John McGlaughlin
MSA SC 3520-17271
Biography:
John McGlaughlin enlisted as a private in Captain Thomas Ewing's Fourth Company on January 27, 1776. Less than five months later, on May 3, he became a corporal in the Fourth Company. During this time, this company was stationed in Baltimore, training until they departed for New York. [1]
As a non-commissioned officer, McGlaughlin would have shouldered some of the responsibility for ensuring order among the Fourth Company in camp and on the battlefield. The job of the corporals was to instruct their troops, keep order in their regiments, including breaking up disagreements between soldiers, and taking roll call every morning. If corporals fell down on their tasks, they were "severly punished." During battles, corporals, such as McGlaughlin and Robert Harvey, were responsible for keeping the companies lined up and together so they could effectively fight against British or forces loyal to the Crown. [2]
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. 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. Four days before the Maryland troops departed for New York, Daniel Bowie was promoted to captain of the Fourth Company after Captain Thomas Ewing became a colonel in the Maryland Flying Camp. [3]
McGlaughlin served with Bowie's company at the Battle of Brooklyn in late August 1776. The company was placed at the front of the lines, but was attacked by advancing British soldiers and was unable to "escape in the best manner we possibly could" by crossing the swampy Gowanus Creek. A sergeant of the company, William McMillan, vividly described what happened:
We were surrounded by Healanders [Scottish Highlanders] [on] one side, Hessians on the other...My captain was killed, first lieutenant was killed, second lieutenant shot through the hand, two sergeants was killed; one in front of me… two corporals killed. All belonged to our Company.
Eighty one percent of the men in Bowie's company were either killed or captured, even more than other Maryland companies. [4]
The Battle of Brooklyn, the first large-scale battle of the war, 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.
By September, only one sergeant, one drummer, and twelve privates remained, half of whom were sick. At this point, 52 privates and 4 sergeants were needed to complete the regiment. Others had been captured, with some being put aboard cramped, dirty prison ships or housed in makeshift prisons. Regardless of where they were sent as prisoners, they did not fair well because the British were not ready for the large number of prisoners they captured after the battle. Since Britain was not at war with a foreign country, the captured Continentals were treated as rebels, rather than prisoners of war, who were treated cruely, abused, and tortured. Numerous soldiers were killed or captured during the battle, possibly including McGlaughlin, meaning that the Fourth Company was nearly wiped out in the battle and never regained its full strength, even by late fall 1776. If he survived the Battle of Brooklyn, there are numerous men who could be him. [5]
McGlaughlin's name could have been spelled in a variety of ways, making it difficult to truly know what happened to him after the Battle of Brooklyn.
- 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, p. 12; Pension of William McMillan, National Archives and Records Administration, Revolutionary War Pension and Bounty-Land Warrant Application Files, NARA M804, S 2806, from Fold3.com.
[3] Arthur Alexander, "How Maryland Tried to Raise Her Continential Quotas." Maryland Historical Magazine 42, no. 3 (1947), 187-188, 196; Francis B. Heitman, Historical Register and Dictionary of the U.S. Army vol. 1 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1903), p. 220; Mark Andrew Tacyn, “'To the End:’ The First Maryland Regiment and the American Revolution” (PhD diss., University of Maryland College Park, 1999), 21, 247.
[4] Pension of William McMillan; Tacyn, p. 4.
[5] Return of the six Independent Companies and First Regiment of Maryland Regulars, in the service of the United Colonies, commanded by Colonel Smallwood, Sept. 13, 1776, National Archives, NARA M804, Record Group 93, Roll 0034, from Fold3.com; Roster of Smallwood's Battalion, January 1777, Maryland State Papers, Red Books, MdHR 4573, Red Book 12, p. 66 [MSA S989-17, 1/6/4/5]; 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), p. 72.
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