John Steward (1753-1783)
MSA SC 3520-17229
Biography:
Before he became a decorated officer in the American Revolution, John Steward began his military service as the first lieutenant of John Allen Thomas' Fifth Independent Company, primarily made up of residents from Saint Mary’s County, although Steward himself was from Anne Arundel, in August of 1776.
Steward was born into a Quaker family of the Clifts Meeting (Calvert County, Maryland) on December 8, 1753, to mother Anna and father Stephen, a prominent merchant. He was the second of four children, with an older sister named Sarah (b. 1751), and two younger siblings, twins Elizabeth and Stephen (b. 1756). Because Quakers are pacifists and thus have religious objections to fighting and war, John was almost certainly expelled from his Meeting for joining the Continental Army, if he had not already been expelled for prior support for the American Revolution. [1]
One of seven independent companies initially formed to guard the Chesapeake Bay coast from potential excursions from the Royal Navy, Steward and the rest of his company soon found themselves on the march to New York to aid General George Washington and the Continental Army in defending the city from the British. On August 27 1776, the first full-scale engagement between American and British forces began at the Battle of Brooklyn (sometimes referred to as the Battle of Long Island).
The battle experience of the British and the inexperience of the American soldiers showed during this engagement, as the British were able to outflank the American line, forcing a general rout. At the request of Colonel William Smallwood, George Washington sent the as of yet untested Fifth Independent Company and some New Englanders to cover the retreat, where they aided the rest of the American forces swim or wade across Gowanus Creek, as the bridge had been destroyed the day before. [2]
Steward continued his service with the Continental Army through the rest of 1776, Fighting at the battles of Harlem Heights; White Plains; Fort Washington; Trenton; and Princeton. By early 1777 he was a captain in the newly formed Second Maryland Regiment, and on April 17, he was promoted again, to major. [3]
John Steward found himself in trouble throughout his military career, but not always when fighting the British. He was bold, brash, and hot-headed. In September 1776, he was court-martialed for striking a Sergeant and threatening the life of a colonel. Steward had accused Sergeant William Phelps of cowardice, and then slapped him in the face after an exchange of words. After Colonel Gold Selleck Silliman intervened on Phelps’ behalf, Steward “grew warm,” was arrested, and said “I’ll go to my tent – all you can do is take my commission, but I am a gentleman, and will put it out of your power, for I will resign it, and in less than two hours will be revenged on you, God damn you.” Steward was put on trial and was found to have had provocation to strike Phelps and was not guilty of threatening Silliman (Phelps had his own court-martial, and was acquitted of cowardice).
On a separate occasion Steward was accused of “abusing inhabitants and encouraging soldiers to plunder.” After Steward insulted the man who made the allegations, Brigadier General Nathaniel Green sent to inquire about the accusations. Greene confided to Steward’s superior officer that “If the Young Gentleman thinks his being a man of fortune or having a liberal education [defenses used by Steward to justify his actions] authorizes him to insult and abuse People with impunity – he will find himself mistaken.” In 1778, Steward celebrated the British withdrawal from Philadelphia by dressing in red to mock the enemy troops. One observer was unimpressed, commenting, "How the ass glories in the lion's skin." [4]
In late August 1777 the Americans attempted a raid on Staten Island, and it was a disastrous failure. Steward led the rear guard, allowing the bulk of the surviving raiders to escape. Captain William Wilmot of Maryland described the fight of the rear guard in a letter:
thay came down on us with about 1000 of their herows, and attacked us with about 500 of their new troopes and hesions [Hessians]... when our ammunition was all spent Major Sturd [Steward] took a whight hankerchief and stuck it on the point of his Sword, and then ordered the men to retreet whilste he went over to their [the British] ground, and surrendered, for he had never gave them an inch before he found that he had nothing left to keep them of[f] with.
Wilmot managed to escape capture, but Steward and the other captured Americans were put on the notoriously wretched British prison barges and ships in New York Harbor. Steward would not be kept out of the fight for long. Purportedly by bribing a British officer, he managed to escape to New Jersey and was back with the Marylanders by the end of October. [5]
Perhaps Steward’s greatest impact on the war was his participation in the Battle of Stony Point. A British defensive position on the Hudson River about thirteen miles south of the American fortifications at West Point, Stony Point threatened to cut off New England from the rest of the Colonies. A secret nighttime assault was planned, and Major John Steward was to lead the northern advance party. He also had to recruit men for the “Forlorn Hope,” a suicide mission to cut apart the wooden defenses of the British. Steward reportedly “spoke very clever” and successfully recruited men for the task.
Advancing in the dead of night early on July 16, 1779, Steward’s force as well as an additional “Forlorn Hope” to the south successfully broke through the British defenses and took “the Gibraltar of the Americas” in an astounding victory for the Americans. Steward was awarded a Congressional Silver Medal, a predecessor to the Congressional Medal of Honor and one of only eleven issued during the entire revolution. The medal would not arrive in America until 1790, after Steward had died. It was instead given to his father Stephen. [6]
After Stony Point, Steward joined his fellow Marylanders in the South. During this time he was promoted to lieutenant colonel. He also requested to command a proposed regiment of African American troops as part of a plan to increase manpower that never manifested. He also almost got married. In correspondence between two other Marylanders, Otho Holland Williams and Samuel Smith, Smith wrote on the almost marriage “Major Jack Stewart was damn’d nigh [wed], How he escap’d I know not… her wedding Cloth[e]s are made, but…poor Kitty Crane, you must hug your sheets.” [7]
He was back in Maryland for General George Washington’s visit to Baltimore on September 8, 1781, was present at the victory at Yorktown, and then marched south to Charleston, South Carolina, and was in command of the first Maryland Regiment when the British left in December 1782. Three months later John Steward injured his neck in a riding accident. He died on Sunday, March 23, 1783 and was buried in Charleston County, South Carolina. [8]
Nicholas Couto, 2016
Notes:
[1] Muster Rolls and Other Records of Service of Maryland Troops in the American Revolution, Archives of Maryland Online vol. 18, p. 25; Clifts Monthly Meeting Register, 1662-1782, p. 88 [MSA SC 2978, SCM 545].
[2] 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; Reiman Steuart, The Maryland Line (The Society of the Cincinnati, 1971), 154-155. 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: The spelling of Steward’s last name differs depending on the source, including his Congressional Silver Medal, ending with either a “d” or a “t.” Because Steward consistently spelled his own last name as “Steward,” that is the correct spelling to use.
[3] Steuart, 136.
[4] Charles Royster, A Revolutionary People at War (Chapel Hill, N.C: University of North Carolina Press, 1979), 93-94; Rebecca Franks, quoted in William Pencak, Jews and Anti-Semitism in Early Pennsylvania,” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 126:3 (2002), 377-378.
[5] “General Sullivan’s Descent Upon The British On Staten Island—The Escape Of William Wilmot,” Maryland Historical Magazine 6, no.2 (June 1911), 141-142; Patrick O’Donnell, Washington’s Immortals: The Untold Story of an Elite Regiment Who Changed the Course of the Revolution (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2016), 166; Royster, 95.
[6] O’Donnell 207-224; Royster, 95.
[7] Samuel Smith to Otho Holland Williams, Southern Army, Oct. 4, 1780, Williams Papers, Maryland Historical Society; O’Donnell, 308, 337.
[8] Royster, 96; O’Donnell, 354, 362, 372; Steuart, 136; John Stewart [sic] on Find a Grave.com.
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