Battle of Crooked Billet
Supported by:

Millbrook Society
Newtown Historic Associaton
Craven Hall
Doylestown Historic Society
Bucks County Civil War Museum
Friends of Graeme Park

".. for his body was found with one of his hands almost cut off ...
and his brains coming out of his nose"
Obituary of Captain John Downey
The Battle of The Crooked Billet

About the Film

In 2006, Arrival Video productions was planning a documentary on the History of Hatboro. In November of 2006 Arrival Video's Scott Randolph and Trey Crease met with The Millbrook Society's Dave Shannon and Ed Price to discuss the outline for the documentary.

Part of the History of Hatboro is the Battle of Crooked Billet, when it came time to talk about the battle, Scott said he thought there could be enough to do a separate DVD just on the skirmish.

About a week later Scott visited a Hope Lodge event to recruit re-enactors for the Battle of Crooked Billet. He was invited by John Naulty of the 1st NJ Volunteers (a British re-enactment group) to join them at Fort Mifflin the following week.

Scott was escorted around Fort Mifflin by Mitch Baker of the 11th PA Continental Line. When the regiments heard he wanted to do a film about Crooked Billet they started saying "Have you talked to Denis Cooke?", "You need to talk to Denis." Fortunately, Denis was there with his reenactment group the 5th PA Regiment.

Denis and Scott walked to Denis' car where he showed Scott a very large volume of information that he has collected about the battle. Denis had been studying the battle for about ten years. Scott looked at Denis and said "I thought we could do another DVD on the battle, I now KNOW we can do another DVD."

After Fort Mifflin the project snowballed, Dominick DiIorio, also of the 5th PA Regiment, became a producer and coordinator for all of the re-enactors. This was a huge undertaking to bring together over 100 military and civilian re-enactors.

Many Historic societies and sites were eager to assist, from The Newtown Historic Association to Washington Crossing State Park, and many many more.

The main battle sequences were shot in Warminster Community Park near where the real battle ended. That day re-enactors came from all over to participate including Walton, New York and Cincinnati, Ohio.

Many individuals and groups volunteered and donated their time, services and goods to make this production. Without their support this documentary would have never been made.

The project took 3 1/2 years to complete, it was shot in HD (High Definition) and the directors cut runs for 72 minutes.

 

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