my mind & expectation, & come these hundreds of miles distance in ye capacity of a soldier, carrying ye cruel & unwelcome instruments of war.
Alas! my heart is full! but I forbid my pen. Oh! [that] I were as great as my grief, or less than my name! Oh! might I forget what I have been, or not remember what I must now become! But my weeping eyes cannot ease my pain!
His final notes on this day recorded the grandeur in which George Washington lived:
We pass his Excellency’s house [Mount Vernon] & ‘tis said we march 10 miles on his land. We also went into a beautiful Church & saw his pew.
Atkins’s journal also documented alleged British use of germ warfare. On June 24, Atkins wrote that he had recently marched past the bodies of 18 or 20 people who appeared to have died from smallpox and were left to rot along the side of the road. All of the dead were African American. Atkins believed they had been deliberately infected with smallpox by Lord Cornwallis and then sent out into the countryside to infect the patriots.
In 1775, Virginia’s Royal Governor, John Murray, Earl of Dunmore, issued a proclamation granting freedom to any enslaved man who joined the British army. This was followed in 1779 by the Philipsburg Proclamation, issued by Sir Henry Clinton, commander of His Majesty’s Forces, promising freedom to any enslaved Black person who joined the British side. Thousands of enslaved people fled to British-held forts and cities, gaining their freedom as promised.
During the summer of 1781, Yorktown was held by the British, commanded by Lord Cornwallis. Hundreds of Black people escaped from slavery in Virginia that summer, seeking refuge and freedom at Yorktown. It is believed that some of the people enslaved by George and Martha Washington were among them. Cornwallis, under pressure from wealthy Virginia planters who wanted their slaves back, pledged that white Loyalists could search the camp for their escaped slaves and take them back so long as “they are willing to go” with them, knowing full well that no one would willingly return to slavery after securing their freedom.
Jean-Baptiste-Antoine DeVerger, American soldiers at the siege of Yorktown, 1781 (from Wikimedia Commons)
Josiah Atkins believed that Cornwallis was deliberately infecting the Black refugees with smallpox, then sending them out into the countryside to infect the American troops. Vaccinations did not yet exist, so the only way to protect someone against smallpox was through inoculation, giving them a small exposure which would lead to a hopefully mild case of smallpox. While inoculation saved countless lives, people who were inoculated were briefly contagious.
Atkins’s journal casts Cornwallis as a despicable person, harming those who sought refuge with him:
Here I must take notice of some vilany. Within these days past, I have marched by 18 or 20 Negroes [that] lay dead by ye way-side, putrifying with ye smallpox. How such a thing came about appears to be this: The Negroes here being much disaffected (arising from their harsh treatment) flock’ d in great numbers to Cornwallis, as soon he came into these parts. This artful general takes a number of them (several hundreds) inoculates them & just as they are growing sick, he sends them out into ye country, where our troops had to pass and repass. These poor creatures having no care taken of them, many crawl’ d into ye bushes about & died where they lie infecting ye air around with intolerable stenches & great danger. This is a piece of Cornwallissean cruelty. He is not backward to own [that] he has inoculated 4 or 500 in order to spread ye small-pox thro’ ye country & sent them out for [that] purpose: Which is another piece of his conduct [that] wants a name.
Atkins wrote further about Cornwallis and smallpox in August. During a march through Richmond, Virginia, Atkins observed an outbreak of smallpox in that city and wrote, “Cornwallis has miss’d his aim in a great measure. Tho’ he has spread ye smallpox, yet it seems God hath taken ye affair in his own hands.”
Whether or not Atkins was correct in his assessment of Cornwallis’s actions at this time is not clear. Some theorize that Cornwallis sent newly inoculated Black people, contagious with smallpox, towards American troops in October during the siege at Yorktown. But smallpox was spreading throughout his encampment, and it’s possible that the Americans were misinterpreting what they were seeing, eager to find fault with Cornwallis. Once a rumor starts, it can be hard to stop.
After Cornwallis surrendered and George Washington took over Yorktown in October 1781, Washington issued an order directing the military to round up all of the Black people who had fled from slavery and return them to their enslavers. The refuge provided by the British was gone.
Josiah Atkins wrote about a battle he witnessed in July, but kept those descriptions somewhat vague, perhaps because he intended to give the journal to his wife. About a week later, he mentioned that he was among the invalids, unfit for duty. He kept himself busy, helping care for other soldiers by pulling teeth and blood letting (doctors at this time still thought that losing some blood was good for your health).
On August 8, the regiment divided, with the able-bodied marching towards York, Virginia. Atkins was among the sick, who went to Hanover, Virginia, where they were tended to by medical personnel. On August 24, Atkins began working for a doctor, helping with dispensing medicine and bleeding the patients. He spent the next several weeks caring for sick and injured soldiers.
By September 17, Atkins had fallen ill. His first treatment was to “take a puke,” forcing himself to vomit, but the next day his headache had worsened. By September 28, the pain had spread to his bones, but within a few days he had improved considerably and began making plans to return home, seeking permission to go on leave and head north. As he journeyed through Virginia, his sickness worsened, with fever and chills putting him in a military hospital on October 12. He died there on October 26, 1781. His journal was sent to his widow Sarah. Near the end of the journal he wrote two long letters to his wife, expressing his love for her and his home, and his fear that he would never see them again.
Sources/Further Reading
The Journal of Josiah Atkins, New Haven Museum
Sarah Culver’s Petition for a Widow’s Pension, U.S. Revolutionary War Pensions (fold3.com)
Gregory J.W. Urwin, “The Yorktown Tragedy: Washington’s Slave Roundup,” Journal of the American Revolution, October 19, 2021
Erica Armstrong Dunbar, Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge (Atria Books, 2017)
Shirley L. Green, Revolutionary Blacks: Discovering the Frank Brothers, Freeborn Men of Color, Soldiers of Independence (Yardley, PA: Westholme Publishing, 2023).
Benjamin Lossing, ed., The American Historical Record, Volume 1 (Philadelphia: Chase & Town, Publishers, 1872).
Andrew M. Wehrman, The Contagion of Liberty: The Politics of Smallpox in the American Revolution (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2022)
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