William Evans
MSA SC 3520-17714
Biography:
William Evans enlisted as a private in the Eighth Company of the First Maryland Regiment on February 3, 1776. The Eighth Company, commanded by Captain Samuel Smith, was raised in Baltimore in early 1776, and trained there that spring and summer. Two other companies from the regiment were located in Baltimore as well, while the rest were stationed in Annapolis. In July, the regiment was ordered to march north to New York, to protect the city from invasion by the British. The Eighth Company lost four men who deserted along the march, a problem which plagued the regiment that summer. [1]
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, including the Eighth, 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, losing 256 men killed or captured. Because the Eighth was able to escape the battle early, it only lost approximately six men. [2]
Evans' fate at the battle is not certain, and no other details of his life are known. There was another Private William Evans in the regiment in 1776, a man from Montgomery County, Maryland, who served all of 1776, before deserting in 1777. There were also several other William Evans who served in the Maryland Line during the Revolutionary War, and the life of the veteran of the Eighth Company cannot be distinguished from any of them. [3]
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, p. 640; Compiled Service Records of Soldiers Who Served in the American Army During the Revolutionary War, NARA M881, from Fold3.com; "Eight Pounds Reward." Philadelphia Evening Post, 10 August 1776; William Sands to John and Ann Sands, 14 August 1776, Maryland State Archives, Special Collections, Dowsett Collection of Sands Family Papers [MSA SC 2095-1-18, 00/20/05/28].
[2] Mark Andrew Tacyn “’To the End:’ The First Maryland Regiment and the American Revolution” (PhD diss., University of Maryland College Park, 1999), 48-73; Return of the Maryland troops, 13 September 1776, Revolutionary War Rolls, NARA M246, folder 35, p. 85, from Fold3.com. 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] For the other William Evans, see Muster Rolls and Other Records of Service of Maryland Troops in the American Revolution, Archives of Maryland Online, vol. 18, pps. 107, 203, 533, 661. On William Evans of the Second Company, see Archives of Maryland Online, vol. 18, pps. 8, 106; "Seventy Dollars Reward." Maryland Journal (Baltimore), 16 December 1777; and Charles Greenbury Griffith to Gov., 1 April 1778, Maryland State Papers, Series A, box 11, no. 1, MdHR 6636-11-1 [MSA S1004-12-616, 1/7/3/30].
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