Barton Tabbs
MSA SC 3520-18229
Biography:
Barton Tabbs was born in 1757 in Great Mills, St. Mary’s County, Maryland.[1] Tabbs grew up in St. Mary’s County and became a doctor after studying under Dr. John Bond.[2] In the spring of 1776, at just nineteen years old, Tabbs contributed his medical abilities to the revolutionary cause by joining Colonel William Smallwood’s battalion of Maryland troops as a surgeon’s mate.[3] The job of the surgeon’s mate was to assist the surgeon however necessary in their dual roles as surgeons and doctors.
In July of 1776, after months of training in Annapolis, the First Maryland Regiment was sent to join the Continental Army in New York in preparation for a major British attack. On August 27, 1776, this attack, later known as the Battle of Brooklyn, arrived.
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 relentless enemy fire. The entire Continental Army and George Washington himself faced imminent destruction as a result. They were spared, however, by the bravery 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.
Following the rout at Brooklyn, an alarming number of Maryland troops desperately needed medical attention. Unfortunately, the majority of men were not getting any. Captain John Allen Thomas from the Fifth Independent Company wrote to the Maryland Council of Safety about the “unhappy situation of the Maryland troops.” He reported that two hundred men were unfit for duty, including one of the two regimental surgeons.[4] Just over a week later, Tabbs was sent to alleviate this dire situation. On September 16, 1776, Tabbs was appointed surgeon’s assistant to Dr. John Hanson Briscoe, the surgeon for the Independent Companies.[5]
As the Continental Army’s retreat from New York continued through the fall of 1776, the role of medical officers like Tabbs became increasingly important. The number of sick and wounded men was staggering and ever-increasing. Conflict between regimental surgeons and the Continental Army’s Hospital Department, however, inhibited their care.
Tensions between these two factions were mostly due to an alarming lack of supplies. Regimental surgeons believed they were entitled to demand anything from the general hospital’s supply. The Hospital Department disagreed, however, and limited the amount of medical supplies they gave to regimental units.[6] When regimental and general hospital surgeons arrived at White Plains, regimental surgeons were again disappointed by the stores brought by the general surgeons. Many regimental surgeons even failed to show up at White Plains.[7] It is not known for certain whether or not Tabbs was present to tend to his regiment. Colonel Smallwood himself was involved in the conflict between general and regimental medical units. He removed his men from the general hospital and insisted that his men would receive better care “in a comfortable house in the country, and supplied with only common rations.”[8]
In early 1777, Tabbs was recommended for a promotion and was appointed surgeon of the Seventh Regiment.[9] Shortly after his promotion, Tabbs was forced to deal with one of the biggest threats to the army, the outbreak of disease. In the winter of 1777, an entire barrack in Tabbs’s regiment, excluding eight men, came down with smallpox. Tabbs reported that the men who were still healthy must be moved out of the barracks and inoculated immediately. “If they are suffered to remain in the Barrack,” he wrote, “the greater part will certainly be lost.” Five men died within two days and Tabbs believed that the rest of the infected would soon perish as well. He wrote that there “[could] be nothing else expected, considering their way of living.”[10] Tabbs was, of course, referring to the notoriously cramped and unsanitary conditions in Continental Army camps.
Tabbs briefly returned to Maryland that summer and married Elizabeth Bond on June 20, 1777 in Calvert County.[11] In the months that followed, Tabbs and his assistants were most likely overwhelmed with wounded men from the bloody battles of Brandywine and Germantown in the fateful Philadelphia Campaign.
Tabbs continued to serve as surgeon for the Seventh Regiment until his resignation on October 3, 1779.[12] He returned to St. Mary’s County and became a very prominent figure in the community. In February of 1785, Tabbs was appointed as a justice of the peace.[13] This position granted Tabbs limited powers to hear minor cases. He served as a justice of the peace intermittently from 1785-1793.[14] On March 10, 1786, Tabbs was appointed a justice.[15] He served as justice again in 1792 and 1793.[16]
In the summer of 1794, Tabbs returned to military service. On June 18, he was appointed surgeon for the Twelfth Regiment of Maryland Militia. Tabbs remained the regimental surgeon until 1813.[17]
By 1795, Tabbs had remarried after the death of his wife Elizabeth Bond. His new wife was Helen Maxwell.[18] The couple acquired copious amounts of land in Charles and St. Mary’s county and owned about twenty slaves by 1807.[19]
On January 20, 1798, Tabbs was appointed a founding member of the Medical and Surgical Faculty of the State of Maryland.[20] This group was essentially the first group of faculty for the University of Maryland’s medical school.
In 1807, Tabbs was given yet another public appointment, this time to the St. Mary’s Board of Agriculture.[21] In the same year, he was offered the position of director of the Farmers Bank of Maryland for St. Mary’s County. Tabbs declined this appointment, however.[22] In 1808, he was one of multiple prominent men commissioned to divide St. Mary’s County into election districts.[23] Tabbs was well-known not only for his multitude of public offices, but also for his fear of lightning. Stories say that he walked around his yard examining the clouds and would “hail his man Friday every few minutes to ask if he thought a certain cloud would come up or pass around.”[24]
After a life of dedicated military, medical, and public service, Tabbs passed away on October 13, 1818 at age sixty-one. He bequeathed his estate to his surviving children, Thomas Tabbs, Ann McWilliams, and Elizabeth Tabbs. He also left parts to the children of his deceased children, Hariot Stone, Benjamin Tabbs, and Moses Tabbs. It is unknown whether these are children from his marriage to Elizabeth Bond or Helen Maxwell. Tabbs had some anxieties about his son Thomas Tabbs’s ability to properly manage his inheritance. He asks his executors to employ their “utmost care and attention, to the person, morals, and conduct of [his] son Thomas Tabbs.”[25]
At the time of his death, Tabbs was extremely wealthy. He owned hundreds of acres of land in St. Mary’s and Charles County, along with over twenty slaves.[26]
Jillian Curran, Explore America Research Intern, 2019
Notes:
[1] Eugene Fauntleroy Cordell, The Medical Annals of Maryland, 1799-1899. (Williams & Wilkins Company, 1903), 588.
[2] “Edward Johnson to Council of Safety”, 17 January 1777, Maryland State Papers, Series A, MdHR 6636-2-130 [MSA S1004-2-1296, 1/7/3/25].
[3] Pay Abstract, First Maryland Regiment, September 1776, Maryland State Papers, Revolutionary Papers, box 6, no. 5, MdHR 19970-6-5 [MSA S997-6-6, 1/7/3/11]; Pay Abstract, First Maryland Regiment, October-December 1776, Maryland State Papers, Series A, box 1, no. 108, MdHR 6636-1-108 [MSA S1004-1-87, 1/7/3/25].
[4] “John Allen Thomas to Maryland Council of Safety”, 4 September 1776, Maryland State Papers, Red Books, vol. 12, no. 89, MdHR 4573 [MSA S989-17, 1/6/4/5].
[6] Mary C. Gillett, The Army Medical Department, 1775-1818. (Washington D.C.: Center of Military History, 1981), 31.
[7] Gillett, 72.
[8] Gillett, 31.
[10] “Dr. Barton Tabbs to Daniel of St. Thomas Jenifer”, 3 February 1777, Maryland State Papers, Red Books, MdHR 4590-03 [MSA S989-3557, 1/6/4/22].
[11] Maryland Marriages, 1777-1804, p. 182.
[12] Archives of Maryland Online, vol. 18, p. 252.
[14] Archives of Maryland Online, vol. 71, p. 168, 232; Journal and Correspondence of the State Council, February 23, 1789 to November 11, 1793, Archives of Maryland Online, vol. 72, p. 170, 315.
[15] Archives of Maryland Online, vol. 71, p. 85.
[16] Archives of Maryland Online, vol. 72, p. 248, 313.
[17] Adjutant General, Militia Appointments 1794-1910, p. 97, MdHR 5587 [MSA S348-2, 2/6/5/10].
[18] Charles County Court, Land Records, Deed, Barton Tabbs from Alexander Smoot, 1795, Liber N, no. 4, p. 407 [MSA CE 82-40].
[19] Charles E. Fenwick, St. Mary’s County Tax Assessment Records, 1793-1849. (St. Mary's County Historical Society, 2004), 401.
[22] “Farmers Bank of Maryland,” Maryland Gazette (Annapolis, MD), October 22, 1807, 2.
[23] Archives of Maryland Online, vol. 596, p. 16.
[24] Cordell, 588.
[25] Will of Barton Tabbs, 1815, St. Mary’s County Register of Wills, Wills, Liber JJ 3, p. 508 [MSA C1720-6, 1/60/10/36].
[26] Fenwick, 401.
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