John Deaver
MSA SC 3520-18091
Biography:
John Deaver was young, just seventeen or eighteen years old, when he became a soldier, joining the First Maryland Regiment as a cadet in the summer of 1776. He was with the regiment at the Battle of Brooklyn, where the stand of the Maryland 400 kept the British from destroying the Continental Army, and went on to serve for another three years. After the war, he lived with his family in Baltimore, where he operated a school.
Deaver was the son of Ann and John Deaver, Sr., and was born in 1758 or 1759. He had at least two siblings, sisters named Martha and Ann. Deaver's mother died when he was young, and his father eventually married again, wedding a woman named Rebecca Talbott, who had a daughter named Rebecca with her first husband, Edward. The family was well off, and John, Jr. received a good education. He was raised in Baltimore, although he was born in the part of the county which later became Harford. [1]
As the summer of 1776 progressed, and the American colonies moved towards independence and war with Great Britain, many members from the gentry joined the army hoping to become officers. John Deaver was no exception. Although he did not join any of Maryland's infantry units when they were formed in the early part of the year, he eventually secured a spot as a cadet in the First Maryland Regiment. Cadets were officers-in-waiting, typically sons of the gentry whose social class qualified them to be officers. As there were more interested young men than available officers' posts, some became cadets instead, in the hope that they would eventually receive an officer's commission. Deaver did not join the regiment until August 7, about a month after it had left Maryland on its way to New York. He probably met up with the unit about the time it arrived in the city. While cadets were generally attached to specific companies, it is not known which, if any, company Deaver was part of. [2]
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. During the retreat, the Maryland troops fought their way towards the American fortifications, but were blocked by the swampy Gowanus Creek. While half the regiment crossed the creek, the rest were unable to do so before they were attacked by the British. Facing down a much larger, better-trained force, the Marylanders mounted a series of daring charges. These men, now known as the "Maryland 400," held the British at bay long enough for the rest of the Continental Army to escape, at the cost of many lives. In all, 256 Marylanders were killed or captured by the British; some companies lost as much as 80 percent of their men. [3]
Deaver was with the Marylanders two months later when they fought at the Battle of White Plains, where they again took the brunt of the fighting. Although the battle was a partial American victory, the British soon pushed the Continental Army out of New York and put it on the run through New Jersey. In early December, "having lost his baggage," presumably during the Americans' retreat through New Jersey in November, Deaver found himself "under the necessity of Returning to Maryland." In his three months in the army, Deaver had performed well in the eyes of several Maryland commanders, showing both personal bravery and commitment to the Revolution's ideals. Captain Benjamin Ford wrote to John Sr. that "your son John['s]...behaviour since he has joined our Regiment far Exceeds your most Sanguine Expectations of a Youth of his age. I can with the Greatest truth assert that he has behaved with Spirit and fortitude that would give honour to a man possessed of every Idea of the Noble struggle." Major Mordecai Gist, one of the regiment's senior officers agreed: "Mr. John Deaver...has behaved with prudence and Courage and Acquitted himself with honour in two engagements." [4]
Both men agreed that Deaver was "absolutely deserving of a Commission [as an officer]...not doubting that his future Conduct will meet with...approbation." At the end of 1776, Maryland increased its contribution to the Continental Army from one regiment to eight, which created many openings for new officers. Deaver received one of them, becoming a second lieutenant in the Third Maryland Regiment. It was good position, and matched Deaver's social position. As a lieutenant, he took on responsibility for leading troops in battle, which he did on many occasions in 1777 and 1778. The Marylanders fought in the disastrous raid on Staten Island in August 1777, and the major battles of the Philadelphia Campaign, Brandywine (September 1777) and Germantown (October 1777), both significant defeats. In June 1778, the Marylanders fought at the Battle of Monmouth, an American victory. [5]
Deaver appears to have performed his duties well, although in the summer of 1778 he was convicted at a court martial for being absent without leave. The violation was a common one, which the court noted "has been so generally practiced by the officers." The court also commented that "it gives the Commander-in-Chief [General George Washington] most sensible Pain to find any Officers Conduct so very blamable as that of Lieutenant Deavor...The striking Propriety and Necessity of Officers staying in Camp with their Corps is well known to every Private—The General is therefore sorry that he is obliged to reprimand Lt. Deaver...or that an Example of so pernicious & fatal a tendency should be seen in the records of the Army." [6]
The winter of 1778-1779 was a hard one, and there was discontent among many officers, who had not been paid; conditions were even worse among the enlisted soldiers. In early April 1779, just as the winter came to an end, Deaver resigned his commission and returned home to Baltimore. Two years later, he was recommended for a post as a lieutenant in a Baltimore City militia company, but it was never offered to him, and he remained a civilian for the rest of his life. [7]
Deaver had married in March 1777, just after being made an officer. His wife was Susanna Talbott, the daughter of his step-mother Rebecca (Talbott) Deaver. In the summer of 1779, a few months after Deaver resigned his commission, John and Susanna received a gift from their parents of a 125-acre farm just south of Baltimore City, near modern-day Dundalk or Sparrows Point. It is likely that they received the land as a sort of a delayed marriage present; while Deaver had probably returned to Baltimore for short visits, he likely had not spent very long with his wife until he left the army. [8]
The years that followed were marked with great sadness for Deaver, beginning with the death of his father John Sr. in the fall of 1782. Deaver's wife Susanna died on September 9, 1787, just half an hour after giving birth to their only child, John Talbott Deaver. Deaver married his second wife, Onorah Wroth in 1789, and they had a daughter named Ann in January 1792. Sadly, Onorah died in October 1793, only a few months after Deaver's step-mother Rebecca died. Deaver was now a two-time widower with a six-year-old son and a daughter who was a year and a half old. [9]
In January 1797, Deaver married his third, and final, wife, Sarah Hunt. They had two children who survived infancy, Emanuel Hunt Deaver (b. 24 May 1798) and Margaret (b. 26 June 1802). John and Sarah also had four children who died young: Job Hunt Deaver (9 January 1801-18 August 1801), John Hunt Deaver (9 April 1804-20 August 1804), Miriam Hunt Deaver (22 August 1805-4 November 1805), and Miriam Deaver (23 October 1806-24 October 1806). It was a heavy toll, even in a time of high infant mortality. Deaver left no record of his reaction during this time, so his feelings can only be wondered about. [10]
During this period of personal loss, Deaver was still an active businessman. In the 1790s, he was part of a dry goods firm with a store at Baltimore and Charles streets in Baltimore, although the business caused him to declare bankruptcy in 1800. However, his long-running career was as a school master. He opened a night school in Baltimore in 1786, promising to offer instruction in "Arithmetic, Writing, Reading, and Surveying, both trigonometrically and practically." Evidentially, the school thrived, as Deaver was able to open a a regular school, in addition to the night school, in 1789, teaching "Latin, English Grammar, Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, and Surveying," while also being sure to "instill into the young and tender Minds of his Pupils the general Principles of Morality and Virtue," while still being sensitive to the "instruction of [the students'] parents...with respect to their religious Principles and Conduct." It was, in short, the sort of school that members of the gentry would be comfortable sending their sons to, and the sort of school which Deaver had likely attended himself. Over the years, Deaver was able to secure his own school building, and even explored opening a school in Annapolis, although it is not clear if he carried out that plan. [11]
While Deaver was well-off, he was not an exceptionally wealthy man. For someone who was part of the city's educated elite, Deaver's property holdings show that he was not nearly as wealthy as many of his peers. He owned a relatively small amount of land, just the 125 acres from his parents, and at times a lot or two in Baltimore City, probably inherited from his father, along with perhaps a few other small tracts. In the early 1780s, he owned one slave, probably also inherited from his father's estate. That person's fate is not known, but Deaver opposed slavery, and owned no others. In 1789, he joined the Maryland Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery and the Relief of Free Negroes, an anti-slavery organization which believed that "the human race, however varied in colour or intellects, are all justly entitled to liberty; and it is the duty...of...individuals enjoying every blessing of freedom to remove this dishonour of the Christian character from amongst them." [12]
In the early 1800s, when he was in his forties, Deaver's health began to fail. In 1809, he closed his school in the middle of the term, "finding it indispensably necessary to decline my business and retire to the country during the remainder of the Spring and Summer for the recovery of my health." It was not a permanent end to his school, which was in operation as late as the fall of 1812. However, Deaver died "after a very long illness" on August 27, 1813. [13]
In his will, Deaver divided his property between his wife Sarah, and his surviving children, Ann, Margaret, and Emmanuel; John Talbott had died in 1810. Emmanuel received his father's desk, while Ann was bequeathed an eight-day clock, which Deaver had inherited from his father John Sr. In all, Deaver's estate was valued at about $350. He asked to be buried at the Methodist Burying Ground in Baltimore, reflecting the religious beliefs which he had adopted; as his obituary noted, "in the latter part of [his life] he experienced the saving power of the Christian Religion." Sarah outlived her husband by nearly forty years, dying on October 23, 1851, when she was seventy-four years old. The next year, her daughter Margaret applied for a veteran's pension from the federal government, on the basis of her father's service in the Revolutionary War; she was turned down for lack of evidence. [14]
Owen Lourie, 2019
Notes:
1. Deed, John Deaver, Sr. and Rebecca Deaver to John Deaver, Jr. and Susanna Deaver, 1779, Baltimore County Court, Land Records, Liber WG D, p. 61 [MSA CE66-54]; American and Commercial Daily Advertiser (Baltimore), 3 September 1813; Insolvency of John Deaver, 1800, Chancery Court, Chancery Papers, MdHR 17898-1351 [MSA S512-1407, 1/36/1/49]; Will of John Deaver, Sr., 1782, Baltimore County Register of Wills, Wills, Vol. 3, p. 476 [MSA C435-4, 2/28/12/3]. There were multiple people living in Baltimore named John Deaver which makes it difficult to learn some details about his family background.
2. Mordecai Gist to Council of Safety, 1 December 1776, Maryland State Papers, Series A, box 2, no. 85A [MSA S1004-2-994, 1/7/3/25]; Benjamin Ford to Council of Safety, 1 December 1777 [sic: 1776], Maryland State Papers, Series A, box 2, no. 85B [MSA S1004-2-1943, 1/7/3/25]; John A. Ruddiman, Becoming Men of Some Consequence: Youth and Military Service in the Revolutionary War (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2014), 31-35; Mark Andrew Tacyn, "'To the End:' The First Maryland Regiment and the American Revolution" (PhD diss., University of Maryland College Park, 1999), 44. On the place of cadets with the First Maryland Regiment in 1776, see "'Anxious of Showing my Zeal for the Love of My County, I entered Myself as a Cadet,'" on the Maryland State Archives research blog, Finding the Maryland 400.
3. Return of the Maryland troops, 13 September 1776, Revolutionary War Rolls, NARA M246, folder 35, p. 85, from Fold3.com; Tacyn, 48-73; Reiman Steuart, The Maryland Line (The Society of the Cincinnati, 1971), 154-155. 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. Gist to Council of Safety; Ford to Council of Safety.
5. Gist to Council of Safety; List of Regular Officers for Promotion, January 1777, Maryland State Papers, Red Books, vol. 12, no. 66, MdHR 4573-66 [MSA S989-17, 1/6/4/5]; Muster Rolls and Other Records of Service of Maryland Troops in the American Revolution, Archives of Maryland Online, vol. 18, p. 102; Steuart, 72; Compiled Service Records of Soldiers Who Served in the American Army During the Revolutionary War, NARA M881, from Fold3.com; List of Officers of the Maryland Line, c. December 1776, Maryland State Archives, Revolutionary Papers, box 6, no. 12, MdHR 19,970-6-12 [MSA S997-6-18, 1/7/3/11];
6. General Orders, 23 July 1778,” Founders Online, National Archives.
7. Capt. John Deaver to Gov. Thomas Sim Lee, 7 April 1781, Maryland State Papers, Series A, box 26, no. 90, MdHR 6636-26-90 [MSA S1004-35-3923, 1/7/3/42]. Many sources assert that Captain John Deaver was the soldier who had been a cadet in 1776 and a lieutenant in the Third Maryland 1777-1779, but that is incorrect. Captain Deaver was a member of the same militia company from 1775 until he was cashiered in April 1781. There is a good chance that Captain Deaver was Lieutenant Deaver's father, but it is difficult to prove that definitively. S. Eugene Clements and F. Edward Wright, The Maryland Militia in the Revolutionary War (Silver Spring, MD: Family Line Publications, 1987), 69.
8. Pension of John Deaver, National Archives and Records Administration, Revolutionary War Pension and Bounty-Land Warrant Application Files, NARA M804, R 2822, from Fold3.com. The pension application contains a detailed listing of births, marriages, and deaths kept by Deaver. Deed, John Deaver, Sr. and Rebecca Deaver to John Deaver, Jr. and Susanna Deaver, 1779.
9. Deaver pension; John Deaver, Sr. will; Will of Rebecca Deaver, 1793, Baltimore County Register of Wills, Wills, Vol. 5, p. 93 [MSA C435-6, 2/28/12/5].
10. Deaver pension.
11. Thompson and Walker, The Baltimore Town and Fell's Point Directory (Baltimore, 1796), 19; Deaver insolvency; "A Night School," Maryland Journal (Baltimore), 3 October 1786; "A School," Maryland Journal (Baltimore), 2 October 1789; "A School," Maryland Gazette (Annapolis), 19 March 1789; Deaver pension.
12. General Assembly, House of Delegates, Assessment Record, 1783, Baltimore East Hundred, p. 3 [MSA S1161-2-4, 1/4/5/45]; Federal Direct Tax, 1798, Archives of Maryland Online, vol. 729, Baltimore County, General List of Land, p. 423; Particular List of Land, p. 840; "Constitution of the Maryland Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery and the Relief of Free Negroes," Maryland Journal (Baltimore), 15 December 1789.
13. "School Room to Rent," American and Commercial Daily Advertiser (Baltimore), 25 April 1809; "Night School," Baltimore Federal Gazette, 15 October 1812; American and Commercial Daily Advertiser (Baltimore), 3 September 1813.
14. Will of John Deaver, Jr., 1813, Baltimore County Register of Wills, Wills, Vol. 9, 352 [MSA C435-10, 2/28/12/9]; Inventory of John Deaver, Sr., 1782, Baltimore County Register of Wills, Inventories, Vol. 12, p. 509 [MSA C340-13, 2/29/9/13]; Inventory of John Deaver, Jr., 1813, Baltimore County Register of Wills, Inventories, Vol. 28, p. 280 [MSA C340-29, 2/29/9/29]; "Mortuary Notice," Baltimore Federal Gazette, 22 August 1810; American and Commercial Daily Advertiser (Baltimore), 3 September 1813; "Died," The Sun (Baltimore), 25 October 1851; Deaver pension.
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