Solomon Kretzinger
MSA SC 3520-17608
Biography:
Solomon Kretzinger enlisted as a private in the Ninth Company of the First Maryland Regiment on February 10, 1776. Solomon's brother George had enlisted in the same company about two weeks earlier. A family of modest means, the Kretzingers lived in Washington County, Maryland, and were the children of George and Mary Kretzinger, who also had a daughter named Mary. [1]
The First Maryland Regiment was the state's first contingent of full-time, professional soldiers raised to be part of the Continental Army. Like Kretzinger, many of the men in the company came from Western Maryland, and it was designated as the light infantry company for the regiment. Instead of fighting in a line with the other companies, the light infantry was often deployed in small groups ahead of the main body of troops as scouts or skirmishers. They carried rifles, rather than muskets, and were intended to be a more mobile group. [2]
Kretzinger and the rest of the company were ordered to travel from Frederick to Annapolis in March 1776, to join with the rest of the regiment. As they departed, however, they were instructed to head for Baltimore instead to provide reinforcements in case of an anticipated British attack launched from the HMS Otter, a warship reportedly heading for the city. No attack ever materialized, and the company proceeded to Annapolis. They trained there until July, when the First Maryland Regiment was ordered to march north to New York, to protect the city from invasion by the British. [3]
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. As the Maryland troops fought their way towards the American fortifications, they were forced to stop at the swampy Gowanus Creek. Half the regiment was able to cross the creek and escape the battle. However, the rest, including the Ninth Company, 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. [4]
The Ninth Company fared poorly at the battle, probably because the light infantry's role placed them closest to the enemy lines during combat. At least thirteen soldiers from the company were captured, and fewer than half the men from the Ninth Company escaped death or captivity at the battle. Both Kretzinger brothers survived the battle, and went on to fight with the Marylanders through the rest of the difficult fall and winter of 1776. While the Maryland troops demonstrated their skill and bravery at Harlem Heights in September and White Plains in October, 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. [5]
At the end of 1776, Kretzinger's enlistment expired. He and his brother left the army and returned home to Maryland. After a few years at home, however, Solomon rejoined the army, enlisting in a unit called Hartley's Additional Regiment, probably in 1778. Commanded by Colonel Thomas Hartley, the regiment was formed in 1777, and was mostly made up of men from Pennsylvania, as well as some Marylanders. [6]
No official records exist to document Kretzinger's service with Hartley, only the vague account he gave when applying for a Federal veteran's pension in the 1830s. While he remembered escorting captured British soldiers to prison, it is likely that Kretzinger spent most of 1778 and 1779 fighting against British-allied Iroquois tribes. In the summer of 1778, Hartley's men launched an offensive in the Wyoming Valley against the hostile Indians there. In the first part of 1779, Kretzinger was probably part of the company stationed at Fort Wallis (or Fort Muncy), in Lycoming County, Pennsylvania. At some point that year, Kretzinger was wounded in a skirmish with a group of British-allied Indians, who took him prisoner. Kretzinger said he was given to the British, who held him at Fort Niagara, in northern New York, until the end of the war. [7]
Just as there is little solid information about Kretzinger's service in 1778-1779, there are no records about his release from captivity. It is not certain if he was back in Maryland in the spring of 1782, when his father George died. Solomon continued to live in Maryland until at least the 1790s. He married a woman named Katherine on August 21, 1787, and they had at least two children, sons named Jacob and Charles. By 1830, the family moved to Sullivan County, Tennessee. [8]
In 1832, Kretzinger was awarded a veteran's pension of $80 per year by the Federal Government, which he received until his death on May 17, 1837, when he was around ninety years old. A few years later, Katherine applied for the widow's pension she was qualified for. However, after she submitted her application, rumors began to surface in the local community that her husband had not been a soldier in the Continental Army. One local man, John Wilson, wrote to the United States Pension Commissioner in late 1845 that "there was an old man in my neighborhood by the name of Solomon Crutsingar [sic] that always claimed to have served seven years in the revolution war. He told his war tales and shewed wounds he had received in the service." After Kretzinger died, however, "amongst the old man's papers [was] found his discharge...[which] was partly wrote in german text." The local educated men, who could read German, were summoned, and "all pronounced it a British discharge...it was signed by order of his Royal Majesty Highness King George the Third at Fort Niagra...[dated] in the year 1784." Wilson reported hearing a man say that "'I got the widow Crutsingar a pension when neither her nor the old man was entitled to a pension, for Old Crutsingar was an old Hessian and had fought against America and was discharged by the British."' Moved by "the unjustness of...a pension clandestinely [awarded to] an old Hessian," Wilson called for Katherine's application to be denied. [9]
Hearing no response, Wilson wrote again in June 1846, claiming "the way old Krutsinger got his pension was...[that] he talked of being in the war and telling the battles he was in, but at the same time he did not tell that he was on the side of the British." "I am a friend of my country and willing to defend her wrights [sic] in any shape or form," said Wilson. Referring to Solomon and Katherine's children, who were advocating on their mother's behalf, Wilson added that "I think it is enough for the offspring of Old British Hessians to enjoy the blessings of freedom and equal rights that their fathers fought to deprive us of without fostering them with American pensions." Pension records are a bit vague, but it seems that Katherine Kretzinger did lose her pension as a result of this protest. [10]
Did Solomon Kretzinger actually fight for the British? It is impossible to say for certain. Few records from Hartley's Regiment exist, so there is no way to prove Kretzinger served in that unit, although his recollections seem correct. Similarly, because the purported British discharge, written in German, did not survive, and was never sent to the Pension Bureau, its true significance cannot be understood. However, the repeated claim that Kretzinger was "an old Hessian" suggests that his German heritage made him suspect in his neighbors' eyes. The Pension Bureau appears to have rejected Katherine's claim for lack of evidence of Solomon's service, although the pension file contains no evidence that anyone ever sought to verify that he was part of the Maryland Line in 1776, something that could have been confirmed from Maryland's records. Indeed, the fact that Kretzinger enlisted in the First Maryland Regiment in February 1776, and saw combat at the Battle of Brooklyn, is the only military service that can be verified.
Owen Lourie, 2018
Notes:
[1] Muster Rolls and Other Records of Service of Maryland Troops in the American Revolution, Archives of Maryland Online, vol. 18, pps. 19, 20; Will of George Kretzinger, Sr., 1782, Washington County Register of Wills, Wills, Liber TS 1, p. 117 [MSA C1981-1, 1/63/2/14].
[3] Order to Capt. Stricker, Council of Safety Proceedings, 6 March 1776, Archives of Maryland Online, vol. 11, p. 202; Order to Capt. Stricker, 9 March 1776, Archives of Maryland Online, vol. 11, p. 224-225.
[4] 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.
[5] Return of the Maryland troops, 27 September 1776, from Fold3.com.
[6] Pension of Solomon Kretzinger. National Archives, Revolutionary War Pension and Bounty Land-Warrant Application Files, W 375, from Fold3.com; Robert K. Wright, The Continental Army (Washington, DC: U.S. Army Center for Military History, 1983), 101, 322.
[7] Kretzinger pension; David Craft, "The expedition of Col. Thomas Hartley against the Indians in 1778, to avenge the massacre of Wyoming," Proceedings and Collections of the Wyoming Historical and Geological Society 9 (1905), 189-216; George Washington to Colonel Zebulon Butler, Major Barnet Eichelberger and the Commanding Officer at Fort Wallis, Pa., 1 March 1779, Founders Online, National Archives.
[8] Will of George Kretzinger, Sr., 1782, Washington County Register of Wills, Wills, Liber TS 1, p. 117 [MSA C1981-1, 1/63/2/14]; Kretzinger pension; U.S. Federal Census, 1790, Washington County, Maryland; U.S. Federal Census, 1830, Sullivan County, Tennessee; U.S. Federal Census, 1840, Sullivan County, Tennessee.
[9] Kretzinger pension.
[10] Kretzinger pension.
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