Cora Crane and the Light Dragoons

ELDON L. JONES

CORA CRANE reminds us, in two autograph manu¬
scripts in Columbia Libraries' Special Collections, about
a colorful but little known facet of the American Revo¬
lution. Her subjects are the British Sixteenth and Seventeenth
Regiments of Light Dragoons. These two units, as Mrs. Crane in¬
dicates, performed services that were vital to the operations of the
British army in America. Their principal duty, of course, was to
support the infantry on the battlefield, but they also patrolled,
carried dispatches, and raided the countryside to seize forage and
horses for the army and to destroy American supplies.

Why Mrs. Crane wrote about these two units will be speculated
upon below. Meanwhile, it may be useful at this point to provide
a brief account of the activities of the light dragoons. It will begin
on the date April 14, 1775, when a young British officer. Captain
Oliver De Lancey, arrived alone in Boston on a secret mission for
the British government. De Lancey had instructions for General
Thomas Gage, commander in chief of British forces in America,
to move quickly and decisively against the rebellious colonists of
iMassachusetts. Gage was prepared for such an order, and four
days later he sent a detachment of 800 troops to destroy some
American military stores at Concord. The long-anticipated war
between England and her colonies had begun.

Captain De Lancey was unable to linger in Boston more than
two days after he delivered the new orders to Gage. He had an¬
other set of secret instructions that directed him to proceed to
New York to procure horses for his regiment, the Seventeenth
Light Dragoons, which was to come from England. The people
of New York, however, had learned of the fighting at Lexington
and Concord, and when they discovered the nature of De Lancey's
mission, they forced the officer to flee to one of the King's war-

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