1775 and the forgotten man of the American Revolution

KITTANNING — In April 1775, William Thompson, a man rarely if ever mentioned in American history books, became the first commissioned colonel in the Continental Army of a rifle battalion in the 1st Pennsylvania Regiment.

The men who served with him were German, Irish, and Scottish settlers. They were fiercely independent frontiersmen, farmers, and artisans who had settled in the wilds near the forks of the Allegheny, Pennsylvania. 

Thompson was a hardy man. Born in Ireland, he emigrated to British-ruled colonial America and served as a captain in the Crown’s military in Western Pennsylvania during the French and Indian War. The war lasted seven years and remains a pivotal yet often overlooked episode in American history. 

The war, which destroyed the French Empire in North America and sparked

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