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Juneteenth and Other Lesser Known African-American Historical Culture

Khalid Elhassan June 15, 2020 34 min

Colonel Tye - American Revolutionary War — Colonel Tye as portrayed in a PBS documentary. PBS

4. Blucke and the Black Brigade

Sir Charles Asgill, whom the Patriots selected by random lot for execution to avenge the killing of Joshua Huddy. Wikimedia

Stephen Blucke successfully led the Black Brigade for the remainder of the war, even after the British surrender at Yorktown. On March 24^th, 1782, Blucke and his men completed Tye’s final (and failed) mission, and took part in the capture of Joshua Huddy, New Jersey’s most vicious Patriot militia leader. The Loyalists finally avenged themselves on Huddy by hanging him in the Navesink Highlands in Monmouth County, NJ, on April 12^th, 1782.

After the war, Blucke joined the exodus of Loyalists, and ended up in Nova Scotia. There, in 1784, the governor commissioned him a lieutenant colonel in the province’s black militia. Blucke was also tasked with scouting land in which to settle fellow Black Loyalists, and decided on Birchtown. There, he built himself a comfortable and spacious home, and took up a career as a schoolmaster. Then, one night, he simply disappeared. It was speculated at the time that he must have been killed by wild animals, as torn clothes resembling his were found in the town’s outskirts.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.