Jane McCrea

Engaged to a Loyalist officer serving under Burgoyne, her death led to widespread outrage in the Thirteen Colonies and was used by Patriots as part of their anti-British propaganda campaign.[1] After her mother died and her father remarried, McCrea moved in with her brother John who lived near Saratoga, New York, where she eventually became engaged to David Jones.Jones, on the other hand, was serving as a lieutenant in a Loyalist militia unit accompanying Burgoyne's expedition, and was stationed at Fort Ticonderoga after the British captured it from the Americans.McNeil was eventually taken to Burgoyne's camp, where either she or David Jones recognized McCrea's supposedly distinctive scalp being carried by a Native American warrior.[6] Anburey claimed that two Native American warriors, one of them Le Loup, were escorting McCrea to Burgoyne's camp when they started to quarrel over an expected reward for bringing her there.[10] When Burgoyne received news of McCrea's death, he went to the camp of Native American warriors accompanying his expedition and ordered that the culprit be delivered to him, threatening to have him executed.Simor Fraser and interpreter Luc de la Corne informed Burgoyne that such an act would result in the defection of all Native American warriors from his expedition and might lead them to take revenge as they travelled back north.[13] Patriot propaganda efforts received a boost after Burgoyne wrote a letter to Continental Army officer Horatio Gates, complaining about the American treatment of prisoners of war captured at the Battle of Bennington on August 17.[...] Miss McCrae, a young lady lovely to the sight, of virtuous character and amiable disposition, engaged to be married to an officer of your army, was [...] carried into the woods, and there scalped and mangled in the most shocking manner [...][14] News accounts of her death elaborated on McCrea's supposed beauty, describing her as "lovely in disposition, so graceful in manners and so intelligent in features, that she was a favorite of all who knew her", and that her hair "was of extraordinary length and beauty, measuring a yard and a quarter".[2] One of the few contemporary accounts of the incident by someone who actually saw her personally was that of James Wilkinson, who described her as "a country girl of honest family in circumstances of mediocrity, without either beauty or accomplishments".