Object Status:
Unlocated
Accession Date:
July 15, 1797
Primary Source Reference:
Claypoole's American Daily Advertiser, 15 July 1797
Additional Source Text:
Fleming, George, Capt.
Notes:
One of these kegs many have been celebrated at an event shortly before this mention in the newspapers. The Peale Museum's Accessions Book records the receipt, on 15 June 1805, of "One of the Kegs, celebrated in the time of the Revolution, May 10, 1797" (p. 6). The donor was "George Fleming, Major of Artillery." The first U.S. Navy vessel, the frigate USS United States, was launched on 10 May 1797 in Philadelphia in the presence of a huge crowd and the "Heads of Department of the General Government." Following the launch "the ship-carpenters and artists sat down in the ship-yard to a collation -- and the remaining part of the day was spent in the utmost festivity." Claypoole's Daily American Advertiser, 11 May 1797; The Philadelphia Gazette, and Universal Daily Advertiser, 11 May 1797
George Fleming (d. 1822), of New York, was captain of the 2nd Continental Artillery during the Revolution and was later military storekeeper at West Point. He was a member of the Society of the Cincinnati. John Schuyler, Institution of the Society of the Cincinnati (New York, 1886), pp. 203-204
The Battle of the Kegs is a propaganda ballad written by Francis Hopkinson describing an attempted (but ineffectual) attack upon the British fleet in the harbor of Philadelphia on 6 Jan 1778 during the American Revolution. Kegs filled with gunpowder were used as floating mines, but they failed to detonate. See https://www.americanantiquarian.org/thomasballads/items/show/127
