Revolutionary War Capt., commissioned Maj. Gen. of the 5th Division, Pennsylvania Militia in 1807.
Born 17 Jan 1746 in Lancaster County, PA.
Captured at the Battle of Fort Washington on 16 Nov 1776, Capt. Dritt would be held prisoner for nearly two years.
Drowned 19 dec 1817 in the icy waters of the Susquehanna River near his estate. His body found 35-miles downriver the following spring and buried locally, its location lost to history.
Born to Hans Peter and Anna (Dellinger) Tritt on 17 Jan 1746, in what was still relative wilderness along Cocalico Creek in Lancaster County. The oldest of several siblings, Jacob would purchase the family farm from his brothers and sisters when their father died in 1768; he would marry Maria Elizabeth Boyer that same year and settle in what is now Windsor Twp, in York County. Jacob and Elizabeth, as she was known, would eventually raise eleven children together.
At the outset of the Revolutionary War, Jacob Dritt was commissioned a lieutenant in Col. Michael Swope’s Regiment of the Pennsylvania “Flying Camp,” but promoted to captain soon after. These York County men were deployed to assist Gen. Washington’s forces constructing Fort Lee on the New Jersey side of the river but were very shortly sent to Fort Washington on the northern, and highest point on the island of Manhattan as it appeared the British were poised to attack.
On 16 November 1776, Fort Washington was stormed by British and German troops, who ultimately prevailed and took the fort after several hours of ferocious fighting, capturing the garrison of 2800 soldiers and militia. The men taken prisoner were placed on British prison ships in New York Harbor. These ships were overcrowded and unsanitary death-traps that would ultimately kill more soldiers by disease and neglect than were killed in battle.
Capt. Dritt and the other officers taken prisoner were housed in private homes in the village of New Utrecht on the western end of Long Island. There, Capt. Dritt remained captive for about two years before being released as part of an exchange of officers.
After the war, Jacob Dritt would return to his plantation in New Windsor Twp. and reengage in business. Maintaining his interest and connections with military matters, Governor Thomas McKean would commission Jacob as Maj. General of the 5th Division (York and Adams Counties) in the state militia on 6 June 1807.
Tragedy would befall the Jacob Dritt family on a cold December day when Jacob Dritt drowned in the icy waters of the Susquehanna River the week before Christmas. His body would not be found until the following spring when it surfaced approximately 35 miles downriver at what is now the Perry Point VA Medical Center. Gen. Dritt’s body was buried on the grounds of the merchant and miller John Stump’s plantation and lost to history.
In 2024, a descendant of Gen. Dritt’s, Shawn Ward, procured a long overdue marker for his Revolutionary War ancestor, a hero of the battle of New York in 1776. His marker was placed alongside that of his wife, Elizabeth, who would pass away in 1826 and who rests in the Dritt family cemetery high upon a hill overlooking the old Dritt homestead and the mighty Susquehanna River; a river that brought both prosperity and tragedy to the Dritt family and generations of Pennsylvania families for nearly 400 years.
