Thomas Mason
MSA SC 3520-17257
Biography:
Thomas Mason enlisted in the Fourth Company of the First Maryland Regiment on January 29, 1776, at the outset of the American Revolution. The company was largely drawn from Harford County, where Mason had served in the county militia in 1775, along with a number of other member of the Fourth Company. While the militia was intended as part-time home defense, the First Maryland Regiment was raised to be part of the Continental Army, and was the state's first contingent of full-time, professional soldiers. Mason and his company were initially stationed in Baltimore, where it trained until early July. On July 9, 1776, the First Maryland Regiment was ordered to march north to New York, to protect the city from invasion by the British. Just days before it left, the company was assigned a new commander, Captain Daniel Bowie, and had only 58 men, instead of the 74 soldiers in a full strength company. [1]
On August 27, a month after arriving in New York, the Americans clashed with the British at the Battle of Brooklyn (also called the Battle of Long Island), the first full-scale encounter of the American Revolution. 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. While half the regiment was able to cross the creek, the rest, Mason's company among them, were unable to do so before they were attacked by the British. Facing down a much larger, better-trained force, the Marylanders mounted a series of daring charges, which held the British at bay for some time, at the cost of many lives, before being overrun. One of the Fourth Company's sergeants, William McMillan, described what happened:
We were surrounded by Healanders [Scottish Highlanders] [on] one side, Hessians on the other...My captain was killed, first lieutenant was killed, second lieutenant shot through the hand, two sergeants was killed; one in front of me…my bayonet was shot off my gun...My brother [Sergeant Samuel McMillan] and I and 50 or 60 of us was taken…The Hessians broke the butts of our guns over their cannon and robbed us of everything we had, lit their pipes with our money…gave us nothing to eat for five days, and then [only] moldy biscuits…blue, moldy, full of bugs and rotten. [2]
All told, the company lost 80 percent of its men, killed like Bowie, or captured like McMillan. Only the company's drummer, a dozen privates, and a sergeant made it back to the American lines. The Marylanders took enormous causalities, with other companies losing nearly as many men as the Fourth, but their action had delayed the British long enough for the rest of the Continental Army to escape, earning themselves the moniker "Maryland 400." [3]
Mason was among the men who were taken prisoner. Based on accounts from other Marylanders who were taken prisoner at the Battle of Brooklyn, he was probably held in squalid conditions on a British prison ship off of New York until the fall of 1776. After the British succeeded in pushing the Americans out of Manhattan, they moved their prisoners to a series of make-shift jails in the city. Thomas McKeel, a sergeant in the Sixth Company, reported that he "remained a prisoner on board of a Prison Ship until the British troops got possession of New York" in November 1776, and "he was then taken ashore and imprisoned in New York with the Maryland officers and prisoners, until he was parolled." Most of the Marylanders captured at Brooklyn were released in the late 1776 or early 1777. [4]
After his release, Mason seems to have returned to Maryland, where he reenlisted in the re-formed First Maryland Regiment on March 23, 1777. However, he never reported for duty, and disappears from the historical records after that point. [5]
Owen Lourie, 2016
Notes:
[1] Muster Rolls and Other Records of Service of Maryland Troops in the American Revolution, Archives of Maryland Online, vol. 18, p. 12; S. Eugene Clements and F. Edward Wright, The Maryland Militia in the Revolutionary War, (Silver Spring, Maryland: Family Line Publications, 1987), 174; Proceedings of the Conventions of the Province of Maryland, 1774-1776, Archives of Maryland Online, vol. 78, p. 198; Return of Ramsey's, Smith's, and Bowie's companies, 9 July 1776, Maryland Historical Society, Revolutionary War Collection, MS 1814.
[2] The experience of the Fourth Company is described in the pension of William McMillan, one of the company's sergeants. See Pension of William MaCmillan, National Archives and Records Administration, Revolutionary War Pension and Bounty-Land Warrant Application Files, NARA M804, S 2806, p. 33-35, from Fold3.com.
[3] 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.
[4] Mordecai Gist, Account, 23 January 1777, Maryland State Papers, Revolutionary Papers, box 2, no. 4-2, MdHR 19,970-2-4/2 [MSA S997-2-254, 1/7/3/8]; Pension of Thomas McKeel. National Archives, Revolutionary War Pension and Bounty Land-Warrant Application Files, S34977, from Fold3.com.
[5] Archives of Maryland Online, vol. 18, p. 136.
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