Michael Waltz
MSA SC 3520-17471
Biography:
Michael Waltz enlisted as a private in the First Maryland Regiment's Second Company, commanded by Captain Patrick Sim, in February 1776. He was twenty-one or twenty-two years old at the time. After enlisting, Waltz and his company traveled to Annapolis, joining five other companies of the regiment that were stationed there; three additional companies were in Baltimore. Commanded by Colonel William Smallwood, the regiment was the first unit of full-time, professional soldiers raised in Maryland for service in the Continental Army. [1]
In July, the regiment received orders to march to New York, in order to defend the city from an impending British attack. The Marylanders arrived in New York in early August, where they joined with the rest of the Continental Army, commanded by General George Washington. 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, including the Second Company, was able to cross the creek and escape the battle. However, the rest 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. [2]
Waltz survived the battle, and continued to serve with the Marylanders through the rest of the difficult fall and winter of 1776. While the Maryland troops demonstrated their skill and bravery, the Americans were nevertheless pushed out of New York, and put on the run through New Jersey. Not until late that winter did they secure revitalizing victories at Trenton and Princeton.
While Waltz did take part in "the capture of the Hessians at Trenton," he was no longer part of the First Maryland Regiment. In late November, as his enlistment was expiring, he had signed on with a Pennsylvania unit. He stayed in the Pennsylvania Line for the rest of the war. Waltz fought in the major battles of the Philadelphia Campaign, Brandywine (September 1777) and Germantown (October 1777), as the Americans tried to protect their capital, as well as Monmouth (June 1778) and other clashes in New Jersey. In many of these battles, he fought alongside troops from Maryland, including many of the men he had served with in 1776. In 1780, however, the Marylanders traveled south, and Waltz and the Pennsylvanians stayed in New York and New Jersey for the rest of the war, although he may have been at the Battle of Yorktown in October 1781. It is likely that Waltz was present during--and may have participated in--the Pennsylvania Line's mutiny in January 1781, when the troops rebelled against their commanders after years with no pay. They mutinied again in 1782 and 1783. [3]
Waltz was discharged in August 1783, and settled in Pennsylvania after the war. It is not known for certain whether he had prior connections to the state, but it is probable that he did. He lived in Berks County in the 1790s and 1800s, where he was an ensign in the county militia, and moved to Harrisburg by 1820. At that time, Waltz, then sixty-seven years old, applied for a Federal Veterans pension, noting that "I am a day labourer, but for three years past have done nothing in consequence of my incapacity to pursue it." Furthermore, he lamented, "my wife aged 61 years [is] weak and afflicted with an asthmatic affliction--unable to do anything." Waltz and his wife, whose name was not recorded, had seven children. The eldest, Susan, was thirty-five and resided "abroad." Katy, thirty, was unmarried and "works out at daily labor," to support her child. The family's four sons--John (26 years old), Michael (24), Samuel (23) and Jacob (22)--were all weavers, while the youngest child, Barbara (20) lived at home and was "engaged in domestic service." [4]
Michael Waltz lived in Harrisburg until 1834, when he moved to Chippewa Township, in Wayne County, Ohio, "in order to be near his relatives who had previously left Pennsylvania." He lived there until his death on March 6, 1839. [5]
Owen Lourie, 2017
Notes:
[1] Muster Rolls and Other Records of Service of Maryland Troops in the American Revolution. Archives of Maryland Online, vol. 18, p. 8; Pension of Michael Waltz. National Archives, Revolutionary War Pension and Bounty Land-Warrant Application Files, S 40620, from Fold3.com.
[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. 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.
[3] Waltz pension; Compiled Service Records of Soldiers Who Served in the American Army During the Revolutionary War, NARA M881, from Fold3.com.
[4] Waltz pension; Berks County Militia officers, Sixth Regiment, Fifth Company, 1794 in Pennsylvania Archives, sixth series, vol. 4, p. 446; U.S. Federal Census, 1790, Berks County, Pennsylvania; U.S. Federal Census, 1800, Berks County, Pennsylvania; U.S. Federal Census, 1820, Dauphin County, Pennsylvania.
[5] Waltz pension.
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