Thomas Brown
MSA SC 3520-18184
Biography:
Thomas Brown enlisted as a private in Maryland's Fourth Independent Company on January 20, 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.” The Fourth Independent Company later fought at the Battle of White Plains in October 1776. Brown 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. [2]
It is difficult to fully determine what happened to Brown after his time with the Fourth Independent Company, since there were a number of people with the same name in the Maryland Line. In fact, there were two Thomas Browns who enlisted in the Second Maryland Regiment, composed of men from the defunct independent companies, in early 1777. One of them served until his term ended in 1780 and lived in Talbot County after the war, while the other died in the winter of 1779. Either of those soldiers could have been the same man who fought at the Battle of Brooklyn, but it is not possible to tell for certain. [3]
-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, 345-346; David Hackett Fischer, Washington’s Crossing (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 111.
[3] Archives of Maryland Online, vol. 18, pp. 82-83; Compiled Service Records of Soldiers Who Served in the American Army during the Revolutionary War, NARA M881, from Fold3.com; U.S. Federal Census, 1790.
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