y a
greatly superior force, resisted stoutly, and the firing on both sides
was heavy. Proctor's artillery pounded away across the stream. The
riflemen, well under cover, at first threw Knyphausen's men into
confusion, though they included some of the best regiments of the
British army, the Fourth, Fifth, Twenty-eighth, Forty-ninth and
Seventy-first being among them.

As Proctor trained his guns upon the advancing British, the house of
William Harvey (Senior--his son William, Junior, lived east of the
creek) was directly in the line of fire. William, who was a quiet but
firm old Friend, was at his home, intending to protect his goods if
possible, though he had sent his family away. His neighbor, Jacob Way,
found him at this juncture sitting on his front piazza, which ended to
the eastward against his kitchen, a semi-detached building. "Come away!"
said Jacob: "thee is in danger here. Thee will surely be killed." But
William refused. Jacob expostulated. As they exchanged words, a
twelve-pound cannon-ball came from Proctor's battery directly for the
house, passed through both walls of the kitchen, and plunged along the
piazza floor, tearing up the boards and barely avoiding William's legs,
until, a little farther on, it buried itself six feet deep in the earth.
It is recorded that William hesitated no longer, but sought a safer
place. His house was thoroughly despoiled when the British came up.

Knyphausen, however, steadily pressed the Americans back, forced them
from the high ground down to the edge of the creek, and finally drove
them across. By half-past ten o'clock this was accomplished, and the
British line was then formed half a mile back from the stream, where it
lay until half-past four in the afternoon, the artillery keeping up a
threatening but not serious fire upon Wayne's position on the east side,
which his batteries returned. On the whole, the Americans thought
themselves doing fairly well. Washington's secretary sent off a despatch
to Congress saying that the British loss must be three hundred killed
and wounded, "while ours does not exceed fifty altogether."

Part of the British force at the ford on this morning was a rifle corps
commanded by Major Patrick Ferguson, a young Scotchman recently arrived
in America, and subsequently killed in the sanguinary fight on King's
Mountain. In a letter describing the Brandywine battle he says his men
were lying concealed in a skirt of woods when "a rebel officer in