Hello everyone. Welcome back to our blog.

My name is Burkely Hermann and I have the privilege for being the researcher for this wonderful project, Finding the Maryland 400. Less than a week ago, I graduated from St. Mary’s College of Maryland, a small liberal arts college bordering historic St. Mary’s City, with a bachelor of arts in Political Science and a minor in History. Still, I have a lifelong love of history which manifests itself in this project. For the next 6 months, I am excited to work with Owen Lourie, the project director. My work, which will be showcased on this blog, would not be possible without previous research on this project since 2013 by Sean Baker, Taira Sullivan, Emily Huebner, Jeff Truitt, and Daniel Blattau. I would also like to thank the Maryland Society of the Sons of the American Revolution for continuing to fund this project which makes this Staff Researcher position a reality.

I will continue to research and write up biographies of members of the First Maryland Regiment. These posts will be focused, first and foremost, on the remaining commissioned officers of the regiment and then, enlisted men in the Fourth and Fifth Companies. Even with the research so far, there is still much left to uncover about these 400 soldiers, who played a vital role in the Battle of Brooklyn, the first major military engagement of the American Revolutionary War.

This project does not mark the first time I have done in-depth historical research, but it is my first exposure to the historical account of the Maryland 400. In high school, I was a participant in three consecutive Maryland History Days, the first of which was an exhibit on Tench Tilghman, an aide-de-camp to General George Washington. For the paper I wrote accompanying the exhibit, I am forever grateful that the Sons of the American Revolution gave me a college scholarship. At my alma mater, I took numerous classes that focused on different aspects of U.S. history ranging from colonial history to the civil rights movement, and mass culture. For some of these classes, I wrote numerous in-depth papers which used primary sources of varying forms, including first-hand accounts and other documentary evidence.

Using my research and writing skills refined from writing research papers in college, my participation in History Day, and numerous years blogging on WordPress, writing about contemporary political issues, I can adequately continue this project. I look forward to conducting primary source research from online sources and those within the walls of the Archives in order to highlight more about the Maryland 400 which is not already known. As the first post of this blog states, this project’s goal is to find out who the men of the Maryland 400 are and recognize their importance. In the end, I feel that I am well-placed to continue fulfilling the goal of the project to the best of my capacity, based on my skills and previous experience.