Cumberland Riflemen
Camp Hill, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Capt. William Hendricks led from nearby Cumberland County points a company of riflemen to Quebec, Canada. There they fought Dec. 31, 1775, at the side of Gen. Richard Montgomery. Hendricks was killed in action.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
In the autumn of 1775, as the newly rebellious colonies gambled on carrying the war north, Capt. William Hendricks raised a company of frontier riflemen from the Cumberland County countryside and marched them toward Canada. They joined the desperate assault on Quebec on the last day of the year, fighting under Gen. Richard Montgomery in a driving snowstorm. The attack failed, Montgomery was killed, and Hendricks fell with him.
Why it matters
The doomed march on Quebec was one of the Revolution's first great offensives, and companies of Pennsylvania riflemen like Hendricks's showed that ordinary backcountry marksmen were willing to die far from home for the new cause.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In 1775, the American Revolution was brand new and far from certain. The fighting around Boston had turned colonial protest into open war, but the rebels had no illusions about the odds. They faced the most powerful empire on earth, and they knew that simply defending their own doorsteps would not be enough.
So the Continental cause gambled on going north. The plan was daring to the point of recklessness: strike into Canada, seize its strongholds before Britain could reinforce them, and perhaps win a fourteenth colony to the rebellion. It meant marching men hundreds of miles through wilderness as winter closed in.
Pennsylvania's frontier counties answered the call. In the countryside of Cumberland County — rugged, self-reliant, full of men who lived by the rifle — companies formed and prepared to march far from home for a cause that was, as yet, only a hope.
People & events
From points around Cumberland County, Captain William Hendricks raised a company of riflemen and led them north toward Quebec. These were not parade-ground soldiers but backcountry marksmen, men whose long rifles and woodcraft made them prized in the Continental ranks.
They reached the walls of Quebec and, on the last day of December 1775, joined the assault on the fortified city. They fought alongside General Richard Montgomery, one of the expedition's commanders, in conditions that could hardly have been worse — a winter storm, a walled city, and a defending garrison that held its ground.
The attack failed. Montgomery was killed, and Captain Hendricks fell in the fighting as well. The company that had set out from the Pennsylvania frontier with such determination was broken against the city's defenses, its leader among the dead.
Its place in the American story
The assault on Quebec was one of the Revolution's first great offensives, and its failure was a hard, early lesson: winning independence would be long, brutal, and costly. Yet the courage it revealed became part of the young nation's sense of itself.
The expedition also showed the world something new about how Americans would fight. Ordinary backcountry men — farmers and frontiersmen with their own rifles — proved willing to march into the wilderness and die far from home for an idea. That citizen-soldier tradition, drawn from communities like Cumberland County's, would echo through American history.
That a company from a single Pennsylvania county traveled so far and paid so dearly, this early in the war, testifies to how deeply the revolutionary cause had already taken root — not just in the halls of Congress, but on the farms and frontiers where the fighting men came from.
If you visit
This marker is a memorial, so come to it in that spirit. There is no battlefield here and no fortress — only a quiet reminder, set in Cumberland County, of men who left this countryside and did not come back.
Stand a moment and consider the distance. The riflemen who mustered near here faced a march of hundreds of miles into a Canadian winter, toward a walled city most of them had surely never seen. The gap between this peaceful ground and the frozen streets of Quebec is the whole measure of their sacrifice.
It's a fitting pause on any road trip through south-central Pennsylvania's Revolutionary-era sites. Take the time to read the names and let them register as real people from these very hills. The most meaningful thing you can do at a memorial like this is simply to remember — which is exactly what it was built to ask of you.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · William Hendricks
- · Richard Montgomery
Related events
- · Battle of Quebec (1775)
- · Invasion of Canada
Themes & tags
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