John Leonard Hardenbergh

author

John Leonard Hardenbergh

1748–1806

A Revolutionary War officer from New York, he is remembered for a vivid firsthand journal of the 1779 Sullivan campaign. His writing offers a direct, ground-level view of marching, mapping, and military life in the early United States.

1 Audiobook

The Journal of Lieut. John L. Hardenbergh of the Second New York Continental Regiment from May 1 to October 3, 1779, in General Sullivan's Campaign Against the Western Indians With an Introduction, Copious Historical Notes, and Maps of the Battle-field of Newtown and Groveland Ambuscade

The Journal of Lieut. John L. Hardenbergh of the Second New York Continental Regiment from May 1 to October 3, 1779, in General Sullivan's Campaign Against the Western Indians With an Introduction, Copious Historical Notes, and Maps of the Battle-field of Newtown and Groveland Ambuscade

by John Leonard Hardenbergh

About the author

Born in 1748 in Ulster County, New York, John Leonard Hardenbergh served as a lieutenant in the Second New York Continental Regiment during the American Revolution. He is best known today for the journal he kept from May to October 1779, recording his part in General Sullivan’s campaign. That account has endured because it captures events as he saw them, with the practical detail of someone living through the march rather than writing long after it.

Hardenbergh’s surviving journal has been published as The Journal of Lieut. John L. Hardenbergh of the Second New York Continental Regiment, helping later readers and historians follow one soldier’s experience of the war. Sources connected with later editions describe him as a native of Rosendale in Ulster County and the son of Leonard and Rachel Hardenbergh.

He died in 1806. Some historical sources also connect him with early Auburn, New York, but the clearest, most consistently confirmed part of his legacy is his firsthand Revolutionary War journal.