Project sponsored by the Maryland Society of the Sons of the American Revolution
Recent posts: Finding the Maryland 400
Help Support the Maryland 400!
In August 1776, a group of soldiers—the Maryland 400—helped hold back the British Army at the Battle of Brooklyn, allowing the rest of the Americans to escape the field. The Marylanders lost a quarter of their men that day, but their stand saved the Continental Army, allowing it to live and fight another day. For […]
Revolutionary Book Review: George the Drummer Boy
The first book I ever read about the American Revolution was a children’s book called George the Drummer Boy, by Nathaniel Benchley, with illustrations by Don Bolognese. It tells the story of a drummer in the British Army who is stationed in Boston in 1775. His unit is chosen to march out of Boston to […]
A New Podcast Tells the Story of the Maryland Line
We are excited to share that a new podcast about the Revolutionary War, and Maryland’s soldiers, has been launched by Mission History. The series tells the story of the events that brought two armies, including nearly 2,000 soldiers from Maryland, to Camden, South Carolina in August 1781. The battle fought at Camden was one of […]
A Beating in Baltimore: Communal Violence during the Revolution
Today’s post comes from Marshall Cooperman of St. John’s College in Annapolis, who was part of the Maryland State Archives’ intern class of 2023. Marshall’s project team worked on cataloging a large collection of Revolutionary-era correspondence, and he came across the letters that tell this story while doing that work America in 1776 was a […]
Tag Archives: George Washington
The Maryland 400’s Veterans
The mission of Finding the Maryland 400 is to pay tribute to Maryland’s Revolutionary War veterans. Today, however, we want to focus on the members of the First Maryland Regiment who were already veterans before the unit’s first battle in … Continue reading
A “little groggy”: the deputy sheriff of Baltimore and his “bowl of toddy”
On December 21, 1776, Sergeant John Hardman of the Edward Veazey‘s Seventh Independent Company arrived at a public prison in Baltimore Town with captured British soldiers. [1] He was there escorting the British prisoners from Philadelphia. That night, Hardman ordered a “bowl of … Continue reading
Victory at Yorktown!
On October 19, 1781, British General Charles, Lord Conwallis surrendered his army of more than 8,000 men to George Washington at Yorktown, Virginia. Cornwallis’s action brought an end to a siege which had lasted nearly two weeks. It was also … Continue reading
Sickened Marylanders and the Philadelphia Bettering House
On April 13, 1777, John Adams described the spread of disease in Philadelphia and the fate of the sick soldiers in that city in a letter to his wife, Abigail Smith. In his letter, he mentioned a local institution, called the … Continue reading
“The misfortune which ensued”: The defeat at Germantown
On the morning of October 4, 1777, Continental troops encountered British forces, led by Lord William Howe, encamped at Germantown, Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia’s outskirts. George Washington believed that he had surprise on his side. [1] He had ordered his multiple divisions to march twenty … Continue reading
A “dull place” on the Patapsco: Baltimore and the Marr Brothers
In May 1776, the Revolution had been raging for almost a year with skirmishes between the British imperial army and the rag-tag revolutionaries. William Marr, probably with his brothers Nicholas and James, enlisted in the Continental Army in Capt. Nathaniel Ramsey’s … Continue reading
Col. Gaither: Seven years on Georgia’s frontier
A new biography expands on previous writing on this blog about Henry Chew Gaither, a Revolutionary War captain of the First and Fourth Maryland Regiments. On the eve of the Battle of Brooklyn, he served as a witness for Daniel … Continue reading
Winter at Morristown
After the battles of Trenton and Princeton, the American troops made winter headquarters at Morristown, New Jersey on January 6.[1] Traditionally, wars were not fought during the wintertime, but the American Revolution was not a conventional European war. The winter … Continue reading
A Fine Fox Chase: The Battle of Princeton
At the beginning of 1777 the Americans were in an unfamiliar position; they were on the offensive. In the week after capturing Trenton they had successfully parried the attacks of General Cornwallis, but a more serious engagement was inevitable before … Continue reading
The Crossing and the Capture
“For heaven’s sake, keep this to yourself,” George Washington wrote to Colonel Joseph Reed, laying out his plan to capture Trenton. “Christmas day at night, one hour before day, is the time fixed upon for our attempt on Trenton.”[1] The first … Continue reading
Finding the Maryland 400 