Samuel Elliott
MSA SC 3520-17203
Biography:
In May 1776, Samuel enlisted in Capt. Nathaniel Ramsey's Fifth Company, part of the First Maryland Regiment. [1] The First Maryland Regiment were the first troops Maryland raised at the beginning of the Revolutionary War. Maryland was more than willing to do its part to recruit the men needed to fill the Continental Army's depleted ranks. [2] A few days after independence was declared, the First Maryland Regiment was ordered to New York so it could join the forces of General George Washington. The regiment arrived there in early August, with the Battle of Brooklyn set between the Continental Army and the British Army, joined by their Hessian allies.
Only two months after enlisting, he and his company served at the Battle of Brooklyn in late August 1776. Ramsey's company, Samuel included, was placed at the front of the lines, but "hardly a man [in the company] fell," even though they took the first line of fire from the British. [3] This confirmed the assessment of the British Parliament's Annual Register which described, how "almost a whole regiment from Maryland…of young men from the best families in the country was cut to pieces" but it brought men of the Maryland 400 together. [4] Years later, Captain Enoch Anderson of the Delaware Regiment wrote about the Battle of Brooklyn, saying the following:
"A little before day, we marched towards the enemy, two miles from our camp we saw them. A little after daylight our Regiment and Colonel Smallwood's Regiment from Maryland, in front of the enemy took possession of a high commanding ground,--our right to the harbour. Cannonading now began in both armies...Colonel Smallwood's Regiment took another course,--they were surrounded but they fought hard. They lost about two hundred men, the rest got in. A hard day this, for us poor Yankees! Superior discipline and numbers had overcome us. A gloomy time it was, but we solaced ourselves that at some other time we should do better." [5]
The Battle of Brooklyn fits into the larger context of the war beyond the fact that this was the first large-scale battle of the war. If the Maryland Line had not stood and fought the British, enabling the rest of the Continental Army to escape, then the Continental Army would been decimated, resulting in the end of the Revolutionary War. This heroic stand gave the regiment the nickname of the Old Line and those who made the stand in the battle are remembered as the Maryland 400.
After the Battle of Brooklyn, Elliott's military service record is not completely clear. There are records that one man of the same name was a private in the Maryland Fourth Regiment from October 1777 to 1780. [6] It is not known whether this is the same man as Samuel Elliott who served in the Fifth Company. While he was not a high-ranking military man, Samuel's role in the Revolutionary War is still important to note.- Burkely Hermann, Maryland Society of the Sons of American Revolution Research Fellow, 2016.
Notes
[1] Muster Rolls and Other Records of Service of Maryland Troops in the American Revolution. Archives of Maryland Online Vol 18, 640.
[2] Arthur Alexander, "How Maryland Tried to Raise Her Continential Quotas." Maryland Historical Magazine 42, no. 3 (1947), pp. 187-188, 196.
[4] Mark Andrew Tacyn, "'To The End:' The First Maryland Regiment and the American Revolution" (PhD Diss., University of Maryland College Park, 1999), 4.
[5] Enoch Anderson, Personal Recollections of Captain Enoch Anderson: Eyewitness Accounts of the American Revolution (New York: New York Times & Arno Press, 1971), 21-22.
[6] Muster Rolls and Other Records of Service of Maryland Troops in the American Revolution. Archives of Maryland Online Vol 18, 107.
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