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Lochry's Defeat 1781

Lochry's Defeat
Image: Will Vawter (1871–1941), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Recorded location from Wikidata; battle sites are often approximate.

Key facts

Date24 August 1781Wikidata
Year1781Wikidata P585 (point in time)
EraEarly modern (1500–1799)derived from year
LocationUnited StatesNatural Earth (modern borders)
ContinentNorth AmericaNatural Earth
War / conflictAmerican Revolutionary WarWikidata P361
Coordinates39.0258, -84.8861Wikidata P625

About the battle

Lochry's Defeat, also known as the Lochry massacre, was a battle fought on August 24, 1781, near present-day Aurora, Indiana, in the United States. The battle was part of the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783), which began as a conflict between Great Britain and the Thirteen Colonies before spreading to the western frontier, where American Indians entered the war as British allies. The battle was short and decisive: about one hundred Indians of local tribes led by Joseph Brant, a Mohawk military leader who was temporarily in the west, ambushed a similar number of Pennsylvania militiamen led by Archibald Lochry. Brant and his men killed or captured all of the Pennsylvanians without suffering any casualties.

Lochry's force was part of an army being raised by Brigadier General George Rogers Clark for a campaign against Detroit, the British regional headquarters. Clark, the preeminent American military leader on the northwestern frontier, worked with Governor Thomas Jefferson of Virginia in planning an expedition to capture Detroit, by which they hoped to bring an end to British support of the Indian war effort.

Text adapted from the Wikipedia article Lochry's Defeat (revision 1370627040), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes: excerpted from the article lead section; shortened by selecting paragraphs and trimming at a sentence boundary; formatting and citations removed. No text added.

Location

39.0258, -84.8861 · United States

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Nearby battles

Other battles of the American Revolutionary War

All 190 battles of the American Revolutionary War →

Browse more: battles in United States · North America · Early modern battles

Further reading