Fighting 5 Calkin Brothers of War of 1812

An article written by Martin Calkins, Ph.D.

The Fighting Five: The Calkin Brothers of Elizabethtown, NY. War of 1812

As I wandered around an old cemetery in upstate NY searching for Revolutionary War and War of 1812 veterans’ graves, I wondered why some headstones from the same era were so differently shaped, scripted, and eroded than others. I wondered, too, why some I knew to be buried there were nowhere to be found. I asked myself: “What is the story behind what I am seeing…and not seeing?”

 

The Calkin Cemetery of Elizabethtown, NY

These questions arose while walking through the 19^thc. Calkin Cemetery (aka Calkin Burial Ground) in Elizabethtown, NY – a once bustling mining town in the Adirondack Mountains near Lake Champlain. Located on a heavily wooded plateau off the rutted Calkin Cemetery Lane that splits off a dirt road called Hurricane Mountain Lane; the Calkin Cemetery is now mostly empty and demarcated by a weathered chain link fence that separates it from the more conventional Lord’s Cemetery. The state of New York now considers it abandoned because it has not received a burial in decades. Even so, 27 people are buried in Calkin Cemetery. A few graves are marked with ornate markers, a couple with modern-looking headstones, but most have no identifier at all.

Despite its empty appearance, the Calkin Cemetery is important because it holds the remains of a number of America’s early patriots ,including those of Elijah Calkin Jr. and Keziah Rogers Calkin (both 1764-1838) who relocated between 1802 and 1806 to Elizabethtown, Essex Co., NY from Northeast, Dutchess Co., NY along with 9 of their eventual 12 children (Brown, 1905, 112).

 Although no more than a boy of 11 or 12, Elijah Calkin Jr. fought alongside his father Elijah Calkin Sr. against the British in the 6^thRegiment of the Dutchess County Militia in the first war for American independence (Roberts, 1898, 247). With Elijah and Keziah’s relocation to Elizabethtown, the children honed their talents with guns and knives, became good woodland hunters and well acclimated to the variable weather conditions and slippery rocks of the Adirondacks. By 1812 and now adults, sons John (1785-1874),Calvin (1787-1871), Isaac (1790-1867), Benjamin (1795-1887), and Elijah(1798-1874) banded together with other local men to form a unified fighting group under the command of the tough oldest Calkin brother, Capt. John, to fight the British. They soon found themselves fighting as foot soldiers in nearby Plattsburgh.

 The Battle of Plattsburg

Historians have put forward complex reasons for the War of1812, but since the 1960s the preferred understanding of the causes of the War are sea rather than land-based (Hickey, 2001, 742; Horsman, 1987, 3).Most of the attention has been given to battles on the Great Lakes, but upstate New York was also a key component in British incursions from Canada into America and the American invasions of British Canada. Moreover, while naval engagements were important, ground troops were also essential for the removal of shore-based artillery (Fredriksen, 1995, 173). This was especially the case prior to the naval skirmish of the Battle of Plattsburg (aka Battle of Lake Champlain, September 6 to 11, 1814) when, on September 9, 1814, 50 American troops led by Captain George McGlassin forded the Saranac River and launched a surprise raid that caught a British work party off guard. The Americans –comprised heavily of mountain men such as the Calkin brothers and their Elizabethtown friends – were intimately familiar with the rugged environment from hunting in the Adirondacks. As a result, their raid of the shore-based artillery was key to American success there. In the end, the British sustained the deaths of 1 officer and 6 troops, and several others were wounded before the British abandoned their project leaving the Americans able to destroy the works and spike guns. Once the area was neutralized, the Americans returned to their fort with no casualties (Hannings, 2012, 247).

 

Fighting next turned to the water and became so fierce that one of the British marines who was at Trafalgar with Lord Nelson described Trafalgar as a mere flea bite in comparison with that of Plattsburg (Brown, 1905, 279-280). At one point, American Captain Thomas Macdonough, familiar with the shifting winds on the mountain lake, took quick action with pulley lines attached to anchors to swing his gunboat around into a position to decimate the British 36-gun frigate HMS Confiance. With that action along with the death of British Captain George Downie, the Battle ended – but not without American forces suffering 100 dead and 120wounded and the British having 380 killed or wounded and more than 300 captured or deserted.

 

While the American victory at Plattsburgh should have ended the War of 1812, news traveled slowly, and warfare continued until it limped to a conclusion in New Orleans. Thus, while the Battle of Plattsburg was not the final battle of the War of 1812, it was the decisive battle that led to the Treaty of Ghent (1814) in which Great Britain agreed to relinquish claims to the Northwest Territory and both countries pledged to work toward ending the slave trade(National Archives Milestone Documents, 2022).

 

The Pride of Elizabethtown

With the cessation of fighting, the 5 Calkin brothers returned to Elizabethtown. Elijah Calkin, Jr. was especially relieved to see that his boys survived and that all but 2 of Capt. John Calkin’s 44 infantry men returned unharmed. In this latest war for American freedom, the Elizabethtown Calkin family had contributed over 70% of its male heirs. Other Elizabethtown families such as the Kellogg and Knox families had also invested similar human treasure to the war effort. Early 20^th c. local historian George Levi Brown recounts the families’ contributions with unveiled pride:

 

There were five Calkin brothers in this company. Moreover, there were three brothers-in-law of the Calkin brothers in the company. Quite a record of family patriotism for one company raised in a little mountainous township. To our knowledge the record has never been surpassed in this northern region (Brown, 1905, 275).

 

After the post-War fanfare subsided, the battle-tested Calkin brothers concentrated on building individual lives. Some had married before the War and now had compatriot veteran in-laws. John Calkin had arrived in Elizabethtown at age 17 and was just age 20 when he married Lucy Kellogg and began siring 9 children before rising to Captain (Brown, 1905, 112). Similarly, John Knox had relocated from Hillsdale, Columbia Co. and married Elijah Jr. and Keziah Calkin’s eldest daughter, Elizabeth, and had a large family before moving them to Elizabethtown prior to the Battle of Plattsburgh (Brown, 1905, 112 and 285). Brothers Benjamin and Calvin Calkin married Urania and Kaziah Kellogg respectively, sisters of John Calkin’s wife as well as of the compatriot brothers Sargent Orson (who went on to own Elizabethtown’s largest hotel, The Windsor), Corporal Valentine (Elizabethtown’s pioneer shoemaker) and Private William Kellogg who served in Capt. Calkin’s infantry (Brown, 1905, 7, 83, and 114).

 

In time the Calkin, Kellogg, and Knox families grew to become tightly interrelated so that when either Elizabeth Calkin Knox’s or her sister Keziah died, John Knox provided a wooded hilltop lot on Hurricane Mountain for burial. It was then named the Calkin Cemetery and used for the remainder of the19^th c. as an extended family burial ground.

 

Scarcity and Rigorous Morality

Today, the Cemetery appears empty and surrounded by tall trees that bend and whisper in the breeze. Its few old gravestones are almost illegible because of age and the porosity of their materials. Most graves, including those of Elijah Jr. and Keziah Rogers Calkin, lack of any sort of marker.

 

During my visit, it struck me as odd that there was so little commemoration of these people given their contributions. Moreover, the Cemetery’s desolate condition seemed to stand in stark contrast to the dignified cemeteries in nearby CT where other Calkin family members were buried beneath elaborate headstones. Why was this cemetery so stark, I wondered?

 

As an academic, I considered several reasons that might explain the condition of the Calkin Cemetery. First, it seemed reasonable that the lack of headstones was due to their high costs given poor local and family economies. The contents of various last wills and testaments as well as the land transactions among the Calkin and Knox families still on record reveal that Elizabethtown families usually had few reserves. The area around Elizabethtown had been settled by growing and struggling families who moved northward for available farmland and the new farms could only be sustained by large numbers of children to help cultivate the land, hunt local wildlife, and raise domestic animals. As the children grew up, land could only be divided so much before it could no longer sustain another family.

 

In addition, the Adirondacks’ short growing season and cool, wet, and unpredictable weather made maintaining life there difficult. With little or no real wealth, a family would have to sell something essential to purchase a carved headstone when someone died. Moreover, a buyer would have to be found among the sparsely populated local community to affect the transaction. As a result, families had little choice but to bury their loved ones without lasting identification.

 Still…the nagging question remained: why were there elaborately carved grave markers for some but not everyone? The few markers that remain were obviously not cheap, so economic conditions alone could not explain why some people received elaborate headstones while others had none.

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 This led to a second hypothesis involving moral choice. An inspection of the existing markers shows a consistent trait: all of those with lasting markers are innocents – babies, children, or wives who died young (see headstone of Maria Pearson/Person Calkin). None of the headstones are of adult men (those of Benjamin Calkin and John Knox are 20^thc. additions). Perhaps the choice to memorialize the deaths of the young and not the elderly was an exception based upon collective feelings of sadness rooted in the notion of “sympathy” prevalent at the time.

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 To explain, the notion of sympathy was a central starting point in 18^th c. European Enlightenment morality that spread to America with colonialism. It was central to David Hume’s An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals and was explained best by Adam Smith – the 18^th c. Scottish “grandfather of capitalism” and author of The Wealth of Nations – who not only detailed sympathy as a sense of “fellow-feeling, ”but also explained the way sympathy might have led to the choices at the time of a death of a young person (Hume, 1983; Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1976). As Smith explains in his oft-overlooked The Theory of Moral Sentiments:

 (Sympathy and) the affections which are founded on it, are by nature more strongly directed towards his children than towards his parents, and his tenderness for the former seems generally a more active principle than his reverence and gratitude towards the latter…In the eye of nature, it would seem a child is amore important object than an old man; and excites a much more lively, as well as a much more universal sypathy….In ordinary cases, an old man dies without being much regretted by any body. Scarce a child can die without rending asunder the heart of somebody (Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, 1976, VI.ii.1.3)

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Today, the Smithian sort of sympathy that emerges after the tragic death of a youngster is expressed by people through GoFundMe initiatives or charity fundraisers. But lacking similar resources, 19^th c. American mountain communities had to reserve fund raising as something special and not extend it to those who died in due course of old age. In this sense, the Calkin burial plot shows commemoration of those who died young but not elderly people such as Benjamin Calkin (age 92), John Knox (age 69), and Elijah Jr. and Keziah Rogers Calkin (both age 74) who were buried without markers despite their valuable contributions to American freedom and economic advancement.

 A third reason for the anonymous burial of some but not all might be sourced in the community’s strong religiosity. According to this view, what appears austere to us today could be part of the asceticism of a 19^th c. religiously rigorous family. As American sociologist Robert Wuthnow argues, ascetic moralism flourished prominently in American culture during the first half of the 19^th c. and drew heavily from biblical Christianity (Wuthnow, 1996, 62). Agreeing with him, American Mennonite theologian and ethicist John Howard Yoder points out that for devout Protestants, Holy Scripture is sufficient and “no more hermeneutic aids than every believer has available in the Holy Spirit and his or her human reason” is needed (Yoder, 1984, 63).

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 As direct descendants of 17^th c. Calvinist Puritans steeped in Enlightenment ideas, anti-Catholicism, anti-Royalism, and opposition to all vestiges of “papist” Anglican ostentation, the Calkin family would have fully embraced an ascetic morality that preferred burial grounds devoid of the cherubs and imposing crosses and outstretched arms of Christ or Marian statuary typical of traditional Roman Catholic and Anglican cemeteries.

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 That the family was religiously rigorous is supported by its stridently abstemious and anti-Masonic views. Brown’s treatise goes on to provide a long list of the men and women (including the fighters at Plattsburgh) who joined the “Total Abstinence Temperance Society of Elizabethtown” in 1837 and helped build Elizabethtown’s Baptist meeting house (Brown, 1905, 354-356). Brown also shows how many family members were strongly averse to the early 19^th c. freemasonry that held for a naturalism and deism at odds with unitarian and trinitarian monotheism (in fact, the Masons are still shunned by Roman Catholicism). As Brown recounts:

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 Captain John Calkin, then Surrogate of Essex County, was a bitter foe of Masonry and led the anti-Masonic fight. As a result of one Town Meeting, when the Masons had control, Captain John Calkin was, figuratively speaking, "run out of town." That is to say a new town line between Elizabethtown and Jay was run and the head and front of the anti-Masonic fight and some of his sympathizing neighbors found themselves over in the town of Jay. This of course put Captain John to the trouble of going over the mountain to Jay to vote but he said he was satisfied - as taxes were lower in Jay (Brown, 1905, 320).

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 A fourth reason for the Cemetery’s austerity could be tied to the notion that gravestones were signs of vanity, self-aggrandizement, and moral weakness. As 18^th c. Scottish Enlightenment philosopher David Hume explains, vanity was (is) a moral flaw because, “it seems to consist chiefly in such intemperate display of our advantages, honours, and accomplishments…(and) is offensive to others, and encroaches too far on their secret vanity and ambition” (Hume, 1983, VII, 71). Fellow Scotsman and Hume’s friend, Smith, concurs in maintaining that our passions are apt to mislead us and that even if we could have perfect knowledge, if that knowledge is not supported by perfect self-command, we would not always be able to do our duty (Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, 1976, VI.iii.1). For both Hume and Smith then, passions related to vanity should be checked by self-command. Taken together these sentiments support an understanding of the absence of gravestones beyond economic conditions and suggest that the absence might be due to a combination of the prevailing ascetic morality, religious rigor, and Enlightenment ideals held by the extended Elizabethtown Calkin family.

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 Dispersal

Not long after the War of 1812 much of the Elizabethtown Calkin family dispersed west and northward. In 1837 – the same year by happenstance or causation that other family members were forging a temperance society – Captain John Calkin sold his farm (pictured here) and left Elizabethtown along “with the greater portion of his family,” going first to Lower Sandusky (later called Fremont) Ohio, where he remained for one year before moving on to Iowa (Brown, 1905, 357).

 

Others relocated elsewhere to follow opportunity. Calvin Calkin (1787-1871) moved to Indiana while his War compatriot brothers Isaac Calkin (1790-1867) went to Vermont and Elijah Calkin (1798-1874) relocated to Nebraska. Younger brother Hiram Calkin (1800-1874) whose first wife (Maria, gravestone pictured here) is buried in the Cemetery, moved with his second wife and children to a newly formed Yankee community in Wisconsin and the youngest living brother Ransom Calkin (1803-1879) went to another part of Essex County, NY. After leaving Elizabethtown, Capt. John Calkin never returned, eventually dying in Iowa in 1874. Only one of the 5 Battle of Plattsburgh brothers – Benjamin Calkin – remained in Elizabethtown and was buried in the Calkin Cemetery.

 

In the end, almost all the fighting 5 Calkin brothers whose glory days were at the Battle of Plattsburgh dispersed after fathering large families and never met again as one in the Adirondacks.

 

20^th and 21^st c. Remembrances

With the passage of time, the legacy of the Calkin patriots began to fade and by the first quarter of the 20^th c., Elizabethtown locals either did not understand or did not agree with the prior generation’s reasons for leaving the Calkin Cemetery barren. Instead, they viewed the lack of recognition of local patriots in the Cemetery as a problem. As the Lake Placid News of May 29, 1925, reports:

 

C.C. Witherbee of Moriah Center, on last week Thursday, set up two marble headstones in the Lord cemetery, so called, one for John Knox, one for Benjamin Calkins. These old soldiers of the War of 1812 have been lying there all these years without even a marker till a year ago when our townsman, W. Scott Brown, interested himself and others in the soldiers with unmarked graves, in fact he looked up all the old, neglected cemeteries and had them cleared, and markers procured for the soldiers. Now the government is paying tardy tribute to those who should have been so honored years aero. All honor to W. Scott Brown for his vigorous work. He is the right man in the right place. Give him something to do, get him interested, and he will push it thru in spite of all obstacles.

 

With the efforts of town leaders, the graves of 2 men who fought in the War of 1812 were marked with the large modern headstones found there today. They are now commemorated regularly by a local Elizabethtown native, history buff, and American patriot named Newman Tryon (pictured herewith the Calkin Cemetery in the background).

 

Mr. Tryon has worked diligently for years to ensure that “the Colors” are placed on the graves of these two War of 1812 veterans and other veterans buried in nearby cemeteries. He not only flags veterans’ graves on certain national holidays, but over the years has also located, retrieved, and repaired vandalized and discarded gravestones, alerted town managers to the need for periodic mowing, and overseen the replacement of a missing road sign.

 

Going Forward

Despite its desolate appearance today, the Calkin Cemetery containsan important history of economic struggle, American patriotism, ascetic morality, religious rigor, and close family alliances of the 19^th c. amilies of Elizabethtown, NY.

 

It also holds the remains of the man (Elijah Calkin, Jr., 1764-1838) who fought alongside his father in the Revolutionary War then brought his large family to Elizabethtown and eventually gave 5 of his 7 sons to the second fight for American independence at the Battle of Plattsburgh.

 

While the anonymity of most of those buried in the now abandoned Cemetery might have been deliberately sought after and should be respected as such, it is also true that the lack of markers on the patriots’ graves leads to their contributions to American freedom being undiscoverable and forgotten. It thus seems fitting for the Calkins family of today to recognize them now with gratitude and some sort of lasting tribute to their heroism and contribution to the freedom and independence that we now enjoy.

 

Sources

Brown, George Levi. Pleasant Valley: a History of Elizabethtown, NY, Essex County, New York. Elizabethtown, NY: Post and Gazette Print, 1905.

 

Calkins, Martin. "The Fighting Five: The Calkin Brothers of Elizabethtown, NY." The1812 War Cry 50, 2 (March 2024): 8-12.

 

Fredriksen, John C. "The War of 1812 in Northern New York: General George Izard's Journal of the Chateauguay Campaign." New York History 76, 2 (1995): 173-200.

 

Hannings, Bud. The War of 1812: A Complete Chronology with Biographies of 63 General Officers. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Co., 2012.

 

Hickey, Donald R. "The War of 1812: Still a Forgotten Conflict?" The Journal of Military History 65, 3 (2001): 741-769.

 

Horsman, Reginald. "On to Canada: Manifest Destiny and United States Strategy in the War of 1812." Michigan Historical Review 13, 2 (1987):1-24.

 

Hume, David. An nquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, ed. J.B. Schneewind. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company Inc., 1983.

 

National Archives Milestone Documents. Treaty of Ghent (1814). The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, 2022. Last update 10 May 2022.Accessed 21 January 2024. Available from https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/treaty-of-ghent.

 

Roberts, James A. NewYork in the Revolution as Colony and State - Second Edition. Albany: Press of Brandow Printing Company, 1898.

 

Smith, Adam. The Theory of Moral Sentiments, ed. D. D. Raphael and A. L. Macfie. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976.

 

________. The Wealth of Nations, ed. R. H. Campbell and A. S. Skinner. London: Oxford University Press, 1976.

 

Wuthnow, Robert. Poor Richard’s Principle: Recovering the American Dream Through the Moral Dimension of Work, Business, and Money. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996.

 

Yoder, John Howard. The Priestly Kingdom: Social Ethics as Gospel. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984.

 

The Calkins Cemetery, a searchable database, and its location: https://www.findagrave.com/cemetery/2259121/calkins-cemetery

 

*This article was originally published in (Calkins, 2024).

 

Martin Calkins, Ph. D. is author of more than thirty publications, including two business ethics books. He is a former university administrator, professor, businessman, Jesuit, and member of several American lineage societies.

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