John Price
MSA SC 3520-17132
Biography:
Enlisting as a member of the Fourth Company, First Maryland Regiment in January, 1776, John Price fought in the Revolutionary War for a number of years, and was a member of the legendary "Maryland 400." He was apparently a supporter of American independence, at least supportive enough to enlist in the militia in his native Harford County in late 1775. [1]
Formed in early 1776, the First Maryland Regiment was the state's first contribution to the Continental Army. The men left Maryland in July, 1776, traveling to New York, which the British were targeting for capture. On August 27, 1776, in the Battle of Brooklyn (sometimes called the Battle of Long Island), the first large-scale battle of the war, the British routed the Americans, inflicting major casualties, and began to push them out of New York. The battle nearly saw the complete destruction of the Continental Army, and only a desperate stand by a small group of Maryland troops allowed the rest of the Americans to escape. These men, now known as the "Maryland 400," included Price. They held the British at bay for long enough, taking enormous casualties. [2]
Price survived the battle, probably as one of only a dozen from his company who was not killed or taken prisoner, but suffered as a result. By December, he had fallen ill, and was among the men housed in the Philadelphia Bettering House (or Almshouse), with "slow fever & deafness." [3] Price could have developed both of these conditions at any point during the summer or fall of 1776. "Slow fever," probably typhoid, was a regular part of military life, and his deafness was a likely a result of the noise of combat.
Existing records indicate that Price survived and went on to serve for in the army for several more years, although it is difficult to understand his service completely. There were at least two men named John Price in the Maryland Line. One was a quartermaster in the Second Maryland Regiment from 1777 until 1778 or 1780. [4] There was also at least one John Price who was a private, probably from 1777 to at least 1779. He may have reenlisted in 1779, at the end of his three-year term, and served during the Southern Campaign, receiving a promotion to corporal, before being taken prisoner at the Battle of Camden in August, 1780. [5] His fate after that is unknown.
Owen Lourie, 2015
Notes:
[1] Muster Rolls and Other Records of Service of Maryland Troops in the American Revolution, Archives of Maryland Online, vol. 18, p. 12; Walter W. Preston, History of Harford County Maryland (1901), 117. Price was a member of Bond's company of the militia, the same company where William and Samuel McMillan also served, before all three joined the First Maryland Regiment.
[2] 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. Mark Andrew Tacyn “’To the End:’ The First Maryland Regiment and the American Revolution” (PhD diss., University of Maryland College Park, 1999), 48-73.
[3] "List of Sick Soldiers in Philadelphia, December 1776," in Pennsylvania Archives, 2nd ser., vol. 1, 531.
[4] Compiled Service Records of Soldiers Who Served in the American Army During the Revolutionary War. NARA M881, from Fold3.com; Archives of Maryland Online, vol. 18, 150; Account for attendance at Cook's Point in Capt. Woolford's Company, October 1778, Maryland State Papers, Revolutionary Papers [MSA S997-2-286, 1/7/3/8]; Muster roll of the 2nd Maryland, October 1779, Maryland State Papers, Revolutionary Papers [MSA S997-7-1, 1/7/3/11].
[5] Archives of Maryland Online, vol. 18, 150, 152, 237; Compiled Service Records; Tacyn, 305.
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