#george w. hagey

[nordleuchten]

25 Days of La Fayette: December 5th - John E. Hagey

(A short notice before we begin; I really enjoyed researching Hagey - although he drove me crazy once or twice. First of all, everybody spelled his name differently. While Hagey is the most common spelling, there is also Hague, Hagar, Haguy, Hagie and what not all.

I first came across Hagey when I stumbled over his entry in the databank of the Valley Forge Muster Rolls. The muster rolls describe him as an aide-de-camp and a member of La Fayette’s lifeguard. While some other men we have looked at thus far had only served for a very short time as La Fayette’s aide-de-camps, Hagey might have served the shortest – if at all. I thought I had a pretty clear picture of the man’s life and the life of his descendants until I found his application for a pension – that document was a wild ride.)

John E. Hagey was born in 1748 in Strasburg and died on July 13, 1841 in Nashville where he was laid to rest in the Nashville cemetery. His grave is marked with a headstone bearing a short summary of his long and eventful life:

The Nashville City Cemetery Association, Inc., Hagey, John E., Section 28.4, ID # 280352. (08/22/2022)

John E. Hagey

1748 – 1841

Born in Strasburg, Alsace, went to France 1777. Came

to America with Genera Lafayette. Chosen as a companion

and later a body guard for the General. Served in the

French Light Horse and became famous in the Battle

Of White Plains and the Siege of Yorktown and was dis-

charged at Newcastle, N. Y. Went to Harrisburg, Pa.

Became a U.S. Citizen. Married Catherine Ault. Migrated

to Greensboro, N.C. Moved to Knoxville, Tenn. and

then to Nashville where he lived the remainder of

his life. In 1825, his work took him to Huntsville, Ala.

for a short period. While there he learned his old

General was to visit Nashville. He walked over 100

Miles to see Gen. Lafayette 44 years after his dis-

charge. He was 77 at the time. Arrived at Nashville

while the parade was in progress. Placing himself

Properly as the General approached, Mr. Hagey

bowed before him. Arose and was recognized and

emotionally embraced by Lafayette. The crowd was

moved to tears. John Hagey was member of

McKendree M. E. Church.  A devout Christian. He died

In the Faith July 13, 1841. Was given a military

funeral attended by 5000 people. Laid to rest

4 p.m. 7-14-1841.

Asleep in Jesus

The Nashville City Cemetery Association, Inc., Hagey, John E., Section 28.4, ID # 280352. (08/22/2022)

This marker was erected by Hagey’s great-great-great grandson Dwight Bennett. The homepage of the cemetery also mentions that the current marker is a replacement marker. It underwent restoration in 2008.

There are a few things I would like to mention concerning this stone. First, you see the spellings Catherine and Catharine equally often in official documents. For the sake of this post, I will go with the spelling that is inscribed on the marker. Second, I could not find any primary record of La Fayette and Hagey meeting again in Nashville. There is nothing in La Fayette’s correspondences nor in Auguste Levasseur’s journals. There are however a number of secondary sources mentioning and describing such a reunion.

John and Catherine had ten children, Mary (married Steven H. Cheek), Catherine (married Joseph Baker), Elizabeth (married Nicolas Becker), Susan (married Hiram W. Martin), John (never married), Sary (married James Nealy), Margaret (married Odle B. Thrift), Nancy (married John E. Wilson), George W. (never married) and Mariah (married “Jenkins”). It appears as if there were still some more children who sadly died young. The application for a pension mentions the name of the children listed above along with their spouses and ages. As, going from the given ages, some children have died prior to the pension application and some are still alive, these ages can not be linked to a certain date and are therefore rather unhelpful.

Some of John E. Hagey’s descendants however made quite a name for themselves and we find them and the family referenced in several, more local, history books. The following is written about the Reverend James Columbus Petrie:

The History of Union County, Kentucky, Courier Co., 1886, p. 848-850.

Then there is this piece about the Honourable William Brown of the firm Brown & Bruner, bankers from Metropolis in Illinois:

The Biographical Review of Johnson, Massac, Pope and Hardin Counties, Illinois, Chicago Biographical Publishing Co., 1893, p. 560-562.

All of these leads us to John E. Hagey’s application for a pension. His record has been transcribed and revised in 2015 and can be found along with many, many other pension records in various archives. The typed document is seven pages long, so while I will not include it in full, here is the link to the PDF document for everybody who wants to read it.

The record starts with a statement by Hagey himself, made on August 1, 1832 and then two affidavits. The first statement was made by Daniel McCoy (made on October 24, 1837) and the second statement was from Peter Jennings (also made on October 24, 1837). Next in the records is a letter from George W. Hagey from May 14, 1841 on behalf of his mother who was recently widowed and also an official statement from George, given on July 8, 1859. It follows an obituary for John E. Hagey, a letter form the Department of the Interior, dated November 2, 1859 and lastly an official document from the Senate of the United States.

Hagey’s claim for a pension was initially denied in 1832 because it was concluded that he was part of the French troops and not a regular member of the Continental Army. He was therefore not entitled to a pension from the United States. After his death in 1841, his widow Catherine (who lived to the ripe age of 106) applied for a widow’s pension and was in the end denied as well and on the same terms.

To make matters short, Hagey’s statements contradict with themselves and with the history of both La Fayette’s life and the American War of Independence. He claims to have been with La Fayette in places where La Fayette had not been at the stated date, he claimed to have been with La Fayette when he had been wounded – in a battle that the Marquis actually never participated in and so on and so forth. While some of these discrepancies can be attributed to old age and a failing memory (La Fayette himself confused some events from the War for Independence during his tour in 1824/25), others are a bit more confusing.

The whole application can be summoned up by this report, written by J. Thompson, Secretary in the Department of the Interior on November 2, 1859:

Sir [Hon. George C. Whiting, Comm’r. of Pensions],

I have carefully considered the claim of Catharine Hagie, widow of John Hagie, for bounty land under Act of March 3d 1855, &c, and also for pension under Acts of June 7th 1832, and July 7th 1838,upon which an appeal has been taken from your decision.

The soldier in the application he made in 1832 declares that he came over to this country with La Fayette, as a volunteer to assist the Americans in the Revolutionary war, and that he served as a private in the regiment of Light Horse under Col. Polorotski and Capt. Escaline, to the end of the war. His claim under the Act of June 7th 1832 was rejected, and since his death the widow has renewed it, and asserted in her own behalf her title to bounty-land and pension.

To justify the allowance of either of the claims for pension it is necessary that the soldier should have “served in the Continental line or State troops, volunteers or militia,” And to obtain bounty-land under the Act of 1855, that he should have been regularly mustered or paid by the United States.

His own statement shows that he could have come under neither of these conditions, for he served (if, indeed, he rendered any service) in the French Troops, and was paid by the King of France.

I am of the opinion, therefore, that these claims are bad, and accordingly affirm your rejection of them.

The papers which accompanied your report are herewith returned to your office.

I am, very respectfully,/ Your Obd’t. Serv’t.. J. Thompson, Secretary

Interesting, is it not? I started this research by think that John E. Hagey was, maybe only for a very, very short period of time, one of General La Fayette’s aide-de-camps and otherwise served as a lifeguard – a fascinating aspect of army life in and on itself and one that I have never really looked into. There were quite some interesting sources relating to Hagey and his case seemed to be a very simple one at first. Now, at the end of this post however, I am no longer entirely sure if Hagey truly served under La Fayette in the way that he had stated. I do believe however that he had been acquainted with La Fayette one way or another.

Opinions anybody?

[mikemortgage]

Toxics from manufacturing turn up in public water systems

HORSHAM, Pa. — Lauren Woeher wonders if her 16-month-old daughter has been harmed by tap water contaminated with toxic industrial compounds used in products like nonstick cookware, carpets and fast-food wrappers. Henry Betz, at 76, rattles around his house alone at night, thinking about the water his family unknowingly drank for years that was tainted by the same contaminants, and the pancreatic cancers that killed wife Betty Jean and two others in his household.

Tim Hagey, manager of a local water utility, recalls how he used to assure people that the local public water was safe. That was before testing showed it had some of the highest levels of the toxic compounds of any public water system in the U.S.

“You all made me out to be a liar,” Hagey, general water and sewer manager in the eastern Pennsylvania town of Warminister, told Environmental Protection Agency officials last month.

At “community engagement sessions” like the one in Horsham, residents and state, local and military officials are demanding that the EPA act quickly — and decisively — to clean up local water systems testing positive for dangerous levels of the chemicals, perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS.

The Trump administration called the contamination “a potential public relations nightmare” earlier this year after federal toxicology studies found that some of the compounds are more hazardous than previously acknowledged.

PFAS have been in production since the 1940s, and there are about 3,500 different types. Dumped into water, the air or soil, some forms of the compounds are expected to remain intact for thousands of years; one public-health expert dubbed them “forever chemicals.”

EPA testing from 2013 to 2015 found significant amounts of PFAS in public water supplies in 33 U.S. states. The finding helped move PFAS up as a national priority.

So did scientific studies that firmed up the health risks. One, looking at a kind of PFAS once used in making Teflon, found a probable link with kidney and testicular cancer, ulcerative colitis, thyroid disease, hypertension in pregnant women and high cholesterol. Other recent studies point to immune problems in children, among other things.

In 2016, the EPA set advisory limits — without any direct enforcement — for two kinds of PFAS that had recently been phased out of production in the United States. But manufacturers are still producing, and releasing into the air and water, newer versions of the compounds.

Earlier this year, federal toxicologists decided that even the EPA’s 2016 advisory levels for the two phased-out versions of the compound were several times too high for safety.

EPA says it will prepare a national management plan for the compounds by the end of the year. But Peter Grevatt, director of the agency’s Office of Ground Water and Drinking Water, told The Associated Press that there’s no deadline for a decision on possible regulatory actions.

Reviews of the data, and studies to gather more, are ongoing.

Even as the Trump administration says it advocates for clean air and water, it is ceding more regulation to the states and putting a hold on some regulations seen as burdensome to business.

In Horsham and surrounding towns in eastern Pennsylvania, and at other sites around the United States, the foams once used routinely in firefighting training at military bases contained PFAS.

“I know that you can’t bring back three people that I lost,” Betz, a retired airman, told the federal officials at the Horsham meeting. “But they’re gone.”

State lawmakers complained of “a lack of urgency and incompetency” on the part of EPA.

“It absolutely disgusts me that the federal government would put PR concerns ahead of public health concerns,” Republican state Rep. Todd Stephens declared.

After the meeting, Woeher questioned why it took so long to tell the public about the dangers of the compounds.

“They knew they had seeped into the water, and they didn’t tell anybody about it until it was revealed and they had to,” she said.

Speaking at her home with her toddler nearby, she asked, “Is this something that, you know, I have to worry? It’s in her.”

While contamination of drinking water around military bases and factories gets most of the attention, the EPA says 80 per cent of human exposure comes from consumer products in the home.

The chemical industry says it believes the versions of the nonstick, stain-resistant compounds in use now are safe, in part because they don’t stay in the body as long as older versions.

“As an industry today … we’re very forthcoming meeting any kind of regulatory requirement to disclose any kind of adverse data,” said Jessica Bowman, a senior director at the American Chemistry Council trade group.

Independent academics and government regulators say they don’t fully share the industry’s expressed confidence about the safety of PFAS versions now in use.

While EPA considers its next step, states are taking action to tackle PFAS contamination on their own.

In Delaware, National Guard troops handed out water after high levels of PFAS were found in a town’s water supply. Michigan last month ordered residents of two towns to stop drinking or cooking with their water, after PFAS was found at 20 times the EPA’s 2016 advisory level. In New Jersey, officials urged fishermen to eat some kinds of fish no more than once a year because of PFAS contamination.

Washington became the first state to ban any firefighting foam with the compound.

Given the findings on the compounds, alarm bells “should be ringing four out of five” at the EPA, Kerrigan Clough, a former deputy regional EPA administrator, said in an interview with the AP as he waited for a test for PFAS in the water at his Michigan lake home, which is near a military base that used firefighting foam.

“If the risk appears to be high, and you’ve got it every place, then you’ve got a different level” of danger and urgency, Clough said. “It’s a serious problem.”

Problems with PFAS surfaced partly as a result of a 1999 lawsuit by a farmer who filmed his cattle staggering, frothing and dying in a field near a DuPont disposal site in Parkersburg, West Virginia, for PFAS then used in Teflon.

In 2005, under President George W. Bush, the EPA and DuPont settled an EPA complaint that the chemical company knew at least by the mid-1980s that the early PFAS compound posed a substantial risk to human health.

The EPA in the past “didn’t have much of a hammer to come down on a bad existing chemical,” said Lynn Goldman, the agency’s assistant administrator over toxic substances in the 1990s, now dean of the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University.

But Congress has boosted the agency’s authority to regulate problematic chemicals since then. That includes toughening up the federal Toxic Substances Control Act and regulatory mandates for the EPA itself in 2016.

For PFAS, that should include addressing the new versions of the compounds coming into production, not just tackling old forms that companies already agreed to take offline, Goldman said.

“Otherwise it’s the game of whack-a-mole,” she said. “That’s not what you want to do when you’re protecting the public health.”

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Associated Press video journalist Joseph B. Frederick contributed to this report.

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Online: EPA site on PFAS: https://www.epa.gov/pfas

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