Henry Gates
MSA SC 3520-18157
Biography:
Henry Gates enlisted in the Fourth Independent Company of Maryland troops on January 25, 1776.[1] This force was raised to protect Maryland from any impending British attacks. The nine companies of Colonel William Smallwood’s battalion were stationed in Baltimore and Annapolis while the independent companies were split between the Eastern and Western shores to protect key commercial centers. Gates and the Fourth Independent were placed at Oxford in Talbot County under the command of Captain James Hindman.[2]
In July of 1776, Gates and his company were ordered to leave Oxford and march to New York to reinforce the Continental Army.[3] A few weeks after they arrived, they faced the British on the battlefield for the first time at the Battle of Brooklyn.
The battle was a disaster for the Continental Army. It was quickly outflanked in the course of the battle and soldiers were forced to retreat by swimming through Gowanus Creek under enemy fire. The entire Continental Army and George Washington himself faced obliteration as a result. They were saved, however, by the courage of a group of soldiers who came to be known as the Maryland 400. In the midst of the frantic retreat, the Maryland 400 launched a daring counterattack and held off the British long enough for Washington and his army to escape annihilation. Two hundred and fifty-six Maryland soldiers were either killed or captured in the process.
Gates was present at the Battle of Brooklyn, but the Fourth Independent Company saw relatively little combat there. The company was even chastised for their alleged non-participation by other Americans. Captain Hindman defended his company, however, and insisted that they wanted to take a more active role, but their orders prevented them from doing so. He wrote in a letter to Daniel of St. Thomas Jenifer, “I have had the vanity to think the company I have had the honor to command have behaved themselves as well as in the service, notwithstanding the dark insinuations that have been thrown out to their prejudice, and will refer to Col Smallwood for their behaviour and conduct since they have been under his command”.[4]
Gates faced the British again at the Battle of White Plains, where the Maryland troops continued to cover the Continental Army’s retreat. Gates was most likely present at the battles of Trenton and Princeton as well.
At the beginning of 1777, the issue of expiring enlistments came to call. After witnessing three gruesome battles and suffering the conditions of an ill-supplied army, Gates decided that he had seen enough of war. He chose not to reenlist in the Continental Army.
Gates’s life following his time in the war is a mystery. No record of him can be found after his service in 1776.
Jillian Curran, Explore America Research Intern, 2019
Notes:
[2] Mark Andrew Tacyn, “‘To the End:’ The First Maryland Regiment and the American Revolution” (PhD diss., University of Maryland College Park, 1999), 34.
[3] Tacyn, 44.
[4] Journal and Correspondence of the Maryland Council of Safety, July 7: December 31, 1776, Archives of Maryland Online, vol. 12, p. 346.
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