Colonel "Red George" McDonnell led 500 men into the lightly defended village while a separate force attacked Captain Benjamin Forsyth's forces on Lighthouse Point. Marching up from the river along Caroline Street to Washington Street, his men split at the corner into two groups, one moving down Washington Street past David Parish's mansion and then up State Street, the other continuing up Caroline and turning at Ford Street. Near the corner of Ford and State Streets, some of his men encountered an iron 12 pounder on a wheel carriage, a Revolutionary War trophy taken from Burgoyne at Saratoga, commanded by Captain Giles Kellogg of the Company of Artillery from Schoharie County. Kellogg, who had been sent to Ogdensburgh in late December to help protect the northern frontier, fired the cannon as the British approached, but the screw used to elevate it broke after the first shot and disabled it. Kellogg and his men then withdrew over the bridge to join Forsyth's rifle regiment at the fort on the west side of the Oswegatchie, leaving St. Lawrence County Sheriff Joseph York as the last barrier to the British capture of Ogdensburgh.