Archives of Maryland
(Biographical Series)

John Reed
MSA SC 3520-17220

Biography:

John Reed enlisted in Captain Nathaniel Ramsey's Fifth Company, part of the First Maryland Regiment, in 1776. [1] He was present among the Maryland 400 at the Battle of Brooklyn. 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.

He and his company served at the Battle of Brooklyn in late August 1776. Ramsey's company, John 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, the first large-scale battle, fits into the larger context of the Revolutionary 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.

In the fall after the battle, John re-enlisted in the Fifth Company. [6] This enlistment was after he had been taken prisoner at the Battle of Brooklyn. [8] While the battle was a defeat for the Continental Army, twenty-three British men were taken prisoner, but at least seventy Marylanders were captured. [7] Hence, John's capture was not unusual for privates after the battle.

Likely John did not fair well as a prisoner. This is because the British were not ready for the large number of prisoners they captured after the battle and since Britain was not at war with a foreign country, the captured Continentals were treated as rebels who were treated cruely, abused, and tortured. [9] In the aftermath of the battle, likely John, along with other captured soldiers, were forcibly housed in New York churches, not including those that were Anglican, and on prison ships. [10] James Fitch, a lieutenant in the Eighth Connecticut Infantry said, despite the brutal behavior of the Hessian soldiers, the following after he knew he was going to be captured: "I expected no quarters to be given but had the satisifaction to find that the reports spread of those people were by no means true, for we were treated with more humanity, kindness and generosity by Hessian officers and soldiers that we have experienced by and of the British troops." [11] Edwin Burrows, in describing the experience of Long Island native, Elias Cornelius, noted that

"These facilities, most of which remained in use for the duration of the war [for prisoners], were shockingly overcrowded...Prisoners never had enough to eat, and what they did have was barely edible. Their clothes were infested with ticks and lice. The water stank. The slop buckets and necessary tubs overflowed. Anyone lucky enough to survive the rampant typhus, dysentery, and smallpox eventually succumbed to the scurvy, which made their teeth fall out and caused their gums and eyes to bleed incessantly. Those who got out alive told of comrades so hungry they ate their own shoes and clothes, of prison ships whose decks were slippery with excrement, of wagons rumbling through the cobblestone streets with corpses stacked like cordwood, of bodies flung carelessly into Wallabout Bay or hastily interred by the dozen on nearby beaches."

John was exchanged after serving three months as a prisoner. [12] Many Marylanders were exchanged, with British forces, in late 1776 and early 1777. [13]

John served in the First Maryland Regiment, but his service cannot be documented through enlistment records. The only reference to him enlisting in 1776 is James Marle's recollection in his pension. In John's pension, he claimed that he fought at Trenton (1776), Brandywine (1777), Germantown (1777), West Point (1780), and Eutaw Springs (1781). [14] In his recollection, he was also ordered to South Carolina, where fought at the Battle of Camden (1780), when he was wounded. Afterward, he joined scouting parties around Camden. He claimed he was honorably discharged by General Nathaniel Greene on December 27, 1779 in Annapolis which does align the service record that he reported in his pension. [15]

He later applied for his pension in 1818, but was originally rejected, possibly because he had lost his discharge papers from General Greene. [15] At the time he was living in Harford County. He also said he had no family, very little money or possessions. John Reed lived to at least 1820.

- Burkely Hermann, Maryland Society of the Sons of American Revolution Research Fellow, 2016

Notes

[1] Pension of James Marle, The National Archives, Revolutionary War Pension and Bounty-Land Warrant Application Files, NARA M804, Pension number R 6908,6. Courtesy of Fold3.com.

[2] Arthur Alexander, "How Maryland Tried to Raise Her Continential Quotas." Maryland Historical Magazine 42, no. 3 (1947), 187-188, 196.

[3] "Extract of a letter from New York: Account of the battle on Long Island." American Archives S5 V2 107-108.

[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] December 1776 payroll, Maryland State Papers, Revolutionary Papers. MdHR 19970-6-7/4 [MSA S997-6, 1/7/3/11].

[7] Pension of John Reed, The National Archives, Revolutionary War Pension and Bounty-Land Warrant Application Files, NARA M804, Pension number S. 35044. Courtesy of Fold3.com

[8] Henry P. Johnson, The Campaign Around New York and Brooklyn (1878; reprint, New York: Da Capo Press, 1971), 174-5, 177, 179.

[9] George C. Doughan, Revolution on the Hudson: New York City and the Hudson River Valley in the American War of Independence (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2016), 72.

[10] Doughan, 133.

[11] "On the prison ships." The Collector (March 1899) Vol. 12 no. 6. pp. 63, 67.

[12] Pension of John Reed.

[13] “From George Washington to Lieutenant General William Howe, 9 November 1776,” Founders Online,National Archives, last modified June 29, 2016, http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-07-02-0088; “From George Washington to Lieutenant General William Howe, 29 December 1776,” Founders Online,National Archives, last modified June 29, 2016, http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-07-02-0372; “From George Washington to Lieutenant General William Howe, 17 December 1776,” Founders Online,National Archives, last modified June 29, 2016, http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-07-02-0289; “From George Washington to Nicholas Cooke, 21 December 1776,” Founders Online, National Archives, last modified June 29, 2016, http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-07-02-0309; “To George Washington from General William Howe, 23 January 1777,” Founders Online, National Archives, last modified June 29, 2016, http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-08-02-0143.

[14] Pension of John Reed.

[15] Tacyn, 287; Pension of John Reed.

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