Background
John Durkee was born on December 11, 1728 at Windham, Connecticut, United States. He was the son of William Durkee and Susannah Sabin.
John Durkee was born on December 11, 1728 at Windham, Connecticut, United States. He was the son of William Durkee and Susannah Sabin.
Not long after attaining his majority, Durkee removed to Norwich, making his home on Bean Hill.
At various times he was an innkeeper, a justice of the peace, and a member of the General Assembly.
He served during the French and Indian War, rising from the rank of second lieutenant to that of major of militia. At the time of the Stamp Act he became an ardent Son of Liberty. Heading a body of several hundred armed men, he dramatically forced the Connecticut stamp agent, Jared Ingersoll, to resign at Wethersfield, September 19, 1763; and at a meeting of the Sons of Liberty at Hartford, March 25, 1766, was appointed, together with Israel Putnam, member of a committee to arrange a system of correspondence between the Connecticut Sons of Liberty and those of other colonies. At a town meeting in Norwich in December 1767, he was chosen member of a committee which recommended that in conformity with the example of Boston the inhabitants refrain from the importation of certain articles of British manufacture. In the spring of 1769, under the auspices of the Susquehanna Company, in which he had acquired an interest, he conducted from Norwich a band of over one hundred emigrants to Wyoming Valley and laid out a settlement surrounded by a stockade which was called Fort Durkee. Later he named the settlement Wilkes-Barré in honor of John Wilkes and Col. Isaac Barré, steadfast champions of colonial rights. He was for a time president of the governing committee. In 1769 and again in 1770 he was captured and taken prisoner to Philadelphia by agents of the proprietary government of Pennsylvania, which claimed the Wyoming Valley as against Connecticut.
In 1772 he returned to Norwich but was back again in Wyoming for certain periods in 1773 and 1774, at which date his connect with the settlement ceased. Word having reached Norwich that the British forces had attacked the people of Boston, he set out on September 4, 1774, with four hundred and sixty-four men, armed and mounted, but returned on learning that the rumor was false.
In May 1773, he helped to raise in Norwich a company of one hundred men, including his two sons, which was mustered into the 3rd Connecticut Regiment commanded by Israel Putnam. Despite a frail constitution, he saw extensive service during the war, being present at the battle of Bunker Hill, and in the campaigns conducted by Washington in the middle colonies. His right hand was rendered useless by a wound received at the battle of Monmouth.
On January 3, 1753 Durkee married Martha Wood of Norwich.