Background
George McClure was born near Londonderry, Ireland. He was the son of Finla McClure, and a descendant of Scotch immigrants to Ireland.
George McClure was born near Londonderry, Ireland. He was the son of Finla McClure, and a descendant of Scotch immigrants to Ireland.
He relates that from his fourth to his fifteenth year he attended school under "cruel and tyrannical" pedagogues; that he then learned the carpenter's trade.
At the age of twenty McClure emigrated to America. He landed at Baltimore, and after working as a carpenter there and at Chambersburg, Pa. , about 1793 went to Bath, Steuben County, N. Y. , in a region which was then just being opened to settlement. Here he soon became a merchant. He studied the Seneca dialect in order to trade more successfully in furs; he erected a distillery, a flour mill, and a mill for making woolen yarn; he speculated in land; he built boats for lake and river traffic and conducted cargoes of flour, lumber, and cattle down the Susquehanna to Baltimore, or to Columbia, Pa. , and thence overland to Philadelphia. He held various civil offices and rose in the militia to the rank of brigadier-general. In the fall of 1812 his brigade was called into service by Gen. Alexander Smyth, and McClure was one of a group of militia officers who protested in writing against Smyth's dilatory tactics. In the fall of 1813, when the expedition against Montreal under Gen. James Wilkinson was in preparation, McClure was ordered again to the Niagara frontier to command a detachment of militia and to defend the frontier in the absence of the regular troops.
When Wilkinson definitely abandoned the campaign against Montreal (Nov. 13), the British turned their attention to the Niagara. Meanwhile, the terms of enlistment of McClure's volunteer troops were expiring; the War Department inexcusably neglected to reinforce him; and by Dec. 10 he had only 100 men at Fort George to face 500 advancing British. Upon the advice of a council of his officers he determined to abandon the fort; and the nearby village of Newark, once the capital of Upper Canada, was given to the flames. The reason advanced by McClure for this wanton act of destruction was that it would deprive the enemy of winter quarters; he also appealed to a letter from Secretary of War John Armstrong, which had authorized the officer commanding at Fort George to destroy the village if necessary for the defense of the fort. This letter did not cover McClure's act, and in view of the fact that all the barracks, as well as tents for 1, 500 men, were left standing, his plea that he was destroying winter quarters was without merit. That the burning of Newark was generally disapproved on the American side is indicated by the hostile reception accorded McClure in Buffalo. His popularity must have been still less after December 30, when the British burned Buffalo and Black Rock in retaliation for the destruction of Newark. McClure returned to his home in Bath and did not again appear on the Niagara frontier. His conduct at Newark was disavowed by his superior officer, General Wilkinson, in a letter to Sir George Prevost. That his popularity at home did not suffer seriously is indicated by his appointment as sheriff of Steuben County in 1815 and his three elections as representative of the county in the legislature. About 1834 he removed to Elgin, Ill. , where he died.
McClure is described as having been "a staunch frees oiler, a radical temperance man, and a firm believer in the future glory of the United States".
On August 20, 1795, McClure married Eleanor Bole of Derry, Pa. , and after her death, Sarah Welles (1808).