John Hughes (1750-1850)
MSA SC 3520-16793
Biography:
John Hughes was twenty-five years old when he volunteered as a private in the Third Company of the First Maryland Regiment in late February 1776. At the time, he lived in Georgetown (now in the District of Columbia), and enlisted in Bladensburg, in nearby Prince George's County, Maryland, which was probably the closest place he could have signed on. The regiment was Maryland's first contingent of full-time, professional troops, raised to fulfill the state's quota of soldiers for the Continental Army, and the Third Company was lead by Captain Barton Lucas, a veteran of the French and Indian War. [1]
The Maryland troops were initially posted in Annapolis, where they trained with their fellow recruits and helped to guard the city. That summer was a time of great activity as Maryland cast off the last vestiges of British rule and mobilized for war. Hughes recalled being "in the city of Annapolis when National Independence was declared, and [he] engaged in the celebration of that event." The news that Congress had declared independence reached Annapolis around July 6, the day that the First Maryland Regiment received orders to march north to New York. [2]
Hughes and his comrades left Maryland on July 10, and reached New York in early August. They joined with the rest of the Continental Army, commanded by General George Washington, and made preparations to defend the city from an impending British attack. 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. Half the regiment was able to cross the creek, and escape the battle. However, the rest of the men, including the Third Company, were unable to do so before they were attacked by the British. Facing down a much larger, better-trained force, this group of soldiers, today called the "Maryland 400," mounted a series of daring charges, which held the British at bay for some time, at the cost of many lives, before being overrun. They took enormous casualties, with some companies losing nearly 80 percent of their men, but their actions delayed the British long enough for the rest of the Continental Army to escape. In all, the First Maryland lost 256 men, killed or taken prisoner. [3]
The Third Company suffered greatly, and more than 60 percent of its men were killed or captured. At least twenty one were taken prisoner by the British. Lucas was sick during the battle and unable to fight with his men, and was greatly affected by the high number of casualties they took. Hughes recalled that "Captain Barton Lucas became deranged in consequence of losing his company...Lucas was sent home" later that fall. [4]
Hughes was one of the lucky few from the Third Company who escaped the fighting. In the weeks after the Battle of Brooklyn, the Americans were gradually pushed out of New York by the British. On October 28, some two weeks after Hughes turned twenty-six, the Americans marched out of Manhattan to White Plains, to take on a force of several thousand British soldiers. The Marylanders were positioned with men from Delaware and Connecticut on the top of a hill, in a strong defensive position. As the battle progressed, they were ordered to descend the hill to engage the British. They were able to push the British back for a time, but were eventually overcome when the British counterattacked and overran the Connecticut troops. The Maryland and Delaware soldiers stood their ground resolutely, and one observer noted that "Ritzema’s [the Delaware commander] and Smallwood’s [regiments] suffered most, on this occasion, sustaining, with great patience and coolness, a long and heavy fire–and finally retreated with great sullenness, being obliged to give way to a superior force." Though the Americans did not win a clear-cut victory that day, they nevertheless showed themselves to be the British's equal. [5]
However, the Maryland Line took heavy losses, just as they had at Brooklyn. Of the 298 men who were present at the battle, 46 were killed or wounded, 15 percent of the Marylanders' total men. The dead included many survivors of the Battle of Brooklyn, including John Day Scott, captain of the Seventh Company, and his lieutenant Thomas Goldsmith. Hughes himself was among the wounded Marylanders. Many years later, he described what happened in great detail while applying for a pension. During the battle,
Col. Smallwood came to where this applicant was stationed, and asked how many would go with him to draw the British out. This applicant with twelve others from his company went out to the British Brest Work, made of [fence] rails, etc. to keep off the musket balls, and fired upon the [British] sentinels. A cannon ball was immediately returned by the British, which struck a fence rail upon the brest work, and threw a half of the rail against the thigh of this applicant, and shivered the bone to pieces from the knee up. He was immediately carried off in a litter and did no more actual service after this accident. [6]
He was taken home to Maryland to recover, and was so eager to return to duty he even reenlisted in December 1776, after his term of service expired. However, "in consequence of his enfeebled health & strength, [he] was never able to join his company again." Hughes was officially discharged in June 1778, after supplying a substitute to finish his enlistment for him. [7]
What became of Hughes in the years immediately after the Revolutionary War is not known. He may have continued to live in Georgetown, possibly working as a ship carpenter, but that is uncertain. He undoubtedly was affected by the injury he received at White Plains, which healed badly, leaving his left leg some four inches shorter than his right. Eventually, Hughes married, and he and his wife Rebecca settled in Rockbridge County, Virginia, moving there by 1820. [8]
Hughes lived and farmed in Rockbridge County for more than three decades. In the 1830s, when he was eighty-two years old, he applied for a Federal veteran's pension. He sought relief since "within the last three years" he had been "much & severely afflicted with sickness & the many distresses incident to old age & poverty." He was awarded a pension of $80 per year, which he received for almost twenty years. [9]
John and Rebecca both died in 1850. Rebecca died first, on January 26, about ninety-seven years old. John died two weeks later, on February 9, eight months shy of his one hundredth birthday. They were buried at Neriah Baptist Church, in Rockbridge County. Hughes was probably the second to last living survivor of the Maryland 400; only Alexander Williamson, who died in the fall of 1851, lived longer. [10]
Owen Lourie, 2019
Notes:
1. Muster Rolls and Other Records of Service of Maryland Troops in the American Revolution, Archives of Maryland Online, vol. 18, 10; Pension of John Hughes. National Archives, Revolutionary War Pension and Bounty Land-Warrant Application Files, S 5954, from Fold3.com.
2. Hughes pension.
3. Return of the Maryland troops, 13 September 1776, Revolutionary War Rolls, NARA M246, folder 35, p. 85, 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.
4. Return of the Maryland troops, 13 September 1776; Hughes pension.
5. Estimates of British strength run from 4,000 to 7,500 men. David Hackett Fisher, Washington’s Crossing, (Oxford University Press, 2004), 110-111; “Extract of another letter, dated in the evening of the above day,” Maryland Gazette, 7 November 1776; "Extract of a letter from White-Plains," 28 October 1776. American Archives Online, series 5, vol. 2, 1271.
6. “Extract of another letter"; "Extract of a letter from White-Plains"; Journal and Correspondence of the Maryland Council of Safety, 1776, Archives of Maryland Online, vol. 12, 418; Hughes pension.
7. Hughes pension; Archives of Maryland Online, vol. 18, 117.
8. General Assembly, House of Delegates, Assessment Record, 1783, Montgomery County, Middle Potomac, Lower Potomac and Georgetown Hundreds, 7 [MSA S1161-8-3, 1/4/5/51]. It is possible that this record refers to the correct John Hughes, but it is not absolutely certain. Hughes pension; U.S. Federal Census, 1820, Lexington, Rockbridge County, Virginia; "News of One Hundred Years Ago," Lexington Gazette (Virginia), 28 February 1950. This article reprints the obituary for John and Rebecca Hughes, which appeared in the Lexington Gazette on 28 February 1850, online via this family history page about Hughes.
9. Hughes pension.
10. U.S. Federal Census, 1830, Lexington, Rockbridge County, Virginia; U.S. Federal Census, 1840, Lexington, Rockbridge County, Virginia; "News of One Hundred Years Ago;" John Hughes on FindAGrave.
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