John Russel
MSA SC 3520-17482
Biography:
John Russel enlisted into the Continental Army’s First Maryland Regiment on January 26, 1776 and was a private within Captain Patrick Sim’s Second Company at the time of the Battle of Brooklyn (otherwise known as the Battle of Long Island) on August 27, 1776. Although the battle was a defeat for the Americans, the defense provided by Russel and the other soldiers of the “Maryland 400” held off the British long enough to allow much of the trapped American army to escape. Russel was one of the lucky soldiers who survived that day, his company losing fewer than ten men. [1]
On December 10, 1776, when most of his fellow soldiers from the original First Maryland Regiment reenlisted, Russel was in a hospital unfit for service in Philadelphia due to “pains in the limbs and fever.” After being discharged in late 1776, Russel did not reenlist. [2]
There were many people with the same name living in Maryland at the time, including one who served in the Fourth Maryland Regiment from July 1779 to November 1780. However, there is no further definitive information about his life. [3]
-Taylor Blades, 2017
Notes:
[2] "List of Sick Soldiers in Philadelphia, December 1776." Pennsylvania Archives, second series, vol. 1, 523-539.
[3] Archives of Maryland Online, vol. 18, p. 159.
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