Crooked Billet: Lacey's Militia Surprised
Near Trenton, Pennsylvania
During the winter of seventeen seventy-seven to seventeen seventy-eight, the British occupied Philadelphia while Washington's Continental Army wintered at Valley Forge roughly twenty miles away. General John Lacey commanded a brigade of Pennsylvania militia assigned to one of the war's least glamorous jobs: stopping local farmers from selling food and firewood to the British in the city. Lacey's men set up camp here near the Crooked Billet tavern on May first, seventeen seventy-eight.
Before dawn a British force found them, caught them unprepared, and hit the camp from multiple directions. The militia scattered with heavy losses; some accounts say prisoners were bayoneted and wounded men were set on fire with straw. The Crooked Billet skirmish was a tactical embarrassment but also a measure of how desperate the British were to keep their Philadelphia garrison supplied.
By late June they abandoned the city and marched back to New York.
