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The Virginia Gazette Domestic News August 29, 1777
Richmond, Richmond, Virginia
Cautionary note: Graphic violence: murder and scalping of a young woman
What is this article about?
A letter from Snook-kill describes the killing and scalping of Miss Jenny M'Crea by Indians serving with Burgoyne's army near Fort Edward; the corpse, with that of Lt. Vanracter, was brought in for burial.
Quality green show the numbers
Measured from the scan
— how cleanly the OCR engine read the characters
- Mean ink quality
- 99.0% The length-weighted average confidence across the OCR lines — the mean of exactly the per-line scores whose tails the two figures below report. Typical is 99%.
- Illegible ink
- 0.0% Text sitting in OCR-detected lines that scored below 80% confidence — very shaky reads. Weighted by line length, so one long bad line counts for more than a short one.
- Uncertain ink
- 0.0% Text in lines that scored 80–90% — somewhat shaky reads.
- Matches source
- 96.85% How closely the served text matches the raw OCR of the same boxes, letter by letter, after collapsing spacing and case. This measures agreement, not correctness: the OCR is often wrong and the extractor corrects it, so 100% does not mean perfect, and a low figure usually means poor scan text was rewritten rather than that text was lost (length vs source shows loss).
- Length vs source
- 100.0% Below 100% means text was dropped from the OCR; above means text was added to make it read.
Assembled by the extraction model
— whether the stitched-together text holds up; catches layout and segmentation errors, which the scores above cannot see
- Transcription confidence
- 97.0% (typical 96%) How cleanly the extractor could assemble what it was given. Low here with clean ink scores points at layout analysis — the characters were read correctly but grouped or ordered wrongly.
- Comprehension
- 92.0% Whether the piece reads coherently start to finish. Can stay high while transcription confidence drops, when only part of the component is affected.
Clipping
Full Text
Extract of a letter from a Gentleman at Snook-kill, dated July 27, 1777.
"The frequent injuries and horrible actions committed by General Burgoyne's scouting parties on single unarmed men, and defenceless women, are sufficient, in my opinion, to give every man a thorough detestation of their whole conduct; and were not the Tories hearts made of more than iron hardness, it would inspire them with a desire of ridding this world of such a set of villains as their army is in general composed of. Several of our officers and soldiers have been inhumanly shot as they passed from one fort to another unarmed, and scalped while yet alive. It would take too much time to enumerate every action of this kind. One instance which happened yesterday, during the skirmish, may serve for the whole; a young lady of the name of Miss Jenny M'Crea, of a good family, and some share of beauty, was by some accident at Fort Edward, when the enemy attacked the picket guard; she and an old woman, whom she was with, were taken by the savages, who generally serve as an advanced guard or flanking parties to the regulars, the latter of whom were drawn upon a hill just above the fort, and then with a barbarity unheard of before, they butchered the poor innocent girl, and scalped her in the sight of those very men who are continually preaching up their tender mercies, and the forbearance of more than Christian King. Is not this sufficient to congeal the heart of humanity with horror, and even oblige a Tory of liberal sentiments to curse the cause which approved or winked at such worse than hell like cruelties.
"Every circumstance of what I have related above, you may depend on. The unfortunate maid's corpse was brought here last night, together with a young Lieutenant, Mr. Vanracter of Brunswick, who is also scalped, and will be interred to-day. What renders this affair more remarkable is, that Miss M'Crea has a brother an officer in the British service, now at New York, and she herself leaned to that side of the question; but thus they treat their friends as well as enemies! The young Lady has also a brother a senior surgeon in our hospital, whom I am intimately acquainted with, a worthy sensible young fellow, and who, I am sure, will not forget the injury, but revenge it tenfold."
"The frequent injuries and horrible actions committed by General Burgoyne's scouting parties on single unarmed men, and defenceless women, are sufficient, in my opinion, to give every man a thorough detestation of their whole conduct; and were not the Tories hearts made of more than iron hardness, it would inspire them with a desire of ridding this world of such a set of villains as their army is in general composed of. Several of our officers and soldiers have been inhumanly shot as they passed from one fort to another unarmed, and scalped while yet alive. It would take too much time to enumerate every action of this kind. One instance which happened yesterday, during the skirmish, may serve for the whole; a young lady of the name of Miss Jenny M'Crea, of a good family, and some share of beauty, was by some accident at Fort Edward, when the enemy attacked the picket guard; she and an old woman, whom she was with, were taken by the savages, who generally serve as an advanced guard or flanking parties to the regulars, the latter of whom were drawn upon a hill just above the fort, and then with a barbarity unheard of before, they butchered the poor innocent girl, and scalped her in the sight of those very men who are continually preaching up their tender mercies, and the forbearance of more than Christian King. Is not this sufficient to congeal the heart of humanity with horror, and even oblige a Tory of liberal sentiments to curse the cause which approved or winked at such worse than hell like cruelties.
"Every circumstance of what I have related above, you may depend on. The unfortunate maid's corpse was brought here last night, together with a young Lieutenant, Mr. Vanracter of Brunswick, who is also scalped, and will be interred to-day. What renders this affair more remarkable is, that Miss M'Crea has a brother an officer in the British service, now at New York, and she herself leaned to that side of the question; but thus they treat their friends as well as enemies! The young Lady has also a brother a senior surgeon in our hospital, whom I am intimately acquainted with, a worthy sensible young fellow, and who, I am sure, will not forget the injury, but revenge it tenfold."
What sub-type of article is it?
Crime
Military
Death Or Funeral
What keywords are associated?
Jenny M'crea
Scalping
Burgoyne
Fort Edward
Indians
War Atrocities
What entities or persons were involved?
Miss Jenny M'crea
Lt. Vanracter
General Burgoyne
Where did it happen?
Fort Edward, New York
Domestic News Details
Primary Location
Fort Edward, New York
Event Date
July 27, 1777
Key Persons
Miss Jenny M'crea
Lt. Vanracter
General Burgoyne
Outcome
miss jenny m'crea killed and scalped; lt. vanracter also scalped; both corpses brought to snook-kill for burial.