One of my wife’s favorite holidays is Independence Day. Typically, on that day, we enjoy a picnic at my aunt and uncle’s home, visit the pool and enjoy spending time together. My wife and I for many years have worked hard teaching our kids about the importance of the day and what we should remember and why it is significant. It’s easy to focus on the great folks who took significant risk for our national independence like George Washington; Thomas Jefferson; my wife’s ancestor, Gen. John Glover; and Patrick Henry. Had the outcome of the war for independence gone differently, these folks would have been in serious trouble, to say the least. There are also those who contributed to the cause of independence who aren’t as well-known but their services to the nation were none the less important.

Hidden among the ancient trees, shady avenues and stately monuments of Union Cemetery in Steubenville lies the simple grave of an almost-forgotten Revolutionary War hero. His brave acts and self-sacrifice earned him the respect and admiration of our founding fathers. Arnold Henry Dohrman was born in 1749 in Amsterdam, Holland, to wealthy merchant parents.

At a young age his parents moved to Lisbon, Portugal, to conduct business in that city. Young Dohrman was educated in the best European fashion and spoke several languages, but his life wasn’t without tragedy. He lost both of his parents in the great Lisbon earthquake on the feast of All Saints Day, Nov 1, 1755. He and his siblings survived when their nurse sought shelter under a set of stone steps which shielded them from falling debris. An estimated 12,000 people died in that catastrophe.

When Dohrman came of age, he followed in his father’s footsteps, becoming a very successful merchant with his brother, Jacob. The firm owned many sailing ships, and he engaged in the import and export of fine trade goods, especially tea, spices and fine products from the Orient, according to Mary Donaldson Sinclair in her book “Pioneer Days.”

Dohrman’s role in the American Revolution began when British ships started bringing captured American seamen into the port at Lisbon, leaving them helpless in a foreign country. Taking it upon himself, Dohrman risked his business and his fortune to help these captives and do his best to send them back home. He brought them into his home in Lisbon and cared for the sick and injured out of his own pocket.

According to a letter written in 1817 by his wife, Rachel, his “own house was frequently the asylum of whole crews of captive American seamen, who were fed, clothed and relieved in sickness through his benevolence, and that at a time when his attachment to the cause of America was dangerous both to his person and property.” His act of charity and duty to these poor, stranded American seamen numbered in excess of 600 during the years of the conflict.

Portugal at this time was in a treaty with England and pressure mounted when British authorities learned about the help Dohrman was extending to the enemy. News of Arnold Dohrman’s brave acts reached America and in 1780, the Continental Congress appointed him agent for the United States in the Kingdom of Portugal. He received warm letters from many of our founding fathers. Thomas Jefferson said “Sir: The many kindnesses which you have shown to our captive countrymen whom the fortune of war has carried within the reach of your inquiries do great honor to your humanity and must forever interest us in your welfare.” John Adams, writing from Paris in May 1780, said, “You will please to accept my thanks as an individual who feels himself obliged to every gentleman, of whatever county, who is good enough to assist his unfortunate countrymen.”

Patrick Henry said it best in a letter from December 1780: “I say that, among the transactions of this interesting time, some friend to virtue I hope will be found who may record the fact, and inform the world that there lives a man who turned his eyes from scenes of grandeur, dissipation, and the allurements of wealth and pleasure, to behold the virtuous sons of America struggling for the rights of human nature; and, although unallied to them by any ties of country or kindred, he opened his purse to them as distressed captives, and took them to his bosom as brethren. As an American I thank you, sir.”

Despite being the American agent in Portugal, Dohrman fled the country with practically nothing of his wealth and success left.

In a letter to Congress, Dohrman described the substantial risk he took in aiding the Americans. He writes, “the execution of this plan was attended with great hazard as well as great expense and loss … I soon became an object of resentment and persecution of the Court of London: upon whose instances with the Court at Portugal was forbidden, on pain of banishment, from continuing assistance to the Americans; but the attachment to their cause would not suffer me to be deterred by menaces or dangers from persisting in what I considered as a duty I owed to the cause of humanity and liberty.”

Because of Dohrman’s persistence and dedication to the American cause of independence, he was effectively blacklisted from society and friends, which ruined his credit, mercantile business and personal interests.

Dohrman immigrated to America and set up a mercantile business in New York City where he worked with the likes of John Jacob Astor in the fur trade. It is said that he fitted out a whole regiment of soldiers with his remaining money when he arrived in the New World. While in New York, he married Rachel Banks and eventually had 11 children.

By 1785 though, his businesses had failed and his home burned down twice, so he appealed to Congress for help. He asked for reimbursements for his expenses, not because of the help he provided to our American countrymen in their time of need, but in his duty as the U.S. agent to the Kingdom of Portugal. Dohrman asked congress to reimburse expenses totaling around $26,000, a hefty sum in those days, but he could only present vouchers for $5,800 in expenses. Dohrman argued that his services were often done secretly “to elude public observation, and of course under pretexts and appearances which would not admit of vouchers of the facts.” He was “often obliged, for his own security, to deposit his papers out of his possession; by which means many of them were at different times lost.”

Although Congress couldn’t pay him back the full amount, they paid him the $5,800 and did offer him $1,600 as a pension per year for the rest of his life. In 1787, they offered him an entire township of land in the newly surveyed Northwest Territory. Dohrman was to pick the land he wished to have, but he relied on others to pick for him.

Those agents evidently consulted a map, rather than inspecting the land in person. The tract that was chosen for him was Township 13, Range 7 in the Seven Ranges. It consisted of 23,040 acres in what is today Harrison and Tuscarawas counties. When Dohrman moved out to Ohio to take possession of the land, he was sorely disappointed to find that the land was marshy, devoid of good farming or timber.

Ultimately Dohrman and his family moved to Steubenville. In 1813, Dohrman was again destitute and while preparing to travel to address Congress to present his plight, he fell ill and died. David Hoge, registrar at the first Federal Land Office, wrote to Congress in 1817 describing the situation of the family of 12 and advocated for help. He wrote “I have, from time to time, made particular inquires as to the value of the land which Mr. Dohrman received as a donation, and have no hesitation in saying that I consider it as the worst township in the three western ranges of this district.”

Hoge goes on to say that the sale of the land, even by the standards of 1817, would be grossly inadequate to pay back the debt owed to Dohrman. Hoge said that “Dohrman died two doors from me, literally of a broken heart, without one ray of hope, as to this world, to cheer the gloom, but what arose from the expectation that this his adopted country, whose friend he had been in her peril and distress, would not, in her day of prosperity, abandon his now helpless family.”

Letters were received from those who remembered Dohrman’s sacrifices to our nation in the 1780s, and those who knew the family, like Steubenville co-founder James Ross. Congress heard this call for help and awarded Mrs. Dohrman $300 a year for the rest of her life and $100 for each of her children until they reached the age of 21.

Dohrman’s family remained here in our area and persevered. In 1860, his well-known grandson Dohrman James Sinclair was born and would go on to make his patriot ancestor proud. In 1929, Dohrman’s sword, the one he carried in the courts of Portugal during the revolution, was presented by his granddaughter, Caroline R. Dohrman, to the Daughters of the American Revolution, where it is housed in their collection to this day to educate their visitors of this important man.

Today, Arnold Henry Dohrman’s remains lie in Union Cemetery, a patriot almost forgotten among the other worthies who inhabit the site. We owe it to him to remember his sacrifice and his devotion to our American cause when we needed it most.

George Washington said that Dohrman is “a gentleman of great merit, and one who, at an early period of the war, (when our affairs were rather overshadowed,) advanced his money very liberally to support our suffering countrymen in captivity.”

With that in mind, I hope you will make Arnold Henry Dohrman a hero you remember on Independence Day in the future.

(Zuros in the Hancock County administrator.)