John Jordan
MSA SC 3520-16752
Biography:
A member of a prominent family in Charles County, Maryland, John Jordan was not yet twenty-one when he joined the First Maryland Regiment, the first unit of full-time professional soldiers from Maryland to fight in the American Revolution. Charles County's population, including its gentry, was particularly enthusiastic about joining the army in 1776. The county supplied the regiment with quite a number of officers, some of whom no doubt benefited from the fact that the regiment's two highest ranking officers--Colonel William Smallwood and Lieutenant Colonel Francis Ware--were Charles County natives themselves. [1]
Jordan was the son of Son of Eleanor (Dent) and Captain John Jordan (?-1763). He had three siblings: William (d. 1775 or 1776), who died as a minor, Henry (died young), and Anne. John Jr. was educated at Princeton, beginning as an undergraduate in the fall of 1773, after a stint at the college's preparatory academy. One of his classmates was Daniel Jenifer, with whom Jordan later served in the army. Jordan probably stayed at Princeton for only a year or so before returning to Maryland. [2]
He arrived in the state amid fevered preparations for war, and obtained a commission as an ensign, the lowest commissioned rank, in the Sixth Company in January 1776. His chief role would be sharing responsibility for carrying the regiment's flags into battle. Jordan and his company spent the first half of 1776 in Annapolis, until July, when the First Maryland Regiment marched for New York, seeking to prevent the British from occupying that city. [3]
On August 27, 1776, the Americans faced the British Army at the Battle of Brooklyn (sometimes called the Battle of Long Island), the first full-scale engagement of the war. The battle was a rout: the British were able to sneak around the American lines, and the outflanked Americans fled in disarray. During the retreat, the Maryland troops fought their way towards the American fortifications, but were blocked by the swampy Gowanus Creek. While half the regiment was able to cross the creek, the rest, Jordan's company among them, were unable to do so before they were attacked by the British. Facing down a much larger, better-trained force, the Marylanders mounted a series of daring charges, which held the British at bay for some time, at the cost of many lives, before being overrun.
All told, the company Jordan served in saw 80 percent of its men killed or captured, although Jordan himself was able to escape either fate. The Marylanders took enormous causalities, with other companies losing nearly as many men as the Sixth, but their actions delayed the British long enough for the rest of the Continental Army to escape, earning themselves the moniker "Maryland 400." [4]
Jordan stayed with the army through the rest of the difficult fall of 1776, a series of defeats that saw the Americans pushed out of New York, followed by revitalizing victories at Trenton and Princeton late that winter. When the Maryland troops were reorganized and expanded in December 1776, he received a promotion to first lieutenant in the reorganized First Maryland Regiment. In the ensuing years, Jordan and his fellow soldiers participated in the battles of Brandywine (September 1777) and Germantown (October 1777), part of the unsuccessful American effort to protect their capital of Philadelphia from the British, as well as Monmouth (June 1778). Sometime in the spring of 1779, Jordan was promoted to captain, and took command of his own company of the First Maryland. [5]
In the spring of 1780, the Maryland troops were part of the American army sent to the Carolinas to counter the new British attacks in that region. The battles in North and South Carolina were the most intense of the war, and the Marylanders took heavy causalities. They also proved themselves to be among the bravest and most effective troops in the army, seeing combat at battles like Camden (August 1780), Cowpens (January 1781), Guilford Courthouse (March 1781), and the Siege of Ninety-Six (May 1781), although the First Maryland did not take part in the fighting at Yorktown that brought about the effective end of the war. [6]
In October 1781, just before the British surrender at Yorktown, Jordan left the First Maryland, and took a post in the Second Partisan Corps, sometimes called Lee's Legion, after its leader, Henry "Light Horse Harry" Lee. Lee's Legion was a mixed infantry and cavalry unit, and Jordan was one of the mounted troops. He served with Lee's Legion until he was discharged in November 1783, with the dissolution of the Continental Army. At the war's conclusion, Jordan was one of the founding members of the Society of the Cincinnati. [7]
Returning to Charles County, Jordan began to increase his landholdings, purchasing several parcels and moving to claim a tract on which his father had begun patent proceedings in the 1750s. On December 27, 1787, he married Sarah Harrison, the daughter of Robert Hanson Harrison, a prominent Maryland judge who had served as one of George Washington's most trusted assistants during the Revolution; he was also John's brother-in-law, as John's sister Ann was married to Robert's brother William. Jordan and his wife had one daughter, named Maria, who was born on October 21, 1788. Sadly, John Jordan died less than two weeks later, on November 8. [8]
While Jordan owned a sizeable amount of land at his death--over 600 acres--he had very few liquid assets, and left his financial "affairs in a very deranged situation." His personal property was assessed at £300 Maryland currency, and Jordan's two slaves and three horses made up the bulk of that amount. His former comrades in arms sought to assist his widow Sarah, seeking to expedite repayment of John's unpaid wartime salary, and she was later granted pensions by the State of Maryland and the Federal Government. Still, Jordan's estate was pursued by his creditors for years. Compounding her financial woes, Sarah's daughter Maria died just a few years later, in 1792. Sarah eventually remarried and moved to Washington, D.C., where she had another daughter, and lived there until her death in 1844. [9]
Owen Lourie, 2015
Notes:
[1] Jordan's elder brother William died in 1775 or 1776 before turning twenty-one. See Jordans Addition, Charles County Land Office, Certificates, Patented, Charles, Patented Certificate no. 606 [MSA S1195-616, 1/25/3/24]. Jean B. Lee, The Price of Nationhood: The American Revolution in Charles County (New York: W.W. Norton, 1994), 160-162;
[2] Gary S. DeKrey, "John Jordan," in Richard A. Harrison, ed., Princetonians 1776-1783: A Biographical Dictionary (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981), 191-192; Pennsylvania Journal (Philadelphia), 13 October 1773.
[3] Muster Rolls and Other Records of Service of Maryland Troops in the American Revolution, Archives of Maryland Online, vol. 18, p. 13; Reiman Steuart, The Maryland Line (The Society of the Cincinnati, 1971), 102; Pension of Sarah Easton, widow of John Jordan, National Archives and Records Administration, Revolutionary War Pension and Bounty-Land Warrant Application Files, NARA M804, W. 24098, from Fold3.com; Compiled Service Records of Soldiers Who Served in the American Army During the Revolutionary War, NARA M881, from Fold3.com, Frederick Steuben, Regulations for the Order and Discipline of the Troops of the United States, Part I. (Philadelphia: Styner and Cist, 1792), 133-134. There is some uncertainty about Jordan's rank and company after the summer of 1776, and he may have held a higher rank and/or been in a different company at any point from mid-1776 until that December. Records regarding his rank are unclear or incomplete.
[4] Return of the Maryland troops, 27 September 1776, from Fold3.com; Mark Andrew Tacyn, “’To the End:’ The First Maryland Regiment and the American Revolution” (PhD diss., University of Maryland College Park, 1999), 48-73. For more on the experience of the Marylanders at the Battle of Brooklyn, see "In Their Own Words," on the Maryland State Archives research blog, Finding the Maryland 400.
[5] Archives of Maryland Online vol. 18, p. 125; Steuart, 102; List of Regular Officers, c. December 1776, Maryland State Papers, Red Books, vol. 12, p. 66, MdHR 4573 [MSA S989-17, 1/6/4/5]; Account of money paid the officers of the First Maryland Regiment, 23 March 1779, Maryland State Papers, Revolutionary Papers, box no. 3, no. 7/1, MdHR 19970-3-7/1 [MSA S997-3-75, 1/7/3/9]. Some sources assert that he was promoted to captain in December 1777, but this is disproved by a significant body of records showing him still as a lieutenant through at least late March 1778.
[6] Tacyn, 216-245.
[7] There is some uncertainty whether Jordan was a lieutenant, or an even more lowly cornet, in the cavalry. Compiled Service Records; Sarah Easton Pension; Steuart, 102; Letter, Christopher Richmond to John White, 1 June 1787 [sic, probably 1789 or later, since it references Jordan's 1788 death], Maryland State Papers, Series A [MSA S1004-87-20561, 1/7/3/65].
[8] Jordan's Addition patent; Sarah Easton Pension; Richmond letter; DeKrey, 192; Greer vs. Bond, et al., 1808, Chancery Court, Chancery Papers, case no. 2141, MdHR 17898-2141 [MSA S512-2211, 1/36/2/37].
[9] Sarah Easton Pension; Richmond letter; Laws of Maryland, 1835, Resolution no. 26, Archives of Maryland Online, vol. 214, p. 719; Inventory of John Jordan, 1789, Charles County Register of Wills, Inventories, Liber AL 10, p. 75 [MSA C665-10, 1/8/10/11]; Greer vs. Bond; Sarah Harrison Easton, Find A Grave.
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