Charles A. Bryan (1752-1838)
MSA SC 3520-18125
Biography:
Born on June 10, 1752, Charles A. Bryan was twenty-three years old when he enlisted as a private in the Fifth Independent Company, led by Captain John Allen Thomas, in early 1776. The company was raised in St. Mary's County, Maryland, and was one of seven independent companies that the Maryland Council of Safety formed across the state in early 1776, initially intended to guard the Chesapeake Bay's coastline from a feared British invasion. By that summer, however, the independent companies were dispatched to New York, to help reinforce the Continental Army as it prepared to defend the city from the British. In total, twelve companies of Maryland troops traveled to New York that July and August: nine companies that comprised the First Maryland Regiment, commanded by Colonel William Smallwood, and the Fourth, Fifth, and Seventh Independent companies, the only three that were ready to travel then. [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. 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 was able to cross 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. Bryan and his company likely saw little combat. Instead, the Fifth Independent Company did not cross the East River from Manhattan to Brooklyn until after fighting had begun, and did not venture into the field of battle. They did, however, perform valuable service assisting the Americans retreating through the Gowanus Marsh. [2]
During the fall of 1776, Bryan and the rest of the Marylanders fought a series of battles in New York: Harlem Heights in September, White Plains in October, and Fort Washington in November. While the Americans had some tactical successes at these engagements, by November they had been pushed out of New York entirely, though they secured key revitalizing victories at Trenton and Princeton late that winter. At the end of the year, when the enlistments of the soldiers expired, the independent companies were disbanded.
Many of the soldiers, including Bryan, reenlisted in the newly-formed Second Maryland Regiment, which was composed of the old independent companies. Bryan signed on for a three-year term, and saw a great deal of combat during that time. 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. The Marylanders also fought at the Battle of Monmouth in June 1778. The next year, 1779, saw little major combat as the war slowed to a stalemate. [3]
Bryan was discharged at the end of this term in early 1780, in Philadelphia. A few months later, while he was still in the city, he once again returned to the army, this time as a corporal (or possibly a sergeant) in the Fourth Continental Light Dragoons, a cavalry regiment commanded by Steven Moylan. That unit saw combat in New Jersey in the summer of 1780, and in 1781 they took part in the siege at Yorktown, where the British surrendered on October 19. In 1782, the dragoons traveled to South Carolina with the troops dispatched to guard against further British action in the south; a large number of other Maryland soldiers were among those men, including men Bryan had fought alongside in 1776. [4]
Sometime in 1783, Bryan's unit was disbanded and he was discharged in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Later that fall, possibly still in Lancaster, Bryan got married on October 6 to Catherine Stone, who was not quite twenty-one years old. By 1790, the family had relocated to the northern part of the state, an area that was part of Northumberland (later Lycoming) County, near Williamsport. [5]
The Bryans were farmers, and Charles and Catherine had eleven children together: Henry (b. 1784); Mary (b. 1786); George W. (b. 1790); John (b. 1792); Elizabeth (b. 1794); Sarah (b. 1796); Frederick (b. 1798); David (b. 1800); William W. (b. 1802); Charles (b. 1804); and Samuel (b. 1806). Three of their children died: Mary, who died in 1802 at sixteen; Charles, who died in 1822 at eighteen; and Samuel, who died at twenty-five in 1831. [6]
By the late 1810s, Charles Bryan's health had begun to fail and the family's economic fortunes declined. However, because Bryan was a veteran of the Revolutionary War, he was able to secure financial assistance. The state of Pennsylvania granted him a pension of $58 per year sometime before 1820, and in 1826 Maryland awarded him another pension. Bryan also received a pension from the federal government in 1818, which paid him $96 per year. He collected that pension until his death on May 15, 1838. After his death, Catherine continued to receive his federal pension, as the widow of a Revolutionary soldier. She was still alive in 1841, but her date of death is not known. [7]
Owen Lourie, 2019
Notes:
1. Pension of Charles Bryan, National Archives and Records Administration, Revolutionary War Pension and Bounty-Land Warrant Application Files, NARA M804, W 2750, 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), 33-45.
2. 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.
3. Muster Rolls and Other Records of Service of Maryland Troops in the American Revolution, Archives of Maryland Online, vol. 18, p. 83; Compiled Service Records of Soldiers Who Served in the American Army During the Revolutionary War, NARA M881, from Fold3.com; Bryan pension.
4. Bryan pension; Robert K. Wright, The Continental Army (Washington, DC: U.S. Army Center for Military History, 1983), 346-347; Charles H. Lesser, Sinews of Independence: Monthly Strength Reports of the Continental Army (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), 157, 185, 224.
5. Bryan pension; Historical and Biographical Annals of Columbia and Montour Counties, Pennsylvania. Vol. II (Chicago: J.H. Beers, 1915), 693; U.S. Federal Census, 1790, Northumberland County, Pennsylvania; U.S. Federal Census, 1810, Lycoming County, Pennsylvania; U.S. Federal Census, 1820, Lycoming County, Pennsylvania; U.S. Federal Census, 1830, Lycoming County, Pennsylvania.
6. Bryan pension.
7. Bryan pension; Maryland General Assembly, Session Laws, 1826, Resolution no. 34, Archives of Maryland Online, vol. 437, p. 248; Charles Bryan on FindAGrave.
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