GUYANT, Luke & dtr Abigail Grattan

GUYANT, GRATTAN, PALMER, OBRIEN, TRASK

Posted By: S. Ferrall - IAGenWeb volunteer
Date: 7/12/2025 at 14:23:27

Washington's Body Guard.
Luke Guyant was born March 5, 1750, enlisting first in the Continental Army at Simsbury, Conn., in the spring of 1775. He re-enlisted in 1776 in Col. Sheldon's second regiment of Light Dragoons for the war. He was wounded at Saratoga and twice at Monmouth in the head and arm. In 1781 he was detached for service in General Washington's Horse Guards, a body of picked men. After Yorktown he was returned to his regiment. He was pensioned Sept. 21, 1809 for disability resulting from wounds.

After his death Dec. 30, 1837, his daughter, Abigail, was pensioned for his services. She was born Sept. 8, 1794 and died Sept. 26, 1886 at Waukon, Iowa, aged 92 years and 18 days.

The writer is her oldest living grandchild. She took me in infancy, at my mother's death, rearing me to despise pacifism. In the first battle of my career she stopped intervention though my antagonist was older and larger. It was not the last time that knowledge of a certain second licking inspired desperate efforts for victory. And it never failed. That spirit made us a nation, under Washington, kept us a nation under Lincoln and will prolong our existence if the miserable policy that dictated the sinking of our battle ships does not prevail.

The records of the war department show Luke Guyant to have been five foot, six inches in stature, eyes, hair and complexion dark, which features he transmitted to Abigail and she in turn to all her grandchildren but one.

Aug. 21, 1825, an old maid of 31, she married Amos Grattan, who fought under Scott at Lundy's Lane and helped drive the British back into Canada in our second war with them. His father, Thomas Grattan, was a revolutionary soldier in Col. Brewer's Massachusetts infantry at the battles of Ticonderoga, surrender of Burgoyne and previous battles. Pensioned March 11, 1824, for disability due to his several wounds.

Abigail's second living grandchild is Mrs. Mary Palmer, mother of Judge Harlan Palmer, of California. Next comes O.T. Grattan, Elkton, S.D., and the youngest, Mrs. John E. O'Brien, of Waukon, Iowa.

Abigail inherited to a marked degree the fighting spirit of her sire, which won him a place as Washington's protector at Yorktown. During the disastrous year without a summer when there were no crops and streams froze over in July, she and Amos lived in the wilderness of Oswego, New York, then an outpost of human settlement.

In the leanto of their log house stood the barrel of soap grease which a half starved wild cat was greedily gobbling, his head deep in the barrel. Abigail seized him around the neck with her powerful muscular hands and choked him to death without getting a scratch. She would teach the pesky critters not to steal her soap grease. I knew the power in those sinewy hands and never wondered that the wild cat succumbed to their grasp.

The pioneer women and their men of those days built the nation which the pacifistic females of the Wooley type seek to destroy with the aid of mollycoddles by stripping us of ships and arms.
M.T. Grattan,
Post 122, G.A.R.

~Allamakee Journal and Lansing Mirror, Wednesday, February 24, 1932; pg 2

Notes: M.T. Grattan is Marvin Trask Grattan. His parents were Henry Guyant Grattan and his 1st wife Jane Trask. Marvin was born in 1848 & his mother Jane died in 1849.

Abigail's obituary
 

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