Archives of Maryland
(Biographical Series)
Levin Frazier (1754-1842)
MSA SC 3520-16768
Biography:
Levin Frazier was born in 1754 in Dorchester County, Maryland.
Established in the seventeenth century, Dorchester County was occupied
by both European colonists and native Indian tribes for decades after
it was settled by Europeans. Farming was one of the most common
occupations in Dorchester in the years leading up to the Revolution,
and Frazier, who was a farmer after the war, likely worked a small farm
with his family or farmed a larger landowner’s property during that
time. Despite its prevalence, cultivating the land came with a number
of challenges. Prior to the Revolution, less than a quarter of the land
in the county was suitable for farming. Much of the rest was either too
marshy or densely covered with trees to be worked efficiently; the land
had to be clear and sitting at a high enough elevation so as to not be
affected by rising tides. Even with these challenges, farming took
hold, and tobacco became the main crop produced in the county.[1]
A
period of prosperity came to the county following the 1715 restoration
of Lord Baltimore’s proprietary rights. This prosperity, which lasted
for decades until the outbreak of the Revolution, allowed farmers to
establish themselves and their households. Cambridge and Vienna became
the trading centers for the county, shipping out crops and bringing in
goods such as slaves. The importation of enslaved laborers grew more
common as the land became more accessible, for a cheap source of labor
was preferred as farming spread to more cleared areas. Although farming
dominated Dorchester County and most properties were spread over large
areas, certain towns, particularly Cambridge, established themselves as
centers of society and social refinement. Not everyone in the county
could fit into this sphere, however.[2]
As the Frazier family
did not own land in the county prior to the Revolutionary War, they
likely served as tenants or hired laborers on land belonging to a
wealthier owner. The nature of the land made it harder for these people
of fewer resources to produce a crop that could compete with the
greater holdings of the elite, who used slaves and laborers to clear
the land at a lower expense and with more ease. Often, the poorer
farmers would be dependent on the large farmers for financial
assistance between growing seasons. Smaller farmers and tenant farmers
dealt with local merchants to sell their crops, but the larger
landowners could trade with England, where more money was to be made.
Land, as was evident to all involved, was the greatest source of power
in the county.[3]
Small planters and tenant farmers, such as the
Fraziers, not only lacked the power that larger landholders had, but
they also fell below this group in social standing. Wealthy Dorchester
County residents made up the highest class, with poor whites and tenant
farmers forming a lower class of citizens. This difference could be a
tangible one, as wealthier families often had grander houses and owned
much more property, but it was also evident through better treatment
and special privileges; even in church, the rich were separated from
the poorer folk. Enslaved men and women made up a class even lower than
the poor whites.[4]
Even with this social stratification, the
wealthy and poor people of Dorchester County were of a similar mind
when it came to fighting oppression. The return to proprietary rule had
helped bring about a period of prosperity in Dorchester, but the people
were not complacent under this form of law. County delegates were
elected to state assemblies to oppose aggressive moves by the governor
and his officials, and they were successful enough to gain concessions
for the people of the county on several occasions. The strongest of the
unifying factors in Dorchester was the trade restrictions put in place
by the British, which affected all residents of the county. Eventually,
this sentiment was strong enough for Cambridge to be named the
headquarters of military operations on the Eastern Shore during the
Revolution. Frazier did not have the loudest voice in his county, but
his reaction to the situation spoke volumes.[5]
Levin Frazier
joined the Continental Army in March of 1776, possibly as a substitute
for a man named Thomas Chaplain. He began his enlistment as a private
in the Fourth Independent Company of the First Maryland Regiment,
serving under Captain James Hindman of Talbot County.[6] The company
marched to New York as a part of the Maryland Line and fought in the
Battle of Long Island on August 27, 1776, where the Maryland 400 earned
distinction for saving the Continental Army. Although the Line was
commended for their bravery and sacrifice, Frazier’s company lost only
three men and was accused of acting dishonorably during the battle.
Captain Hindman vehemently defended his men against these accusations,
and wrote that Colonel William Smallwood could attest to their
character.[7]
In the months following Long Island, Frazier
fought as a member of the Maryland Line at the battles of White Plains
and Trenton. Like the rest of Washington’s forces, Frazier’s Company
was left in poor shape by the end of 1776. Hindman wrote to Maryland’s
Council of Safety, underlining such needs as “necessary clothing for
the Maryland Regular troops, which am much afraid shall not be able to
procure at present, particularly shoes and stockings, of which we are
in great want and unless they can be got will render many soldiers
unfit for duty.” Describing the state of his men, he noted that “they
have been and still are very sickly, as are all our troops.”[8] Frazier
left the Continental Army in 1777, perhaps as a result of these poor
conditions, and joined a budding Maryland navy that had recently
acquired several ships for defense of the Chesapeake Bay.
His
first naval service was as a midshipman on board the galley Conqueror,
captained by John David, where he remained for eighteen months. The
Conqueror was commissioned towards the end of 1776, but was not
completed until 1777 as wartime limited the available supplies. It
could hold eighty men, but likely had fewer than that number on board
for most of its service due to shortages. Levin Frazier was on board by
September of 1777 and could have taken part in its several expeditions
to clear the Chesapeake of enemy ships. He would later recall that he
spent his time on the Conqueror “cruising up and down the Chesapeake
Bay as required, during which time they had some skirmishes but no
regular engagements.”[9] When this term ended, he received a commission
as a Second Lieutenant from Maryland Governor Thomas Johnson. Upon
receiving this commission, Frazier joined the galley Independence,
captained by Bennet Matthews.
Although he served on the
Independence for a similar length of time as he did on the Conqueror,
he likely saw less action during this time than he had seen on his
first cruise, for the Independence served mainly as a transport vessel
after 1778.[10] Frazier left the military for a short period of time
after the Independence was sold in 1780 with the rest of Maryland’s
naval galleys. While away from the service, Frazier married Elizabeth
Eccleston of Dorchester County in January of 1781. However, it was also
likely during this time away from the service that he impregnated a
woman named Retty Bromwell.[11] While both of these occurrences are
major events in a man’s life, they also gave him ties to Dorchester
other than it being his home county. A wife and child would give him
substantial reason to return to the county after he was out of the
military, which is exactly what he would do.
The sale of the
galleys virtually shut down Maryland's navy and left the region
vulnerable to the British and Loyalist privateers, and these groups
quickly began to construct forces for raiding and invasion; the need to
rebuild Maryland’s naval fleet became imminent. This time, however,
Maryland’s Council of Safety would look to a different kind of ship to
meet their needs. Instead of commissioning more galleys, the council
chose to rely on naval barges. The British had used these vessels in
New York and in the Chesapeake, and they were versatile in their
capabilities and could traverse both open water and shallow shoals,
something the schooners and galleys were not built to do.[12]
Interestingly,
one of these barges, the Defence, was funded by and built for a number
of private donors from Dorchester County in 1781; it is possible that
the Frazier family made donations to this pursuit. This barge was
constructed with local lumber, a valuable material that had been made
abundant by the clearing of land for farming. Victimized by the
Loyalist privateers that raided in the Chesapeake, the men who funded
the barge’s construction, though remaining anonymous, stated that the
barge was built as an endeavor “to bring to condign Punishment and the
Perpetrators of the many late villainous and horrid Barbarities [that
weigh] more in the Breasts of these Officers & men than any
expectation of gain.”[13]
Shortly after being outfitted for
service, the barge Defence acquired a new captain. Solomon Frazier,
Levin Frazier’s brother, was put in charge of the vessel from his home
county in the beginning of 1782 and given orders to recruit a
crew. One of the men he recruited to join him was his brother,
and Levin came aboard as his first lieutenant. The recruiting
instructions given to the captains offer some insight into what the
bargemen, including Levin Frazier, looked like: “the Men enlisted must
be able bodied and perfect in all their Limbs and light of sound Health
without ruptures or other visible infirmities, above five foot four
Inches high and above sixteen and under fifty years of age.”[14]
Residents of Dorchester County were preferred, and no servants,
apprentices, or deserters of another force were to be accepted. Levin
Frazier served on the vessel for a twelve-month term and was on board
for several encounters in the bay, including the Defence’s capture of a
British barge, the Jolly Tar, in November 1782. Two weeks later, the
Frazier brothers led the barge into the deadliest battle that took
place in the Chesapeake during the Revolutionary War: the Battle of
Cages Straits near Smith Island, Maryland.[15]
The Defence and
the Frazier brothers played a very important role in the battle, though
it turned into a harsh loss for the Maryland navy. Sent ahead to scout
the British positions, Solomon sailed under British flag to the
Loyalist base on Tangier Island, Virginia, and was able to trick the
locals into divulging information to his men. For the battle itself,
the Defence was placed at the far left of the line of barges, and was
the first to fire on the British. Ultimately, however, the ammunition
reserves on Maryland’s leading barge, the Protector, were hit and
exploded, killing and injuring a great number of men onboard. The
remaining barges, including the Defence, were forced to flee, and the
battle was lost.[16]
Levin Frazier returned to Dorchester County
after his term on the Defence ended in early 1783. He came back to his
wife and child, though he owned no land in the county at the time. Land
was vitally important to a person’s place in the county, as it had been
when he left for the army; Frazier worked to acquire land of his own
after his return, and he was able to patent a land claim in 1795, a
sixteen and one-half acre plot fittingly called “Frazier’s Beginning.”
This first land patent was also his last, though he would acquire land
through other means. His wife inherited eighty acres upon the death of
her brother early in the nineteenth century, making the property
jointly her husband's. He turned his property into farmland, but faced
the same problems posed by Dorchester land that had
troubled planters for decades.[17]
Although his land
was located in one of the poorest and least populated districts in
Dorchester County’s Neck district (located between the Choptank and
Hudson rivers), this did not inherently mean that Frazier was poor. He
continued to accumulate land throughout his life, and he was assessed
as having close to 110 acres, worth 360 dollars, in 1837.[18] While his
landholding was not great when compared to those of the large planters
in the county, it placed him well above many of the other residents of
his district. He had also amassed over 500 dollars of personal
property, making his total worth one of the highest-valued in the Neck
district; his property’s overall value was greater than double the
district average. There were 173 people assessed in the survey, and
Frazier was one of the top forty.[18]
Working as a farmer,
Frazier likely grew wheat and other grains on his land. Tobacco’s value
had declined in the years leading up to the war, and Dorchester County
planters began to look to other crops to make up for the decrease in
tobacco production with wheat being the frontrunner.[19] Though Frazier
was more successful than most of the other farmers in his region, the
majority of his profits were likely poured back into his farm. He had
also accumulated debts that needed to be paid off, possibly as a result
of renting in the years before he owned land of his own. As a result of
his troubles, Frazier was granted a pension in 1818. This likely helped
him to pay off his debts and continue increasing his holdings.[20]
He
and Elizabeth had a number of children together, in addition to the one
he had with Retty Bromwell, and he owned at least three slaves who
served as house servants, though more likely worked his land as
farmhands. It cannot be known what their family life was like, but some
instances recorded by the local news give insight into a few exciting
occurrences in the Frazier household. In 1825 his house was struck by
lightning, severely injuring one of his daughters and one of the
family's slaves. Only two years later, the family was victimized by a
sinister plot. Frazier and his family were poisoned with cyanide, with
someone having put the poison in their coffee. After they became sick,
their suspicions fell on two slave women, who were then also made to
drink the coffee and too became sick. The Fraziers survived the
incident upon receiving medical attention, but the fate of the slave
women remains unknown.[21]
The simple fact that Frazier owned
these slaves and dozens of acres of land shows the social and economic
steps he had taken since living as a poor farmer in the years
surrounding the war. Though it was an oppressive institution, slave
ownership was one of the markers that separated the wealthy class from
the poor farmers and tenants of the county and had been since
Dorchester County was formed. Prior to the war and for several years
following, Frazier had not owned any land, let alone slaves to work it.
He eventually acquired enough means to break through the barriers that
had divided him from the upper classes. Adding to this is the fact that
news of his life was printed in a local paper, indicating the social
significance he had attained over the years.
Levin Frazier died
in the Morris Neck region of Dorchester County, Maryland, in the summer
of 1842. His obituary, printed in a local paper, commemorated him in
the following way:
At an early
age Mr. Frazier took up arms in defence of his country's rights, and
was an active and approved soldier of the American Revolution. He was a
Lieutenant in the army, in which capacity he served his bleeding county
for about three years, with a zeal and fidelity alike honourable to the
head and the heart. . . . Animated by the spirit of '76, he avowed
himself ready to follow his leader, regardless of danger. That brave
and chivalrous spirit never deserted him, even in advanced age, when
any incident connected with that glorious struggle was mentioned in his
presence, you would see the fire of youth and manhood rekindle in his
brilliant eye, his voice grow stronger, so that it seemed for the time
being his age had been renewed;--at such time he would tell of the
scenes that himself and his companions in arms had passed through, with
the strength and energy of by-gone days. . . . He was a most kind and
affectionate husband, an indulgent father and a firm and uncompromising
friend.[22]
Jeffrey Truitt, 2014
Notes:
Return to Levin Frazier's Introductory Page
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