Evert Mellick

Quick Facts

Place of Death:

Stillwater, NY

Date of Death:

September 25 or 26, 1777

Evert Mellick enlisted as a soldier in Captain McMyer’s company, Colonel Ogden’s 1^st New Jersey Regiment, in January 1777. Unfortunately, we don’t know how old he was or what town he was from. Even his name is somewhat nebulous because it was spelled a variety of ways on military documents.

In July 1777, Evert was transferred to Colonel Daniel Morgan’s Rifle Corps, an elite force consisting of men drawn from Virginia and Pennsylvania Continental regiments. Why, in a unit with no New Jersey soldiers, would Evert have been drafted? It’s because he wasn’t only a soldier—Evert was also a waiter, and he happened to be the waiter to the 1^st New Jersey’s major, Joseph Morris. Because Morris was appointed to be Morgan’s major, where Major Morris went, Private Mellick had to follow.

As with their British and German counterparts, Continental Army officers had servants—or as the Americans preferred to call them, “waiters.” While soldier-waiters were expected to fight in battle, they were exempt from many other soldierly duties because they otherwise had to attend their officers.

Now settled in as a rifleman of Captain Boone’s Pennsylvania rifle company, Mellick survived the September 19 Battle of Freeman’s Farm. But he was killed on September 25 or 26 during a skirmish near the British lines. What happened to his remains is unclear.

It’s sobering to consider that if Evert was like 95% of other soldiers who were not also waiters, he wouldn’t have lost his life at Saratoga in 1777.

As for Major Morris, he survived the Saratoga campaign but was mortally wounded a couple months later in the Battle of White Marsh, Pennsylvania.