Joseph Elliot - PLAQUE
Wyalusing Township, Bradford County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Second in command at the Battle of Lime Hill April 14, 1782. He killed the Indian who shot Mrs. Franklin and rescued three of her four stolen children. He was in the engagement at Trenton December 25, 1776 and was presented with a sword by General George Washington for bravery. He broke from the Indians at the Bloody Rock, Wyoming Massace, and swam the Susquehanna River with a bullet in his shoulder and escaped to Wilkes-Barre.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
This marker honors Joseph Elliot, a Revolutionary War soldier of the embattled Wyoming Valley frontier. He fought at Trenton on the night of December 25, 1776, and by tradition was given a sword by George Washington for his bravery. He survived the Wyoming Massacre of 1778 — breaking free at the Bloody Rock and swimming the Susquehanna with a bullet in his shoulder — and later, at the 1782 Battle of Lime Hill, helped rescue captured children.
Why it matters
Elliot's story captures the brutal, personal nature of frontier warfare during the Revolution, where soldiers fought as much for their families' survival as for a new nation.
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Related people
- · Joseph Elliot
- · George Washington
Related events
- · Battle of Trenton
- · Wyoming Massacre
- · Battle of Lime Hill
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Lime Hill Battlefield - PLAQUE
Wyalusing Township, PA · est. 1928
On April 14, 1782, near this spot, Sergeant Thomas Baldwin's party tried to overtake a Native war band that had captured Mrs. Rosewell Franklin and her four children. After some four hours of fighting from hastily thrown-up breastworks, the rescuers freed three of the children, but Mrs. Franklin was killed. The skirmish was one of the last violent episodes of the Revolutionary frontier in the Wyoming country.
Lime Hill
Wyalusing Township, PA · est. 1947
On April 14, 1782, a small party led by Sergeant Thomas Baldwin came to this ground trying to free a woman and her children held captive by Native raiders — a common and wrenching feature of frontier war. The rescue turned into a four-hour fight. Three of the children were saved, but the mother was killed before they could reach her. The episode captures the intimate violence of the Revolution's final years along the Susquehanna.
Sullivan's March
Standing Stone Township, PA · est. 1947
As General John Sullivan's Continental army marched north against the Six Nations in August 1779, it made its sixth camp on the river lowlands near here on the nights of August 8-9. The stopping places along the Susquehanna traced the slow, deliberate advance of a major Revolutionary War expedition ordered by Washington. From Wyoming to Fort Sullivan, each riverside campsite marked another day's push into Iroquois country.
Sullivan Expedition Against the Iroquois Indians, 1779 - Wyalusing (PLAQUE)
Wyalusing Township, PA · est. 1929
Wyalusing had been the site of Friedenshütten, a Moravian mission town where Christian Delaware Indians lived before being pushed westward in the early 1770s. A few years later, in August 1779, General Sullivan's army made its fifth encampment here on the march from Wyoming toward Teaoga. The marker stands near the monument to that vanished Moravian Indian community.