Robert Magaw was an American politician and lawyer from Carlisle, Pennsylvania, who served as a colonel in the Continental Army during the U.S. Revolutionary War. He was forced to surrender it, and became a prisoner on November 16, 1776. Magaw served several years in the militia, and when the war broke out he was made a colonel in command of the 5th Pennsylvania Battalion. During the New York campaign he was in command of the U.S. garrison at Fort Washington. Based on his parole he was set at liberty in New York City, but could not leave the city until he was exchanged. After he was exchanged, he returned home to New Carlisle and continued his law practice. He served two years in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives and was for many years a trustee of Dickinson College. He died at home in Carlisle on January 7, 1790. After his death, Marritje returned to New York to live with their son, Robert Van Brunt Magaw, at Gravesend. The available biographical account does not describe a continuous final medical course. It gives no dependable sequence of treatment and last symptoms from which to reconstruct a more detailed bedside narrative.