John McFadden (1751-1841)
MSA SC 3520-17811
Biography:
John McFadden volunteered to serve in the Continental Army early in the Revolutionary War, enlisting as a private in the First Maryland Regiment's Sixth Company on January 23, 1776. McFadden lived in Cecil County, Maryland, and was twenty-four years old, the typical age of Maryland's recruits. [1]
Throughout Maryland and the American colonies, many young men got swept up by the feelings of the time, the initial enthusiasm for war termed rage militaire. For these recruits, volunteering for the army could show that they were ready to become men, and it wcould be an opportunity to fight against the oppressive hand of England, and to change history. Glory in battle could give a man standing in his community, and service was intrinsically mixed with politics and community membership. Groups of friends often enlisted together, as did brothers and families. Joining also gave soldiers a way to leave home and to earn a wage. For some, enlisting was a more symbolic, political act: military service was viewed as the responsibility of a citizen in a republic, and to fight was to become a virtuous man. It was also an opportunity for ordinary people to exert their influence on the political world, participate publicly with those around them. [2]
On July 10, after being stationed in Annapolis for several months, McFadden and his company started to march with the regiment to the Elk River in the northeastern corner of Maryland. They traveled by water up to the head of the Chesapeake Bay, then marched to Philadelphia, arriving on July 16. The regiment then traveled to New York City, a city embroiled in tension and chaos. The Continental Army had the unfortunate task of defending New York City from the British forces. The British were the finest naval force at the time and they were attacking with a fleet of hundreds of ships. New York was surrounded on all sides by navigable water. Defending an unfortified island from the greatest navy on earth was an impossible task, but it was the task that fell to John McFadden and his comrades. [3]
The First Maryland Regiment, commanded by Colonel William Smallwood, arrived in New York on August 9. The Marylanders were incorporated into one of the brigades stationed on Long Island, under the command of William Alexander, Lord Sterling. The conditions of the fortifications on Long Island were not comfortable or healthy. The American forces were inexperienced soldiers and did not know how to properly maintain a camp. Notably, they did not observe the necessary practices for proper sanitation. American general Nathaniel Greene described soldiers “easing themselves in the ditches of the fortifications.” This lack of sanitation ensured that the water supplies around the camps were polluted. Dysentery, “putrid fevers,” typhoid fever, malaria, and enteric diseases ran rampant throughout the camps of the colonists. By August, 25 percent of the American forces were too sick to serve on active duty. John McFadden was one of the many soldiers who fell ill, and at the time of the Battle of Brooklyn, he was “confined by fever to his tent” during the Battle of Brooklyn, on August 27. Little did John McFadden know at the time, but it is most likely that his fever saved his life. [4]
On August 23, Washington decided to relocate 3,000 of his soldiers from the Brooklyn Heights forward to the Heights of Guana, a line of high hills that were heavily wooded. The heights were ten miles long, and 3,000 soldiers could not hope to defend all of it. The Americans were positioned along the four roads that passed through the Heights of Guana. Their role was not to hold the British army, but rather to delay the British forces and to force them to pay for every step in blood. The furthest right of the American line was manned by the soldiers under Stirling, including John McFadden’s comrades in the First Maryland Regiment. On the night of August 26, the British forces began their attack. By the next morning, they had begun to threaten the American position. The Maryland forces were aligned along the Gowanus Road, with the First, Second, Fifth, Seventh, and Eighth companies on the left, while the Third, Fourth, Sixth--McFadden's company--Ninth, and Seventh Independent companies on the right. From sunrise till noon, artillery attacked the Maryland line and its right wing was harassed by light infantry, but the bulk of the British forces did not advance. [5]
The Marylanders were unaware, however, that the British delay was due to patience, not fear. Miles to the east, on the American left, around 10,000 British soldiers moved around the end of the American line and attacked the Heights of Guana from the rear and side. At around 11:30 or 12:00 noon the Maryland troops were attacked by British forces emerging from the woods to their left. The companies from the left wing were largely able to escape across the marshy area and creek to the left of the road. They were ambushed along their retreat and a few soldiers downed in the watery crossings. However, their casualties were relatively light.[6]
Meanwhile, the other half of the Marylanders had been covering the most open ground in front of the British, acting as a rear guard in order to protect their retreating comrades. They now faced two choices: try to swim across the creek while under British attack, or try to push up the road. Lord Stirling and Major Mordecai Gist, the Marylanders' commander on the ground, then led the right wing composed of the Third, Fourth, Sixth, Ninth, and Seventh Independent up along the Gowanus Road to the Port Road, where they could then cross the creek at Yellow Mills. On their way, the five companies ran into a body of troops commanded by British general Lord Cornwallis at Upper Mills. The right wing attacked twice, trying to break through the British position. The Fourth, Sixth, and Seventh Independent sustained the most casualties in this attack. After the second failure to break through the British force, a third attack was deemed by Gist to be the height of "rashness." Instead, the outnumbered, surrounded, and bloodied Maryland troops fled to the sides of the road. Some fled into the trees to the right and the rest tried to cross the creek while under fire from the British. As a result of their charges, the Marylanders had tied up the main British force in the area long enough to allow many other American units to cross the creek and escape. [7]
McFadden’s company, the Sixth, was in the heaviest of the fighting that day and sustained some of the highest casualties. McFadden later recalled that only "fourteen or fifteen men remained" in the Sixth company after the battle (the actual number was closer to sixteen or eighteen) which represented just one quarter of the company's men. The survivors were consolidated into the Fifth Company, since not enough of the Sixth remained to function on its own. If McFadden had been in the battle that day, he would likely would have died or been captured. After the battle, McFadden traveled with the regiment to Kingsbridge, and was still with the Marylanders when they fought at the Battle of Trenton. [8]
On December 26, 1776, at around 7:30 in the morning, under the cover of a snowstorm, the Continental Army attacked the city of Trenton, New Jersey, which was occupied by Hessian soldiers allied with the British. The Americans prepared their artillery and formed their ranks along the northern heights that dominated the town. The Maryland soldiers, John McFadden among them, were under the command of General Hugh Mercer. Mercer was positioned towards the west, on the right hand side of the American line. After the American artillery had battered the Hessian guns that had been hastily placed on King Street, the American line advanced, their musket fire inflicting many casualties. The concentrated American fire eventually drove the Hessians back, and Rall himself was killed in the fighting. Mercer and his soldiers then pivoted to the left and charged after the retreating Hessians. The American forces surrounded the remaining Hessians west of Trenton, where they surrendered. [9]
Hearing of the Battle of Trenton, British commander General William Howe ordered Cornwallis to attack the Continental Army at Trenton. On January 2, 1777, Cornwallis encountered American troops at Laurensville and pushed them back to Trenton by nightfall. In order to deceive Cornwallis and escape, Washington and the army lit fires in camp and then marched away though the night, around the British force, with the Assunpink stream between them. By morning, Washington had arrived at Stonybrook, about two miles from Princeton. He ordered General Mercer to lead the army with 400 men from the First Virginia Regiment, the Delaware Regiment, and the First Maryland Regiment, including John McFadden. A British detachment encountered Mercer's force on the road. The Americans and British exchanged fire, until Mercer’s men were driven back after the British charged with bayonets fixed. Mercer dismounted so he could regather his men, but was immediately surrounded. He refused to surrender and was knocked to the ground and stabbed repeatedly until he died. John McFadden fought in this battle as well, and recalled having been "within a few yards of General Mercer, when he fell." Washington then arrived with reinforcements and drove off the British so that the army could continue on to Princeton. After the Battle of Princeton, McFadden was discharged and traveled back to Maryland. [10]
McFadden stayed in Maryland for a time, but in 1796 he moved to Pennsylvania, living first in Westmoreland and Crawford counties, before settling for good in Sugarcreek, Venango County, in the northwestern part of the state. He married a woman named Nancy (last name unknown), and they had four children: Elisha (1790-1838), John (1794-1839), Leah (1795-?), and Stephen (1797-1866). John was a farmer, and a founding member of the Sugercreek Presbyterian Church. [11]
By 1838, McFadden applied for a pension from the Federal government as a Revolutionary War veteran, when he was in his mid-eighties. He had been eligible for the pension since 1832, but had waited to apply, he said, because, “as long I was able by [my own] industry to earn my living, it was not my desire to [make] myself a [burden] to the public.” The next year, he was granted a pension of forty dollars per year, which sustained him in his old age. His wife Nancy died in December 1839, and John died about a year later, on March 3, 1841, a month before his ninetieth birthday. [12]
John McFadden fought in the Revolutionary War for only a year, then moved to the frontier and lived a quiet life raising his family. However, without men like John McFadden, the United States would not exist today. He went to war and stood fast when he was needed. He charged the Hessian cannons at Trenton. He braved the wilderness of the frontier. He raised a family. This county is built on the bravery and work of men like John McFadden.
Simon Belcher, Washington College, 2018
Notes:
[1] Pension of John McFadden. National Archives, Revolutionary War Pension and Bounty Land-Warrant Application Files, S 5755, from Fold3.com; Muster Rolls and Other Records of Service of Maryland Troops in the American Revolution, Archives of Maryland Online, vol. 18, p. 13; FindAGrave for John and Nancy McFadden. McFadden's pension application gives his date of birth in 1755, not 1751, as reported on his gravestone.
[2] John A. Ruddiman, Becoming Men of Some Consequence: Youth and Military Service in the Revolutionary War (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2014), 22.
[3] McFadden pension; Mark Andrew Tacyn, "'To the End': The First Maryland Regiment and the American Revolution" (Ph.D. diss, University of Maryland, College Park, 1999), 44.
[4] David Hackett Fischer, Washington’s Crossing (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 82, 87; Tacyn, 44, 52; McFadden pension.
[5] Fischer, 93; Tacyn, 52-57.
[6] Fischer, 95; Tacyn, 58-59.
[7] Fischer, 95; Tacyn, 60; Extract of a letter from New-York: Account of the battle on Long-Island, 1 September 1776, American Archives Online, series 5, vol. 2, p. 107.
[8] Return of the Maryland troops, 13 September 1776, Revolutionary War Rolls, NARA M246, folder 35, p. 85, from Fold3.com; McFadden pension.
[9] Fisher, 244-251.
[10] John T. Goolrick, The Life of General Hugh Mercer (New York: The Neale Publishing Co., 1906), 48-53; McFadden pension.
[11] McFadden pension; U.S. Federal Census, 1820, Sugarcreek, Venago County, Pennsylvania; U.S. Federal Census, 1830, Sugarcreek, Venago County, Pennsylvania; FindAGrave for John and Nancy McFadden.
[12] McFadden pension; FindAGrave for John and Nancy McFadden.
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