Thomas Burgess
MSA SC 3520-18161
Biography:
Thomas Burgess enlisted as a private in Maryland's Fourth Independent Company in 1776 under Captain James Hindman. Hindman’s company originally played a role in the Maryland Council of Safety's plan to protect the Chesapeake Bay from potential British invasions. At first stationed at Oxford in Talbot County, Hindman's company travelled to New York to reinforce the Continental Army in preparation for a British invasion. The Fourth Independent Company arrived in New York by mid-August 1776. [1]
On the morning of August 27, 1776, American forces faced British troops at the Battle of Brooklyn (otherwise known as the Battle of Long Island). While several companies engaged the British Army on the Gowanus Road and the nearby Gowanus Creek, taking severe losses in the process, the Fourth Independent Company suffered only three casualties. Hindman defended his actions during the battle to the Council of Safety, arguing that rumors referring to the Fourth Independent Company’s “very ill” behavior were unfounded. Hindman instead declared that “the company [he] had the honor to command...behaved themselves as well as in the service, notwithstanding the dark insinuations...thrown out to their prejudice.” [2]
The Fourth Independent Company later fought at the Battle of White Plains in October 1776. Burgess survived the Battle of White Plains, despite heavy American losses. One Hessian volley alone wounded and killed ninety-two soldiers during the battle, and forty soldiers of the Maryland Line were killed, captured, or wounded in total. As his enlistment in the Fourth Independent Company drew to a close, Burgess once again enlisted as a private, this time in the Fifth Maryland Regiment on December 10, 1776. Despite a string of defeats in 1776, American victories at Trenton and Princeton revitalized the morale of the Continental Army. [3]
Burgess was soon transferred to the Second Maryland Regiment on April 22, 1777 under the command of Captain Archibald Anderson. Burgess once again fought alongside many of the same people from the Fourth Independent Company, including Anderson, who had previously been Burgess's first lieutenant in Hindman's company. Between 1777 and 1779, Burgess's company remained in the northern theater and participated in combat at locations including Staten Island, Brandywine, and Germantown. Burgess participated in guard duty at Fish Kill, New York in September of 1778. [4]
Shortly after midnight on July 16, 1779, Thomas Burgess participated in an American raid on Stony Point. American soldiers were not allowed to load their muskets prior to the harrowing assault on British troops for fear that accidental misfires might give away their positions, forcing the soldiers to rely only on their bayonets. American troops went so far as to kill all dogs in the surrounding area to prevent their barking from alerting the British. American soldiers successfully defeated the British, taking 543 prisoners. Only fifteen American soldiers were killed and eighty-four were wounded. Thomas Burgess received wounds during the battle, the exact nature of which were not specified. [5]
Despite surviving for a few months, Thomas Burgess later died of his wounds on August 10, 1779. Although the American victory at Stony Point served as a major psychological victory, producing “an ardor of enthusiasm in the minds of both the army and the people,” the Americans soon abandoned the area. The British reclaimed the area not long after, but also abandoned Stony Point in order to focus on the war's southern theater. [6]
-James Schmitt, Maryland Society Sons of the American Revolution Research Fellow, 2019
Notes:
[1] Muster Rolls and Other Records of Service of Maryland Troops in the American Revolution, Archives of Maryland Online, vol. 18, p. 24; Mark Andrew Tacyn, “‘To the End:’ The First Maryland Regiment and the American Revolution” (PhD diss., University of Maryland College Park, 1999), pp. 33-34, 44-45.
[2] Tacyn, pp. 52-67; Journal and Correspondence of the Maryland Council of Safety July 7, 1776 to December 31, 1776, Archives of Maryland Online, vol. 12, pp. 345-346.
[3] Archives of Maryland Online, vol. 18, p. 274; David Hackett Fischer, Washington’s Crossing (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 111.
[4] Archives of Maryland Online, vol. 18, p. 82; Compiled Service Records of Soldiers Who Served in the American Army during the Revolutionary War, NARA M881, from Fold3.com.
[5] Samuel W. Pennypacker, “The Capture of Stony Point,” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, vol. 26, no. 3 (1902), pp. 366-369.
[6] Archives of Maryland Online, vol. 18, p. 82; Pennypacker, p. 368.
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