![the ballad of jane the ballad of jane](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/mqM_YgtA7xk/hqdefault.jpg)
Each telling of the story did one better than the previous one, embellishing circumstances surrounding her death and adding new particulars that shocked the reader or listener. Details emerged that heightened the horror of her last moments. References to Jane’s murder began to appear in newspapers and in taverns. By August and into September, all that changed. Besides, frontier settlers have been paying the price for forging into the wilderness for decades brutal attacks and massacres were old news. Jane was just another non-combatant casualty of the war. There were many refugees caught between British General John Burgoyne’s advancing troops towards Albany, New York and the Continental Army’s haphazard attempts to stop them. The first casual reports of her unfortunate killing were glossed over. The few settlers who found Jane McCrea’s body had no clue that they were burying a martyr, one whose death would tilt the colonial rebellion towards the struggling Americans and be a defining factor leading up to the Battle of Saratoga. Settlers along the frontier lived in perpetual terror of being attacked by opposing British and American Native American allies. As this version was artfully woven, told and retold both verbally and in print, more ‘details’ emerged, becoming all that was needed to doom an entire British army. Jane’s death would prove to be a ‘spin doctor’s’ dream come true. Soon after, her scalp was presented to a British officer who readily paid for the gruesome trophy. As she pleaded for her life, she was brutally raped and scalped before her naked, lifeless body was left lying in the woods. She was attacked and torn from civilization by two half naked ‘savages’. Within weeks of Jane’s demise, an embellished take on the story had already spread throughout the colonies.Īn young and attractive innocent woman with long braids of golden blonde hair, braved the wilds of the wilderness alone to rejoin her betrothed, some say while in her wedding dress. How could one life impact an entire nation when hundreds of others who succumbed to the same fate did not? Perhaps the answer is instinctive, emotions that one could argue stem back to the time when humanity lived in caves. Not to lessen the terror all victims experienced before a painful death, but the question arises… Why was McCrea’s murder so different than the hundreds of settlers who, throughout the American Revolution, died at the hands of both whites and Native Americans. It solidified the Continental Army’s determination to stand firm while stirring thousands of revengeful militiamen to march north and drive out the British army along with their hoard of ‘savages.’ Yet the first was instantly forgotten while Jane’s death horrified a nation. Shortly thereafter, Jane McCrea was shot and scalped. That same day, a young women was taken by a pair of Native Americans who so too were allied with the British. So too were three African American slaves on loan to the family Tom, Sarah, and another whose name is lost to history. Husband John, his wife Eva Kilmer, their three small children daughters Eva and Elizabeth and baby John, and Eva’s younger sister Catherine Kilmer, were killed. On July 27, 1777, in Argyle, New York, north of Saratoga, John Allen’s family was attacked and brutally murdered by a party of Native Americans aligned to British General ‘Johnny’ Burgoyne.
![the ballad of jane the ballad of jane](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/RwCJvx2OgXg/maxresdefault.jpg)
“In the history of the Revolutionary War, perhaps no single incident is recorded which, at the time of its occurrence, created more intense sympathy, or aroused a spirit of more bitter indignation, than the massacre of Jane McCrea.” David Wilson, 1853 The Death of Jane McCrea, 1804 by John Vanderlyn.