Maryland Loyalists Battalion | |
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![]() William Augustus Bowles, who served in the Maryland Loyalists Battalion. | |
Active | 1777–1783 |
Country | ![]() |
Allegiance | ![]() |
Branch | ![]() |
Type | Infantry |
Size | One battalion |
Garrison/HQ | Pensacola, West Florida |
Engagements | |
Commanders | |
Notable commanders | Lieutenant-Colonel James Chalmers |
The Maryland Loyalists Battalion, also known as the First Battalion of Maryland Loyalists, was a Loyalist infantry unit which served on the side of the Kingdom of Great Britain during the American Revolutionary War. Raised in 1777 by Loyalist officer James Chalmers, the unit, consisting of one battalion, was organizationally part of the British Provincial Corps and saw action at the 1778 Battle of Monmouth and the 1781 Siege of Pensacola. It was disbanded in 1783 in the wake of the Patriot victory in the war.
As with other colonies in British America, Maryland was bitterly divided by the American Revolution. Members of the existing political elite tended to make reluctant revolutionaries; men such as Benedict Swingate Calvert, illegitimate son of the ruling Calvert family and a judge of the land office, remained loyal to the British Crown, and would suffer the consequences. Like other loyalists, Calvert would find himself on the losing side of the Revolutionary War, effectively ending his political career. The Annapolis Convention of 1774 to 1776 saw the old Maryland elite overthrown – men like Calvert, Governor Eden and George Steuart all lost their political power, and in many cases their land and wealth. After the war, Loyalists would have to pay triple taxes and were forced to sign the loyalty oath. Many had their lands and property confiscated. [1]
The unit was composed primarily of colonists from the Eastern Shore of Maryland; it was commissioned in British-held Philadelphia in mid-October 1777 as "The First Battalion of Maryland Loyalists." The unit's commander, Lt. Col. James Chalmers of Newtown, Maryland (present-day Chestertown), was an active Loyalist writer.
The Maryland Loyalists saw limited action in 1778 at the Battle of Monmouth before being shipped off to Pensacola, West Florida, to fight the Spanish in the fall. A number of soldiers of the battalion died of smallpox upon arrival. Weakened by the epidemic and limited manpower, the Maryland Loyalists garrison was subsequently defeated by the Spanish in the siege of Pensacola in 1781. After a brief time as Spanish prisoners of war in Cuba, the battalion was eventually sent back to New York City, the command center for British forces during the war.
After the war, the soldiers of the battalion, along with many other American loyalists, were transported by the British government as refugees to Nova Scotia. In the fall of 1783, a ship carrying the exiled battalion was shipwrecked off the Nova Scotia coast. The survivors made up the first British American citizens of the new Canadian province of New Brunswick.
William Augustus Bowles was an ensign in the Maryland Loyalists Battalion. In the 1790s, he became a leader of the Creek Indians.
Philip Barton Key was a captain in the Maryland Loyalists Battalion. After the war, Key studied law in England and returned to Maryland in 1785. He was admitted to the bar and entered private practice in Leonardtown, Maryland from 1787 to 1790. He practiced in Annapolis, Maryland from 1790 to 1794, and from 1799 to 1800. Key was a member of the Maryland House of Delegates from 1794 to 1799 and Mayor of Annapolis from 1797 to 1798.
The American Revolutionary War, also known as the Revolutionary War or American War of Independence, was the military conflict of the American Revolution in which American Patriot forces under George Washington's command defeated the British, establishing and securing the independence of the United States. Fighting began on April 19, 1775, at the Battles of Lexington and Concord. The war was formalized and intensified following passage of the Lee Resolution, which asserted that the Thirteen Colonies were "free and independent states", by the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia on July 2, 1776, and the unanimous ratification of the Declaration of Independence two days later, on July 4, 1776.
Loyalists were colonists in the Thirteen Colonies who remained loyal to the British Crown during the American Revolutionary War, often referred to as Tories, Royalists or King's Men at the time. They were opposed by the Patriots, who supported the revolution, and called them "persons inimical to the liberties of America."
John Hoskins Stone was an American planter, soldier, and politician from Charles County, Maryland. During the Revolutionary War he led the 1st Maryland Regiment of the Continental Army. After the war he served in the state legislature and was the seventh Governor from 1794 to 1797.
The 1st Rhode Island Regiment was a regiment in the Continental Army raised in Rhode Island during the American Revolutionary War (1775–83). It was one of the few units in the Continental Army to serve through the entire war, from the siege of Boston to the disbanding of the Continental Army on November 3, 1783.
The 84th Regiment of Foot (Royal Highland Emigrants) was a British regiment in the American Revolutionary War that was raised to defend present day Ontario, Quebec and Atlantic Canada from the constant land and sea attacks by American Revolutionaries. The 84th Regiment was also involved in offensive action in the Thirteen Colonies; including North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Virginia and what is now Maine, as well as raids upon Lake Champlain and the Mohawk Valley. The regiment consisted of 2,000 men in twenty companies. The 84th Regiment was raised from Scottish soldiers who had served in the Seven Years' War and stayed in North America. As a result, the 84th Regiment had one of the oldest and most experienced officer corps of any regiment in North America. The Scottish Highland regiments were a key element of the British Army in the American Revolution. The 84th Regiment was clothed, armed and accoutred the same as the Black Watch, with Lieutenant Colonel Allan Maclean commanding the first battalion and Major General John Small of Strathardle commanding the second. The two Battalions operated independently of each other and saw little action together.
Edward Winslow was a loyalist officer and New Brunswick judge and official.
James Chalmers was a Loyalist officer and pamphleteer in the American Revolution.
De Lancey's Brigade, also known as De Lancey's Volunteers, De Lancey's Corps, De Lancey's Provincial Corps, De Lancey's Refugees, and the "Cowboys" or "Cow-boys", was a Loyalist British provincial military unit, raised for service during the American War of Independence. Its commanders were Brigadier General Oliver De Lancey and his nephew James De Lancey.
The New Jersey Volunteers, also known as Jersey Volunteers, "Skinners", Skinner's Corps, and Skinner's Greens, were a British provincial military unit of Loyalists, raised for service by Cortlandt Skinner, during the American Revolutionary War.
Associators were members of 17th- and 18th-century volunteer military associations in the British American thirteen colonies and British Colony of Canada. These were more commonly known as Maryland Protestant, Pennsylvania, and American Patriot and British Loyalist colonial militias. But unlike militias, the associator military volunteers were exempt from regular mandatory military service. Other names used to describe associators were "Associations", "Associated", "Refugees", "Volunteers", and "Partisans".
George Hume Steuart, (1700–1784) was a Scottish physician, tobacco planter, and Loyalist politician in colonial Maryland. Born in Perthshire, Steuart emigrated to Maryland in around 1721, where he benefited from proprietarial patronage and was appointed to a number of colonial offices, eventually becoming a wealthy landowner with estates in both Maryland and Scotland, and serving two terms as mayor of Annapolis. However, he was forced by the outbreak of the American Revolution to decide whether to remain loyal to the Crown or to throw in his lot with the American rebels. In 1775 Steuart sailed to Scotland, deciding at age 75 that "he could not turn rebel in his old age". He remained there until his death in 1784.
Philip Barton Key, was an American Loyalist during the American Revolutionary War and later was a United States Circuit Judge and Chief United States Circuit Judge of the United States circuit court for the Fourth Circuit and a United States representative from Maryland.
Benedict Swingate Calvert was a planter, politician and a Loyalist in Maryland during the American Revolution. He was the son of Charles Calvert, 5th Baron Baltimore, the third Proprietor Governor of Maryland (1699–1751). His mother's identity is not known, though one source speculates that she was Melusina von der Schulenburg, Countess of Walsingham. As he was illegitimate, he was not able to inherit his father's title or estates, which passed instead to his half brother Frederick Calvert, 6th Baron Baltimore (1731–1771). Benedict Calvert spent most of his life as a politician, judge and planter in Maryland, though Frederick, by contrast, never visited the colony. Calvert became wealthy through proprietarial patronage and became an important colonial official, but he would lose his offices and his political power, though not his land and wealth, during the American Revolution.
Then Province of Maryland had been a British / English colony since 1632, when Sir George Calvert, first Baron of Baltimore and Lord Baltimore (1579-1632), received a charter and grant from King Charles I of England and first created a haven for English Roman Catholics in the New World, with his son, Cecilius Calvert (1605-1675), the second Lord Baltimore equipping and sending over the first colonists to the Chesapeake Bay region in March 1634. The first signs of rebellion against the mother country occurred in 1765, when the tax collector Zachariah Hood was injured while landing at the second provincial capital of Annapolis docks, arguably the first violent resistance to British taxation in the colonies. After a decade of bitter argument and internal discord, Maryland declared itself a sovereign state in 1776. The province was one of the Thirteen Colonies of British America to declare independence from Great Britain and joined the others in signing a collective Declaration of Independence that summer in the Second Continental Congress in nearby Philadelphia. Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, and Charles Carroll of Carrollton signed on Maryland's behalf.
Elizabeth Calvert was the daughter of Maryland Governor Captain Charles Calvert and Rebecca Gerard, and a wealthy heiress in colonial Maryland. Her parents died when she was young, leaving her their substantial fortune. In 1748, aged 17, she married her cousin Benedict Swingate Calvert, a Loyalist politician and planter and the illegitimate son of Charles Calvert, 5th Baron Baltimore. Benedict's connections to the ruling Calvert family allowed him to benefit from considerable proprietarial patronage, until the American Revolution saw the overthrow of British rule and the end of Calvert power in Maryland. Benedict and Elizabeth had to pay triple taxes after the war's end but, unlike many loyalists, their lands and fortune remained unconfiscated.
The Province of Nova Scotia was heavily involved in the American Revolutionary War (1776–1783). At that time, Nova Scotia also included present-day New Brunswick until that colony was created in 1784. The Revolution had a significant impact on shaping Nova Scotia, "almost the 14th American Colony". At the beginning, there was ambivalence in Nova Scotia over whether the colony should join the Americans in the war against Britain. Largely as a result of American privateer raids on Nova Scotia villages, as the war continued, the population of Nova Scotia solidified their support for the British. Nova Scotians were also influenced to remain loyal to Britain by the presence of British military units, judicial prosecution by the Nova Scotia Governors and the efforts of Reverend Henry Alline.
The American Revolutionary War was a war of independence between the Kingdom of Great Britain and the United States that was fought from April 19, 1775 to September 3, 1783. The war was fought as part of the broader American Revolution, in which the Thirteen Colonies made a declaration of independence in response to disputes regarding political representation. The conflict took place in the present-day Eastern United States, which the Thirteen Colonies successfully defended with the assistance of French, Dutch, and Spanish support. American victory led to the creation of the United States.