#52 Ancestors 2021 Week 22, Military: Great Uncle William Bruce and the Maryland 400

 Many Marylanders have heard their state referred to as "The Old Line State," but quite a few of them don't really know what that means. 

The name comes from a valiant group of Maryland soldiers in the Revolutionary War.  In 1776, the British sent the largest armada in history (450 ships and 10,000 troops) across the Atlantic with the intent of putting an end to the American Revolution by crushing Washington and his band of colonial rebels. On the morning of August 27th, British forces surrounded the Continental Army in Brooklyn Heights and backed them up against the East River, where their armada of frigates was waiting to capture them if they tried to retreat. General Washington decided that his best option was to evacuate his army across the East River to safety in lower Manhattan.  But they needed time to gather enough boats to move the troops.  

Colonel William Stirling offered 400 militia men of the 1st Maryland Regiment, led by Major Mordecai Gist, for what was basically a suicide mission to hold off the British while the rest of the army escaped.  The Maryland men, vastly outnumbered, attacked the huge British force six times across marshy ground and distracted them long enough for Washington to move the rest of his army to safety. After the final attack, the remaining troops attempted to follow.  More than 250 were killed and another 100 were captured, just about wiping out the regiment.  Only a few dozen made it back to the American lines. 

General Washington, watching the battle, said "Good God.  What brave fellows I must lose today."

This group, known afterward as The Maryland 400 (or the Old Line) led to Maryland's nickname and cemented the state's reputation as the home of incredibly brave and skilled soldiers. 

While I don't have any direct ancestors who were part of this group, I do have several great uncles, including two brothers--William and John Bruce--who participated in the Battle of Long Island. A third brother, Robert, was also a soldier in the Revolution, but not part of this battle. 

William Bruce ca. 1780

William (1752), John (1750) and Robert (1745) Bruce were the sons of Charles Bruce and Jane Yates of
Charles County MD, born at the home plantation, "Good for Little." (Their sister, Elizabeth Bruce, wife of Major Jonathan Yates, was my 5X great-grandmother.) William took an early lead in the movement for American independence by joining one of the Committees of Correspondence in 1774.

Originating from gentry stock but not yet having established their own wealth, the Bruce brothers did not initially receive commissions as officers and instead enlisted in the Maryland fighting force as noncommissioned officers. Volunteering in July 1775, Robert was given the rank of corporal in the Maryland and Virginia Rifle Regiment, while his brothers William and John received the rank of sergeant and corporal, respectively, in Colonel William Smallwood's First Maryland Regiment.  

As a noncommissioned officer in the Ninth Company, a mobile and light infantry company of troops from western Maryland under the direction of Captain George Stricker, William Bruce’s military role was primarily based on direct conflict with the enemy. Like all noncommissioned officers, Bruce's chances of being promoted to an officer's rank and attaining a position among the military elite depended on both his performance in battle and ability to recruit. With the arrival of the British Navy in New York in the summer of 1776, Bruce was given his first opportunity to prove his worth. 

William Bruce’s Ninth Company was part of the attack on the dug-in British forces. Over the course of the battle, the Marylanders lost 256 men killed or captured, and the five companies that made this final stand lost between sixty and eighty percent of their troops. William Bruce’s Ninth Company lost more than half its men, and he was the only one of its four sergeants to make it off the battlefield. However, their action allowed for the successful escape of Washington’s remaining Continental forces across the East River into Manhattan. With their blood, Bruce’s comrades purchased a precious hour which saved the Continental Army from utter annihilation.

After the battle, the 256 dead were buried in a mass grave, exact location not known.  In 1895, the Maryland Society of the Sons of the American Revolution erected a monument to the Maryland 400 in Prospect Park in Brooklyn. 

William Bruce remained in the Continental Army until 1783, when the unit was disbanded.  His brother John left in 1777 and returned to Charles County. William received a commission as a second lieutenant in the First Maryland Regiment in December 1776, and was made a first lieutenant on June 10, 1777. In the spring of 1780, Bruce once again received a promotion, and was commissioned as a captain, in command of a company. He fought with Major Thomas Lancaster Lansdale's company at the Battle of Yorktown in 1781. 

After the war, William returned to Charles County, married, and had two sons and four daughters.  Although he received two hundred acres of bounty land in western Maryland, he considered it rocky and not good for cultivation and so never claimed the land. He purchased land in Charles County, but was never really successful financially as a planter.  

As one of the founding members of the Society of the Cincinnati, (the nation's oldest patriotic organization) Bruce hoped to reinforce the degree of group solidarity he had known while serving in the army as well as preserving the memory of the Revolution.

At his death in 1825, the Maryland Gazette published this eulogy:

Another soldier of the Revolution gone!

On Wednesday, the 26th ultimo. Colonel WILLIAM BRUCE, departed this life, at his residence in Charles county. He was in the 73d year of his age, and, during his long and varied life, there was no one action, the remembrance of which could embitter his parting hour, or stain the cheek of his surviving family with shame.

He entered the Army of the Revolution in the spring of the year '76, as a private, fought through the whole war, and finally came out a Captain in the 1st Maryland regiment. From these trying scenes of hardship, hunger, and bloodshed, he returned to the quietude and duties of private life, and, as he had been a brave soldier, so be became an excellent citizen. In his domestic relations, as husband, father, and master. he was affectionate, indulgent, and humane; as a nelghbour, urbane and friendly; as a citizen, frank and patriotic. and as a man, strictly and sternly honest.

This tribute is paid by one who bad been early taught to reverence Col. Bruce, and the sentiments it expresses will find an echo in the bosom of all who knew him.

The Maryland 400 represented the cream of the Maryland Line, which had a reputation of being among the best of the Continental Army. Because of the long service of the high quality regiments, George Washington, according to tradition, referred to the Maryland units as his "Old Line," giving Maryland one of its nicknames as "The Old Line State."

The bayonet on the coat of arms of the 175th Infantry Regiment is representative of its introduction to American arms at the Battle of Long Island by the Maryland Line in 1776, the use of which became famed throughout the War. It is also symbolic of the Maryland 400.

For more information see: Finding the Maryland 400 at Finding the Maryland 400 | A Maryland State Archives research project (wordpress.com)