Mr. Josiah F. Caldwell, one of the sons--the sixth of the nine children who were thus bereaved of a mother--relates what he remembers of the event. He was at the time six years of age. About sunrise, when it was announced that the British were coming, he went into the street and joined the people who were driving their cattle to Springfield. There he saw his father with a field-piece--a six pounder, which had formerly been used as an alarm piece. Thence the little boy proceeded to Bottle Hill, and found his second sister, Hannah, at the house of Mr. Sayre; and a day or two after, both the children set off on foot for Connecticut Farms, to see their mother. On their way, they were met by the nurse, Katy, with the two youngest children, in a chair belonging to Mr. Caldwell; she informed the young orphans of their mother's death, and insisted that they should return with her to Bottle Hill. The sister yielded, and was taken into the carriage; the little brother refused to go till he had taken a last look at his beloved parent, and pursued his way to the Farms. On his arrival he was conducted to the house where his mother's remains were laid. His father, who had arrived a short time before, was standing beside the bed on which reposed the lifeless form of this victim of political hatred. What a meeting for the heart-stricken mourner, and the child scarce able to comprehend his irreparable loss!
Some attempts were made by the royalist party to escape the odium of this sanguinary transaction, by pretending that Mrs. Caldwell had been killed by a chance shot.
The actual evidence, however, sets the fact beyond question that one of the enemy was the murderer; and there is too much reason to believe that the deed was deliberately ordered by those high in command. A letter to General Knyphausen, published in the New Jersey Journal, in reproaching him for the outrages of his army, unhesitatingly casts the blame of the murder on him, as committed designedly by one of his men: and the various rumors that went abroad amidst the popular excitement on the subject, and were mentioned in the papers of the day, show that such was the prevalent opinion.
* The Hon. Samuel L. Southard, alluding to Mrs. Caldwell's death, in connection with a memorial presented to the U. S. Senate for the church and property destroyed, says "her children were baptized to piety and patriotism in a mother's blood."