Thomas Machin (March 20, 1744 – April 3, 1816) was a British-born American soldier and construction engineer. Machin was born in

Staffordshire Staffordshire (; postal abbreviation Staffs.) is a landlocked county in the West Midlands region of England. It borders Cheshire to the northwest, Derbyshire and Leicestershire to the east, Warwickshire to the southeast, the West Midlands Cou ...

, England, and in his youth was apprenticed to English canal builder

James Brindley James Brindley (1716 – 27 September 1772) was an English engineer. He was born in Tunstead, Derbyshire, and lived much of his life in Leek, Staffordshire, becoming one of the most notable engineers of the 18th century. Early life Born i ...

. After arriving in America he was commissioned a Lieutenant of the artillery and then in July 1776, a Captain in Lamb's Artillery in which capacity he served for the duration of the conflict. (The commission, for various reasons, was not approved by congress until 1780.) In 1776 he was dispatched by George Washington to the

Hudson Highlands The Hudson Highlands are mountains on both sides of the Hudson River in New York state lying primarily in Putnam County on its east bank and Orange County on its west. They continue somewhat to the south in Westchester County and Rockland County ...

to assist in defending the Hudson River and creating emplacements an obstructions in an alongside the river from Fort Montgomery up to Kingston. He was singularly responsible for emplacing the

chain A chain is a serial assembly of connected pieces, called links, typically made of metal, with an overall character similar to that of a rope in that it is flexible and curved in compression but linear, rigid, and load-bearing in tension. A c ...

at Fort Montgomery prior to the British attack on that post in the fall of 1777. The Fort Montgomery chain was breached on October 7, 1777 when the British overran the forts. ' The Great Chain' at

West Point The United States Military Academy (USMA), also known Metonymy, metonymically as West Point or simply as Army, is a United States service academies, United States service academy in West Point, New York. It was originally established as a f ...

, was emplaced by Machin the subsequent year at the direction of then New York Governor, George Clinton. That chain was never breached and remained in place until the end of the war, being rolled up and placed on the bank during the winter months when there was ice in the river. Following his service in the Hudson Valley he was attached to the

Sullivan Expedition The 1779 Sullivan Expedition (also known as the Sullivan-Clinton Expedition, the Sullivan Campaign, and the Sullivan-Clinton Genocide) was a United States military campaign during the American Revolutionary War, lasting from June to October 1779 ...

and was instrumental in the defeat of

Joseph Brant Thayendanegea or Joseph Brant (March 1743 – November 24, 1807) was a Mohawk people, Mohawk military and political leader, based in present-day New York (state), New York, who was closely associated with Kingdom of Great Britain, Great B ...

's forces at the

Battle of Newtown The Battle of Newtown (August 29, 1779) was a major battle of the Sullivan Expedition, an armed offensive led by General John Sullivan that was ordered by the Continental Congress to end the threat of the Iroquois who had sided with the British ...

. He also participated in the

Yorktown Campaign The Yorktown campaign, also known as the Virginia campaign, was a series of military maneuvers and battles during the American Revolutionary War that culminated in the siege of Yorktown in October 1781. The result of the campaign was the surren ...

where he won a bet for his commander,

Henry Knox Henry Knox (July 25, 1750 – October 25, 1806), a Founding Father of the United States, was a senior general of the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War, serving as chief of artillery in most of Washington's campaigns. Following the ...

, who had made a wager with French General Rochambeau regarding the relative accuracy of French and American Artillery, by blowing up a British troop transport. Following the war, after running a

mint MiNT is Now TOS (MiNT) is a free software alternative operating system kernel for the Atari ST system and its successors. It is a multi-tasking alternative to TOS and MagiC. Together with the free system components fVDI device drivers, XaAES g ...

operation on Orange Lake (near Newburgh), he moved to Montgomery County, New York where he pursued his

surveying Surveying or land surveying is the technique, profession, art, and science of determining the terrestrial two-dimensional or three-dimensional positions of points and the distances and angles between them. A land surveying professional is ca ...

and engineering activities. His son, Thomas Machin Jr. was a Brigadier General in the War of 1812. He died on April 3, 1816. He was a member of the Order of Cincinnati. As a

civil engineer A civil engineer is a person who practices civil engineering – the application of planning, designing, constructing, maintaining, and operating infrastructure while protecting the public and environmental health, as well as improving existing ...

Machin was

conscripted Conscription (also called the draft in the United States) is the state-mandated enlistment of people in a national service, mainly a military service. Conscription dates back to antiquity and it continues in some countries to the present day un ...

for the planning of the

Cape Cod Canal The Cape Cod Canal is an artificial waterway in the U.S. state of Massachusetts connecting Cape Cod Bay in the north to Buzzards Bay in the south, and is part of the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway. The approximately canal traverses the neck o ...

immediately following the

Siege of Boston The siege of Boston (April 19, 1775 – March 17, 1776) was the opening phase of the American Revolutionary War. New England militiamen prevented the movement by land of the British Army, which was garrisoned in what was then the peninsular town ...

and was responsible for

dam A dam is a barrier that stops or restricts the flow of surface water or underground streams. Reservoirs created by dams not only suppress floods but also provide water for activities such as irrigation, human consumption, industrial use, a ...

ming Lake Otsego (New York) to allow

James Clinton Major General James Clinton (August 9, 1736 – September 22, 1812) was an American Revolutionary War officer who, with John Sullivan, led in 1779 the Sullivan Expedition in what is now western New York to attack British-allied Seneca and ...

's army to float down to Tioga along the

Mohawk Mohawk may refer to: Related to Native Americans *Mohawk people, an indigenous people of North America (Canada and New York) *Mohawk language, the language spoken by the Mohawk people *Mohawk hairstyle, from a hairstyle once thought to have been t ...

to join with Sullivan in August 1779.

References

Bibliography

*''Donderburg's Pumpkin Vine'', Kenneth B. Lifshitz, Heritage Arts, 2011.

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Machin, Thomas 1744 births 1816 deaths American civil engineers American military engineers British emigrants to the Thirteen Colonies Continental Army officers from England People from Staffordshire