Thompson's Rifle Battalion: Timothy Murphy's Company

In June of seventeen seventy-five, Captain John Lowdon recruited men from this part of Pennsylvania into what became one of the most famous military units of the Revolution. Lowdon's Company was part of Thompson's Rifle Battalion, the first battalion authorized by the Continental Congress, organized just weeks after the battles at Lexington and Concord. Among those who enlisted here was Timothy Murphy, a frontiersman from the Susquehanna Valley who would go on to become one of the celebrated sharpshooters of the war.

Murphy is traditionally credited with firing the shot at the Battle of Saratoga in seventeen seventy-seven that mortally wounded British General Simon Fraser, though some historians doubt the story, a moment some historians argue turned the tide of that crucial engagement. He served throughout the war and became a legend in the Pennsylvania backcountry, a local hero from a unit that set the template for the American rifleman.