Asa Hartshorne
United States Army officer (died 1794)
Asa Hartshorne was a United States Army officer who died in 1794 during the Northwest Indian War. He was among the signers of the Treaty with the Six Nations and the Treaty with the Wyandot at Fort Harmar on January 9, 1789. Hartshorne became the namesake of a 1790 frontier skirmish near Maysville, Kentucky.
Biography
Hartshorne was born in Franklin, Connecticut Connecticut and joined the Army in 1787.
As an ensign in the First American Regiment, he signed the 1789 Treaty of Fort Harmar
He traveled west from Fort Harmar that August, along with his fellow junior officer Jacob Kingsbury, under the command of Captain David Strong. On 30 May 1790, Hartshorne commanded a party near Limestone, Kentucky, that was attacked in retaliation for an attack on the Shawnee village of Chalawgatha by Charles Scott a month earlier. Hartshorne reported 8 people missing after the attack and 5 killed, including 3 children. This frontier skirmish is known as "Hartshorne's Defeat (1790)."
While stationed in Fort Washington at Cincinnati, Ohio, Hartshorne participated in the Harmar campaign, an assault on Native American villages deep in Ohio Territory. He and Captain John Armstrong were the only two active duty Army officers to survive when a force under Kentucky colonel John Hardin approached the Miami village of Little Turtle on 19 October 1790.
Hartshorne was promoted to lieutenant on 4 March 1791 and returned to Connecticut to recruit for the newly-formed Second American Regiment.
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