Richard White
MSA SC 3520-17562
Biography:
Richard White enlisted as a private in the First Maryland Regiment's Seventh Company, commanded by Captain John Day Scott, in January 1776. The company was raised in the beginning of the year, then traveled to Annapolis in the spring, where they joined five of the regiment's other companies 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 to defend the city from an impending British attack. The Marylanders arrived in New York a month later and joined the rest of the Continental Army, commanded by General George Washington. One of the company’s sergeants, William Sands, described the scene in mid-August: “Our Maryland Battalion is encamped on a hill about one mile out of New York, where we lay in a very secure place…We are ordered to hold ourselves in readiness. We expect an attack hourly.” [2]
That attack finally came two weeks later, on August 27, 1776, 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. As the Maryland troops fought their way towards the American fortifications, they were forced to stop at the swampy Gowanus Creek. Half the regiment, including the Seventh 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. They held the British at bay for some time before being overrun, at the cost of many lives. The Marylanders 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. [3]
White's fate at the battle is unknown, but it is possible that he survived and served for the rest of 1776, leaving the army at the end of the year. A Richard White who was a Revolutionary War veteran lived in Annapolis in the years after the war, and there seems to have been only one man by that name who had been in the army; the Seventh Company was also raised in and around Annapolis in 1776. He married Margaret Reed on December 7, 1796, and they had seven children together: James R., Peggy, Ann, Sarah, Richard, Elizabeth, and Thomas. That Richard White died in the spring of 1802, and Margaret remarried quickly, wedding John Lamb on February 17, 1803. In 1834, after John had died, Margaret was awarded a pension as the widow of a veteran by the State of Maryland. However, while it is likely that Richard White was the same man who enlisted in January 1776, it is not absolutely certain. [4]
Owen Lourie, 2017
Notes:
[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. 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] Anne Arundel County Court, Marriage Licenses, 1777-1813, pps. 64, 83 [MSA C113-1, 1/1/11/27]; Will of Richard White, 1802, Anne Arundel County Register of Wills, Wills, Liber JG 2, p. 212 [MSA C153-6, 1/3/12/16]; Inventory of Richard White, 1802, Anne Arundel County Register of Wills, Inventories, Liber JG 5, p. 338 [MSA C88-8, 1/3/12/33]; Maryland General Assembly, Session Laws of 1834, Joint Resolution 11. Archives of Maryland Online, vol. 541, p. 426.
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