Archives of Maryland
(Biographical Series)

Robert Chesley
MSA SC 3520-17250

Biography:

Before the Revolutionary War, Robert Chesley was a landowner, inheriting land from his father, also named Robert. The elder Robert had been a member of the Lower House of the Maryland Legislature from 1742-1744, and served as both a justice and sheriff in St. Mary’s County before his death in 1768. Young Robert inherited most of his father’s land, with the rest left to his brother John. The remainder of the estate was split between Robert Senior’s widow Ann, the two sons and their four daughters: Susannah, Anne, Mary and Elizabeth. [1]

Robert Chesley the younger began his own public service as a cadet in John Allen Thomas' Fifth Independent Company, one of seven independent companies formed in 1776 to guard the coast of the Chesapeake Bay from potential excursions from the Royal Navy.

Cadets were young members of the gentry who did not receive commissions as officers and so remained with the army as officers-in-waiting, hoping that officer positions would become available. As they waited, cadets would lobby for a commission. For example, William Courts of the Fourth Company wrote to the Maryland Convention in June 1776:

Anxious of showing my zeal for the love of my Country… I take this Opportunity of applying to your Honours, in hopes that you will take this my memorial into your Consideration, and grant to you Memorialist a Commission in the Troops already raised, or those which are to be raised.

In the case of Chesley, Captain John Allen Thomas wrote that Chesley and another cadet with the company were “two young Gent who have entered Cadets in my Company and who will fill (in my opinion) it very well the stations [sic] of third Lieutenants.” [2]

Just days after the signing of the Declaration of Independence in July 1776, Chesley and the rest of the Marylanders were ordered to march up to New York to aid General George Washington and the Continental Army in defending the city from the British. [3]

In early August, Chesley had a chance for a commission. The company’s first lieutenant, John Steward, had allegedly “lately accepted a Commission from Congress in the marine service” and would be leaving the company. A plan was made for Steward’s departure, with lieutenants John Davidson and Henry Neale being promoted to fill Steward’s position, leaving Neale’s place at third lieutenant to be filled by Chesley. Unfortunately for cadet Chesley, the promotions and his commission would be given only “upon a presumption of the truth of [Steward’s departure].”  Lieutenant Steward did not actually leave the company, and the commissions were never issued. Chesley later served as a witness during Steward’s court-martial of an unrelated event less than two months later. [4]

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 British experience and American inexperience showed in this engagement, as the British were able to outflank the American line and forced a general rout. At the request of Colonel William Smallwood, George Washington sent the untested Fifth Independent Company and some New Englanders to cover the retreat. Here Thomas’ men aided the rest of the American forces swim or wade across the Gowanus Creek, as the bridge had been destroyed the day before. [5]

The British were not the only enemy, as sickness plagued the camps of the Continental Army. Immediately following the Battle of Brooklyn, Chesley’s Captain, John Allen Thomas, wrote a letter to Maryland’s Council of Safety, describing the conditions the Fifth Independent Company was in. Captain Thomas wrote:
I have had from fifteen to twenty of my men extremely ill and have not yet been able to procure them the least assistance. The Province have [sic] but two surgeons here, one of them very ill, and none can be procured here.

Out of the entirety of the Maryland troops, not just his own company, “we have at this time near two hundred men unfit for duty and most of them without any assistance.” Despite Captain Thomas’s plea, no help came from home. [6]

Chesley continued his service with the Continental Army through the rest of 1776, including the battles of Harlem Heights; White Plains; Fort Washington; Trenton; and Princeton.

Chesley finally got the commission he wanted in December of 1776, when he became a first lieutenant in the Second Maryland Regiment under Captain John Davidson. By the summer of 1777 he had become a captain himself, also in the Second Regiment. On August 22, 1777, Chesley and a large number of other Americans, including John Steward, were captured by the British following a disastrous American raid on Staten Island. Steward managed to escape within a few months, but Chesley remained in captivity until he was eventually paroled by the British, and was transferred to the Third Maryland Regiment in January 1781, as part of an officer shuffle to replace loses suffered by the Marylanders during the Southern Campaign. Robert Chesley resigned on October 25, 1781, after the surrender of the British Army at Yorktown. [7]

After the war, Robert Chesley lived the life of a planter, farming the lands inherited from his father. Chesley and his wife Marie had four daughters, Angelica, Elizabeth, Letitia and Mary, as well as a son Robert, named after his father and his father before him. Chesley had a “beautiful high-bred horse” named Union. Union was “a fine bay… looked upon by judges to be one of the [decedents of the] first horses on the continent.” Farmers could bring mares to breed with Union for “four hundred pounds of net new inspected crop tobacco, and half a crown to the groom.” [8]

As a Federalist, Chesley held several appointed offices. At the state level he was appointed Commissioner of the Tax of St. Mary’s County in 1790. At the National level he was nominated by President Washington to be Surveyor of the Port of St. Mary’s in August of 1789 and in March 1792 was named Inspector of the Port of St. Mary’s. [9]

Robert Chesley died in early 1799. President John Adams nominated Chesley’s only son to replace the deceased Surveyor and Inspector of the Port of St. Mary’s. Chesley’s estate was the subject of a long lawsuit and was not settled until 1807. In 1827 his heirs successfully petitioned the General Assembly for land set aside for Revolutionary War soldiers, receiving “a common warrant for two hundred acres of vacant land, lying to the westward of Fort Cumberland, in Allegany County.” [10]

Nicholas Couto, 2016

Notes:

[1] Will of Robert Chesley, 1768, Prerogative Court, Wills, Liber 36, p. 312 MdHR 1316 [MSA S538-52 1/11/2/1]; “Final Account of Robert Chesley,” 1771, Prerogative Court, Accounts, Liber 66 p. 161-162 MdHR 1088 [MSA 351-66 1/11/4/26]; Edward C. Papenfuse, et al. Biographical Dictionary of the Maryland Legislature, 1635-1789, vol 1. (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985), 217.

[2] John Allen Thomas to Maryland Council of Safety, 8 March 1776, Archives of Maryland Online, vol. 11, 221-222 ; William Courts to Convention of Maryland, 20 June 1776, Maryland State Papers, Red Book 19: 10

[3] Muster Rolls and Other Records of Service of Maryland Troops in the American Revolution, Archives of Maryland Online, vol. 18, p. 25; 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.

[4] "Commissions issued to the following Officers...", Archives of Maryland Online, Vol. 12, 180-181, 7 August, 1776; "Proceedings of a Court-Martial of the Line", American Archives Online, 23 September 1776, series 5, vol. 2, p. 467.

[5] Steuart, 154-155.

[6] John Allen Thomas to Maryland Council of Safety, 4 September 1776, Maryland State Papers, Red Books 12:89, MdHR 4573 [MSA S989-17, 1/6/4/5].

[7] Steuart, 66, 161-162; Muster Roll of the Officers of the Maryland Line, 1777, Maryland State Papers, Revolutionary Papers, Box 6, Folder 12, MdHR19970-1-3-51/7-38 [MSA S997-20, 1/6/2/42]; Return of the American Officers and other Prisoners on parole on Long Island, from Fold 3.com;

[8] Chancery Court, Chancery Papers, Richard Watts vs. Robert Chesley, Letitia Chesley, Mary Chesley, James Hopewell, Angelica Hopewell, James Egerton and Elizabeth Egerton, 1805. MdHR 17898-5415-1/4 [MSA S512-5537 1/37/2/29]; “The Beautiful High Horse Union,” Maryland Gazette (Annapolis, MD), 12 June 1783.

[9] William Fitzhugh to George Washington, June 1789, Founders Online, National Archives; Michael Jenifer Stone to George Washington, 22 July 1789, Founders Online, National Archives;  George Washington to the United States Senate, 3 August 1789,Founders Online, National Archives; William Fitzhugh Sr. to George Washington, 31 August 1789, Founders Online, National Archives; George Washington to the United States Senate, 6 March 1792, Founders Online, National Archives.

[10] Oliver Wolcott, Jr. to John Adams, 15 April 1799, Founders Online, National Archives; John Adams to Oliver Colicroot, Jr., 25 April 1799, Founders Online, National Archives;  Laws of 1827, Resolution No. 39, Archives of Maryland Online, vol. 474, p. 294.

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