[SIEBERT] REFUGEE LOYALISTS OF CONNECTICUT 83 
However, this decrease was largely offset by. the support given the 
Queen’s Rangers by Captain Thomas Sandford and his troop of Bucks 
County Light Dragoons, who at this time ‘‘considered themselves 
under Lieutenant Colonel Simcoe’s protection,” and by the co-opera- 
tion between Simcoe’s regiment. and another local troop of pro- 
vincials, the Philadelphia Light Dragoons, numbering over 100 men 
led by Captain Richard Hovenden and Captain Jacob James.! 
On the evacuation of Philadelphia by the British the Queen’s 
Rangers crossed at Cooper’s Ferry, June 17, 1778, and by the time 
they reached Allentown were accompanied by many refugees, who, 
Simcoe says, served him as guides. On July 5th, the corps was trans- 
ported from Sandy Hook to New York, and Simcoe boasts that it had 
experienced no desertions during the march across New Jersey. 
Ten days later it encamped near Kingsbridge, and here its numbers 
mounted again by the accession of the troops of Hovenden, James, and 
Sandford. Hence, the muster of August 24, which was taken at Kings- 
bridge, shows the strength of the corps as 448 men, among whom un- 
doubtedly the Connecticut Loyalists formed a much smaller proportion 
than at the beginning. Although about three weeks before the muster, 
Hovenden and James’ troop (the Philadelphia Light Dragoons) 
was transferred to the British Legion, Simcoe remained in command of 
the cavalry of that organization for the time being, and in command 
also of Lieutenant Austrias Emerick’s corps of Chasseurs, which was 
in a great measure composed of Loyalists. On November 19th the 
Queen’s Rangers went into winter quarters at Oyster Bay. It was 
evidently at this time that an effort was made to augment the troop 
of Hussars to a membership of 50 or more, for the officers of the Rangers 
subscribed liberally to a recruiting fund, and an advertisement was 
inserted in Rivington’s Royal Gazette offering a bounty of forty guin- 
eas each to ‘all aspiring heroes” who would join the troop, and of two 
guineas to any person bringing in a recruit to Cornet Spencer at No. 
1033 Water Street, or at Hewitt’s tavern, New York? 
At the muster of February 24, 1779, the regiment numbered 449 
men, but when it left Oyster Bay to return to Kingsbridge, May 18, 
its enrollment had fallen to ‘360 rank and file,” according to Simcoe, 
evidently through its activities in New Jersey. Early in August 
Captain Frederick de Diemar’s troop of German Hussars was added 
to the corps, while the Bucks County Light Dragoons were continued 
as a part of Simcoe’s command “until further orders.” The corps 



1 Simcoe’s Journal, 17, 18, 20, 32, 37, 47, 55, 58, 153, 156; MS. Muster Rolls of 
Col. Edward Winslow (in possession of the N. B. Hist. Soc., St. John, N. B.); Ab- 
stracts from the Muster Rolls by Rev. W. O. Raymond (unpublished). 
2 Simcoe’s Journal, 62, 66, 74, 76, 79, 80, 96, vii, viii. 
