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Hanna Caldwell

Benoit1025

Benoit1025

New Member
So! I believe I have finally found who I was in my past life during the American Revolution. I've posted before about the dream I had of holding a baby and opening the door to see 3 British soldiers, one who I believe was an officer. I never knew what was said because the dream was more like images of what happened. Next image was of me trying to run away, and then being shot.

Well, I've tried researching online many times about a woman shot by soldiers, but for whatever reason, didnt find anything that clicked. So I'd let it go for a while until I'd get what I would call a nudge to look again, and this would go on over and over for the past few years with no luck. This weekend, I got that feeling again, and found a whole bunch of sites mentioning a woman named Hannah Caldwell, wife of a Rev. James Caldwell, who was killed in their temporary home. She was there with an 8 month old, 3 year old, her nurse and a young girl they had taken in.

When I read about her bells went off, I couldn't believe it! How had it taken me so long to find her? There are many different stories as to how she died, the most popular being that she was shot through the window after nursing her infant, which I feel is completely wrong. This is what I feel in my gut is what happened:

Her husband was very outspoken against the British, so much so that they had a reward out for his capture. I know in my heart that his place of residence was given to the British, and they came to get him but he had already left with the older children to safety. I feel I was shot because I wouldn't tell the soldiers his whereabouts, maybe as an incentive to him to turn himself in.

I'm glad that after so many years of wondering who I was and why I was killed, that I finally have answers!
 
Wow! Congratulations! :thumbsup: Before you do any more research, might I suggest you write down everything you know or have a feeling about your past life, so later when you dig further you can make unbiased comparisons for verification purposes. Now that you have a name, your research can really take off, and it will be that much more valuable if you can make verifications with info you're not privy to yet.
 
I had read the story about her being shot through the bedroom window. They said the girl, Abigal, took some glass to the face while Hanna was shot through the breast by two rounds. (I don't know much about the firearms of the time, but it seems to me that the standard infantry firearm was a single-shot muzzle-loader, and there would have been a bit of time between shots. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.)


Reports put her on the bed when she died.


http://www.americanrevolution.org/women/women44.html


However, as with the media today, fabrications designed to stir public sentiment were not uncommon. In fact, where the Revolution is concerned, it can be hard NOT to find a story with a few things tweaked here and there. (I do confess muttering to myself "Well, at least they didn't blame it on Tarleton!") Some of the anti-British stories are only slightly embellished, but some are wild fabrications.


As for Hanna Caldwell, I have a book called "Diary of the American Revolution". It's a collection of copies of newspaper clippings, songs, broadsides, etc., that someone collected more than a hundred and some-odd years ago from their original sources. If I can find where it is my unkempt stacks of books, I can look to see what the newpapers of the day had to say about her. A woman shot in cold blood with so many witnesses would stand well on its own for the cause without embellishments!
 
Thank you Jody! I've started a dream diary not too long ago, and an interesting thing is I wrote about my find Sunday, still unsure of whether I was her before because of the "official" story of her death. But I wrote down what I felt really happened because the story given didn't feel right at all.


Sure enough, when I continued trying to find out more about her yesterday, I found a site that told the story the way I believe it happened. my automatic reaction was "Finally! Someone who got it right!" Haha


I'll definitely continue trying to write feelings down about her, but there isn't much about her besides her birth, marraige, kids and death. She's more famous for her death than anything really. :(
 
Shiftkitty, that's the first story I read as well. I don't know much about firearms either, but my assumption was that they were 1 ball per shot. I've never heard of anyone loading more than 1 ball...I would think it wouldn't be too effective.


My conclusion was they manipulated the story to gain more sympathy for the patriot cause. People (especially those on the fence) would be far more outraged over an innocent mother being shot in cold blood, than with the real story of her hiding her wanted husbands whereabouts.


Of course, the British and loyalists came out with their own versions of the story with their own witnesses. Some said a soldier mistook her for a possible sniper, or that the shot(some claim it was only 1) went through the wall from an American soldier by accident. Like you said, it was very commen for stories to be twisted to support the cause...
 
Shiftkitty said:
I don't know much about the firearms of the time, but it seems to me that the standard infantry firearm was a single-shot muzzle-loader, and there would have been a bit of time between shots. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.
Click to expand...
You are quite correct, Shiftkitty! The standard infantry firearm was a sing-shot, muzzle-loading weapon. The barrel was usually about a half-inch in diameter and was most often loaded with a pre-wrapped paper cartridge filled with black powder and a single 70-72 caliber lead ball. However, they were also known to carry cartridges that had been prepared with several smaller caliber balls—usually about 30 caliber, or 1/4 inch in diameter. These were used for room-clearing and house-to-house fighting. It is probably the case that two of these smaller balls were what struck Hanna, while the other balls could have been deflected by the glass in the window.


What is confusing to me is that I know of no situation in which regular British troops would have been under the command of a Hessian officer. Hessian troops, yes, but they would have been wearing blue coats with yellow facings plus a tall cone shaped helmet-like hat. They were from Germany and looked nothing like British soldiers. However, it is known that American loyalists sometimes were attached to Hessian units which conducted raids in the New Jersey colony, and some of these were known to wear brick-red coats. It is also known that loyalist troops were most likely to participate in terrible vendettas against their "Rebel" neighbors, and such an act as that committed against Hanna Caldwell would have been characteristic of the kind of atrocities that took place with what was considered partisan warfare.
 
It could have also been more than one person shooting at the time.
 
Yeah, in my dream I heard 2 quick shots. One quickly following the other. All I know is that I was running away from the front door, into the living room when I was shot twice in the back. I believe I was trying to get into a back room, probably where everyone else was.


On reading the link Shiftkitty gave, I think it's interesting that even which kids were in the home with her is different depending on what account you read. To be honest, in my dream, I only saw the baby I was holding. I wasn't aware of anyone else around me before answering the door. I was 13 when I had this dream, and until now assumed I was trying to escape out the back of the house, but maybe I was just trying to get to the others.
 
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