![]() In 1852, she was exhumed again and moved to the newly-created Union Cemetery in Fort Edward. In 1822, she was moved to State Street Cemetery in the Village of Fort Edward where her remains were placed atop the brick vault of Sara McNeil (who had passed away naturally in 1799 at the age of 77). Ironically, after her first burial in 1777, Jane McCrea was later dug up and relocated twice because of her prominence as a tourist attraction. The colonial population intrepreted Jane’s murder as a symbol of British oppression-and American leaders manipulated her image most effectively as they organized resistance to British authority. He recovered her body, and buried her about three miles south of Fort Edward. David Jones recognized Jane’s hair in the middle of a pile of scalps. ![]() Faced with the prospect of no reward, they scalped her and took the scalp to the British camp. The Indians claimed afterward that an American musketball, intended for them, had mortally wounded the young Scottish-Presbyterian woman. While we know that she was then killed and scalped, it is unclear whether her death was a deliberate murder or merely an accident. What happened next has been hotly disputed by historians, but it appears that two competing bands of Indians fought over who was to receive the reward for delivering Jane to her fiancé. The Indians mounted Jane on a horse, but Sara was forced to walk because she “was too heavy to be lifted on the horse easily.” As the Indians approached, both women hid in the cellar they were discovered and dragged out by their hair. On July 27, a party of Indians was sent by Burgoyne to locate the two women and escort them back to the British camp. Only Jane and an older woman, Sara McNeil, remained behind in Sara’s house in Fort Edward. Most other settlers in northern New York had already fled for Albany. ![]() ![]() In July 1777, she was living in Fort Edward, N.Y., awaiting the arrival from Canada of her fiancé, David Jones, a Tory officer with Burgoyne’s army. The mysterious circumstances of her death made Jane McCrea one of the best-known American women of the 18th century. Jane’s death thus contributed to the great American victory later that year at the Battle of Saratoga, known as the “turning point” of the American Revolution. Her tragic death on July 27, 1777, prompted thousands of outraged Americans throughout the northern colonies to rise up against British authority because Jane had been murdered by Indians who accompanied General John Burgoyne on his march south from Canada. What is it like to dig up an American icon-in this case the most famous woman to be murdered and scalped during the American Revolution? Over the past three years, I have worked with the remains of Jane McCrea. The exposed coffin, containing the bones, is the new one placed in the grave in 2003. April 23, 2005-the second "modern" exhumation of Jane McCrea's grave. ![]()
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