Baltimore | Maryland in the War of 1812

Baltimore Bellona Gunpowder Manufactory (1801-1856)

“Baltimore Bellona Gunpowder Manufactory.The proprietors have commenced manufacturing and offer for sale Gunpowder of a superior quality, and refined Saltpetre. LEVERING.” Federal Gazette, December 5, 1801.

The manufactory in 1810 was capable of making thirty-two quarter casks per day. It was governed by several leading citizens, one of whom was James Beatty, U.S. Naval Agent in Baltimore who later had the company incorporated by an act of the General Assembly on April 16, 1815. The company’s agent, Aaron R. Levering (1784-1852) served during the war as captain of the Baltimore Independent Blues, 6th Maryland Regiment that was held in reserve during the Battle of North Point, Sept. 12, 1814. By 1816 the company was able to enter into contracts for 100,000 lbs of different descriptions of powder.

Subsequent explosions in 1812, 1820-21, and 1833 did not diminish its production until 1856 when the site was sold to the City of Baltimore as a water works and soon found itself submerged below the waters of Lake Roland, Baltimore County.

Sources: “An Act to Incorporate the Bellona Gunpowder Company of Maryland,” Archives of Maryland, Vol. 192, pp. 1625-1626, Maryland State Archives; Maryland Gazette, June 13, 1810; Baltimore Patriot, June 6, 1816.

Published in:

on March 29, 2011 at 10:33 pm Comments Off

Capt. Thomas Quantrill & the “Homespun Volunteers,” Hagers-town, Md.

“Volunteers —Attention!- ALL the volunteers attached to my Company, are ordered to repair to my quarters for the purpose of being uniformed – they are also ordered to bring their arms with them as they will be supplied with new arms for the purpose of marching immediately, according to orders. Thomas Quantrill, Capt. Hagers-town, August 11, 1812.”

Capt. Thomas Quantrill (1790-1854) was a blacksmith and slave-holder in Hagerstown, Md., who received on June 16, 1812 a militia commission for a rifle company known as the Homespun Volunteers, of the 24^th Maryland Regiment from Washington County. In August 1812 they marched for Annapolis and garrisoned Fort Madison as part of Maryland’s militia quota for the War Department. A correspondent noticed that “they possessed all the essential qualities deemed necessary to form good soldiers…and will be found in merit, second to no company attached to the service…” In January they returned home having performed their first duty during the war.

In late August 1814 following the capture of Washington, Captain Quantrill and his company marched for Baltimore and were attached to Lt. Colonel Joseph Sterett’s 5^th Maryland Regiment, then transferred to the 39^th Maryland Regiment who were in the front lines of the Battle of North Point, Sept. 12, 1814. Thomas and two others of the company of seventy-seven men were wounded.

After the war Capt. Quantrill migrated to Canal Dover, Ohio, married and had four sons, one of whom was William Clarke Quantrill (1837-1865) who became notorious in the Kansas border wars and his infamous August 21, 1863 raid on Lawrence, Kansas.

Captain Thomas Quantrill died in Canal Dover, Ohio on December 7, 1854 apprently of tuberculosis.

Sources: Frederick-town Herald, Aug. 29, 1812: Maryland Adjutant General Papers, Militia Appointments, 2 1794-1816, Maryland State Archives, DE67-1; Niles’ Weekly Register, August 29, 1812; Cincinnati Daily Gazette, May 14, 1869; Hagers-town Gazette, July 14, 1812.

Published in:

on March 29, 2011 at 9:30 pm Comments Off

Baltimore Bellona Gunpowder Manufactory (1801-1856)

“Baltimore Bellona Gunpowder Manufactory. The proprietors have commenced manufacturing and offer for sale Gunpowder of a superior quality, and refined Saltpetre. NATHAN LEVERING.” Federal Gazette, December 5, 1801.

The Bellona Gunpowder Manufactory was Maryland’s most extensive powder works established seven miles north of Baltimore along the Jones Falls west of Towson, Baltimore County, Maryland, receiving its name from the Roman Goddess of War – Bellona. It was one of four known Baltimore powder mills, all competing with the famous Eleuthere Irenee du Pont de Nemours & Company along the Brandywine River in Delaware. All delivered gunpowder to Maryland during the War of 1812. The manufactory in 1810 was capable of making thirty-two quarter casks per day. It was governed by several leading citizens, one of whom was James Beatty, U.S. Naval Agent in Baltimore who later had the company incorporated by an act of the General Assembly on April 16, 1815.

The company’s agent, Aaron Righter Levering (1784-1852) of German descent, served during the war as captain of the Baltimore Independent Blues, 5th Maryland Regiment at the Battle of North Point, Sept. 12, 1814. Subsequent explosions at the mill in 1812, 1820-21, and 1833 did not diminish its production until 1856 when the site was sold to the City of Baltimore as a water works and soon found itself submerged below the waters of Lake Roland, Baltimore County.

Published in:

on March 29, 2011 at 8:30 pm Comments Off

British “Return of Killed and Wounded in action with the Enemy, near Baltimore, on the 12th of September 1814.”

During the two hour Battle of North Point the number of killed and wounded may be established correctly with the following report made by Assistant Adjutant General Major Henry Debbieg of the 44^th Regiment (East Essex) Foot under Lt. Colonel Arthur Brooke who assumed command of the land forces following the death of Maj. General Robert Ross.

Killed

Major General Robert Ross…1

Royal Marine Artillery…1

4^th Regiment (King’s Own) , 1^st Battalion…1

21^st Regiment (Royal Scots Fusileers), 1^st Battalion.….11

44^th Regiment, 1^st Battalion (East Essex)…11

85^th Light Infantry, 1^st Battalion…3

Royal Marines, 2^nd Battalion…4

Royal Marines, 3rd Battalion…2

Royal Marines detached from ships attached to 2^nd Battalion…2

Detachment of Royal Marines under Captain Robyns…2

Wounded

Royal Artillery…..6

Royal Marine Artillery…3

4^th Regiment (King’s Own) , 1^st Battalion…13

21^st Regiment (Royal Scots Fusileers), 1^st Battalion.…81.

44^th Regiment (East Essex), 1^st Battalion…88

85^th Light Infantry, 1^st Battalion….29

Royal Marines, 2^nd Battalion..10

Royal Marines, 3rd Battalion…11

Royal Marines detached from ships attached to 2^nd Battalion…1

Detachment of Royal Marines under Captain Robyns…10

Total Killed…38

Total Wounded..252

Officers Killed…2

Officers Wounded..11

Source:“Return of the Killed and Wounded in Action with the Enemy, near Baltimore, on the 12th of September 1814,” by Assistant Adjutant General Major Henry Debbieg of the 44^th Regiment (East Essex) Foot. Printed in the Baltimore Patriot, November 30, 1814

Published in:

on March 29, 2011 at 4:32 pm Comments Off

Defenders of Fort McHenry, September 13-14, 1814

“…O thus be it ever when freemen shall stand / Between their lov’d home and the war’s desolution! / Blest with vict’ry and peace may the heav’n rescued land / Praise the power that hath made and preserv’d us a nation!…” Francis Scott Key, 1814.

With the arrival of the British expeditionary forces landing at Benedict, Maryland on August 19, 1814, Major General Samuel Smith and Major George Armistead, commanding Fort McHenry began to assemble those militia and federal forces for the defense of Fort McHenry. The following are those companies and officers that defended Fort McHenry during the bombardment of September 13-14, 1814.

U.S. Garrison of Fort McHenry

Capt. Frederick Evans – U.S. Corps of Artillery (60)

Capt. Matthew S. Bunbury, U.S. Sea Fencibles (60)

Capt. William H. Addison, U.S. Sea Fencibles (50)

Maryland Militia, 1^st Regiment of Artillery

Capt. John Berry, Washington Artillery, (100)

Lt. Commander Charles Pennington, Baltimore Independent Artillery (75).

U.S. Volunteers

Capt. Joseph H. Nicholson, Baltimore Fencibles, U.S. Volunteers (75)

U.S. Infantry

Lt. Colonel William Steuart, 38th U.S. Infantry

Capt. Joseph Hook, 36^th U.S. Infantry (125)

Capt. William Rogers, 36^th U.S. Infantry (130)

Capt. Sheppard Church Leakin, 38th U.S.Infantry (?)

Capt. Joseph H. Hook, 38^th U.S. Infantry (100)

Capt. John Buck, 38^th U.S. Infantry (100)

Capt. Thomas Sangsten, 14^th U.S. Infantry (100)

U.S. Chesapeake Flotilla

Sailing Master Solomon Rodman, (60)

Total: 1035

Sources: “Report of Fort McHenry, September 13 & 14, 1814 in the Bombardment” Captain Thomas Sangsten, February 22, 1815; Major Armistead to Acting Secretary of War, James Monroe, September 24, 1814. “Letters Received, Secretary of War John Armstrong,” September 24, 1814.

Published in:

on March 29, 2011 at 3:10 pm Comments Off

Battery Babcock, 1813-1814

“I deem it absolutely necessary top erect a small Battery, south of the [powder] Magazine on the [Patapsco]river bank. It mounted six 18-pounder French naval guns behind a four foot high breastwork with a powder magazine in the rear covered with earth.” Maj. General Samuel Smith, May 1813.

Known as the Six Gun Battery or the Sailor’s Battery, this half-eliptical earthen gun battery built of sod, was located one and a half miles west of Fort McHenry upon the shores of the Patapsco Ferry Branch, southwest of present day Riverside Park in South Baltimore.

The U.S. was not willing to provide the expense of erecting it, so the City of Baltimore hired Captain Samuel Babcock, U.S. Engineers to lay out a plan requiring twenty or thirty men to dig the foundation. By the summer of 1813 it was completed and was garrisoned by a company of U.S. Sea Fencibles under Capt. William H. Addison. In September 1814 during the Battle for Baltimore, Sailing Master John Adams Webster (1786-1877) commanded the battery with seventy-five sailors from the U.S. Chesapeake Flotilla. His 1853 account provides a detailed report on the heroic occurences that took place on the night of September 13-14, 1814 when Battery Babcock, Forts Covington and McHenry, repulsed a British barge offensive, the last action of the Battle for Baltimore.

“…Day and night we were on the alert, until hope was nearly extinct, when on the night of the 13th, about eleven o’clock, the bomb vessels appeared to renew their fire with redoubled energy. It was raining quite fast, and cold for the season. The rapid discharge of the bombs from the enemy’s shipping excited great vigilance among my officers and men. I had the cannon double shotted with 18-pound balls and grape shot and took a blanket and laid on the breastworks, as I was much exhausted. About midnight I could hear a splashing in the water.The attention of the others was aroused and we were convinced it was the noise of the muffled oars of the British barges. Very soon afterwards we could discern small gleaming lights in different places. I felt sure then that it was the barges, which at that time were not more than two hundred yards off…”

Battery Babcock soon thereafter opened its fire upon the barges, along with nearby Forts Look-Out, McHenry and Covington. Captain Charles Napier,RN commanding the British flotilla of barges, caught in a whethering cross-fire, soon retreated to the fleet having lost two barges in the attempt. However he had done his duty in providing “a diversion” for the land forces before Hampstead Hill for a midnight assault that never, though planned, materilized.

In 1914 during the centennial celebration of the battle, a 6-pounder cannon was mounted near the original site on a granite stone monument pedestal.

Sources: The battery site, no longer extant, is located under the I-95 southern approach to the Fort McHenry Tunnel. Samuel Smith to the Committee of Public Supplies, May 4, 1813, Baltimore City Archives, RG 22; John A. Webster to Mayor Brantz, July 2, and August 10, 1853, The [Baltimore] Sun, Sept. 23, 1928. The British Invasion of Maryland, 1812-1815 by William M. Marine (Baltimore: 1913, reprinted by Genealogical Pub. Co., 1977), 177-181.

Published in:

on March 29, 2011 at 2:50 pm Comments Off

Camp Eagleston on Bear Creek

At the north side of the entrance to Sollers’ Point on Bear Creek was Camp Eagleston named for the nearby farm of John Eagleston, a private in Captain Samuel McDonald’s company, 6^th Maryland Regiment. The camp was one of several strategic militia outposts along with Colegate Creek, Swann Point and North Point to detect British naval movements. On August 5, 1813 the British established a naval base of operations on Kent Island for their subsequent attacks on Queenstown (Aug. 13) and St. Michaels (Aug. 10, 26). Baltimore was threaten by several barges that had entered the mouth of the Patapso River that summer. With the Baltimore militia brought into federal service, various infantry regiments were encamped here among them Lt. Colonel Benjamin Fowler’s 39^th Maryland Regiment (519 men). A year later on September 12, 1814, British naval barges with Congreve rockets entered Bear Creek towards the head of Bear Creek where the Battle of North Point had begun.

Source: William Jameson to Samuel Smith, August 7, 16, 1813. Samuel Smith Papers, MSS 18974, Reel 4, Containers 5-6, Library of Congress.

Published in:

on March 27, 2011 at 1:15 pm Comments Off

Alfred Jacob Miller (1810-1874)

Alfred Jacob Miller

In the War of 1812 galleries of the Maryland Historical Society in Baltimore, artist Alfred Jacob Miller’s famous panorama oil painting entitled “The Bombardment of Fort McHenry, September 13-14, 1814.” This unique painting, circa 1829, remains the quintessential War of 1812 image complete with “the rockets red glare and bomb bursting in air.”

Miller was born on January 2, 1810, to a successful sugar merchant and grocer, George Washington and Harriet Jacobs Miller. During the bombardment of Fort McHenry, George Miller, served as a private in Captain John Berry’s Washington Artillerist, 1^st Regt. Maryland Artillery. He would later share his experiences for his son’s painting. Young Miller, while not a veteran of the war, but as an artist, captured the imagination of the events for history.

In the spring of 1829, eighteen year old Alfred Jacob Miller set up his easel and sketch book upon a promontory in South Baltimore, and sketched out the view of Fort McHenry in the distance. The site was old Camp Look-Out (Riverside Park), a circular earthen redoubt that took an active role in the city’s defense. Later at his studio/residence his canvas revealed the colorful events of what had occurred during September 13-14, 1814. The Baltimore Gazette gave notice of the young painter’s talents: “It is the production of a young gentleman of Baltimore…His painting is marked by a beautiful richness of colouring, and a graphic faithfulness in the delineation of the shores of the bay, the British fleet, the smoke of the cannon, and the bombs “bursting in air” over the Fort. With attention instruction commensurate with his genius, he will most assuredly attain a high rank as an historical painter.”

Alfred Jacob Miller is best remembered for his famous paintings and watercolor sketches of his 1837 travels to the American West, capturing the scenes of the American native Indians and early western plains culture. He died on June 26, 1874 at the age of seventy-four and was buried, it is believed, with his parents in the Old Glendy Burying Ground (est. 1807) of the 2^nd Presbyterian Church at Broadway and Gay, near Baltimore’s Fell’s Point.

Sources: “Alfred Jacob Miller and ‘The Bombardment of Fort McHenry, Sept. 13-14, 1814.” by Scott S. Sheads (New Discoveries and Interpretations: The War of 1812 in Maryland, (unpublished, No. 14); “On the Trail of Alfred Jacob Miller,” Maryland Historical Magazine, vol. 97, Fall, 2002); Baltimore American, July 23, 27, 1874; Six Months in America, by Godfrey T. Vigne (London: 1831).

Published in:

on March 25, 2011 at 8:30 pm Comments Off

James McHenry (1753-1816)

James McHenry by DeNyse Turner. Maryland State Archives, MSA SC 1545-1029

James McHenry was born in Ballymena, County Antrim, Ireland, on November 16, 1753. He immigrated to America in 1771 and received a medical education at the Newark Academy (Delaware) under the tutorship of Dr. Benjamin Rush.

In 1776 he served as a physician during the Revolutionary War and then as an aide to General Lafayette. In 1781, having obtained the rank of major, he left the military and served in the Maryland Senate (1781-1783) and as a delegate to the Continental Congress (1783-1786) and delegate in 1787 to the federal Constitutional Convention. Following the convention he served in the Maryland State assembly (1787-1796).

In 1796, President George Washington offered McHenry a position in his cabinet as secretary of war until 1800 when he resigned under the John Adams administration. In 1798 Fort McHenry in Baltimore was named in his honor.Following his resignation, McHenry retired to Baltimore where he died on May 3, 1816 and is buried in Westminster Burying Ground.

Sources: The Life and Correspondence of James McHenry, by Bernard C. Steiner and James McHenry, (Cleveland: Burrows Brothers Co., 1907).

Published in:

on March 25, 2011 at 1:30 pm Comments Off

Joseph Hopper Nicholson (1770-1817)

Joseph Hopper Nicholson, MSA SC 3520-1893

Joseph Hopper Nicholson was from one of the most influential and oldest families on Maryland’s Eastern Shore at Centreville, whose linelage dates back to 17th century Maryland. Born on May 15, 1770 in Chestertown, Queen Annes County, Maryland he graduated from Chestertown [Washington] College in 1787 and served in the Maryland House of Delgates (1796-1798), U.S. House of Representatives(1799-1806). In 1804 he conducted the impeachment hearings of Associated Chief Justice 0f the U.S. Supreme Court, Samuel Chase of Maryland. Two years later he introduced a House bill that became known as the “Nicholson Resolution” that became the first of several Non-Importation Acts that resulted in the unpopular Embargo Act of 1807. He resigned in 1806 to become the Chief Judge of the Maryland’s Court of Appeals in Baltimore, holding this post until his death.

On May 16, 1812 at Baltimore’s Old Fountain Inn, fifty delegates of the Democratic-Republican Party, with Judge Nicholson presiding as chairman, met to present several resolutions in a memorial to the President James Madison on the momentous decision that the nation was now affixed upon – a declaration of war with England. Foremost of the delegates was Hezekiah Niles, the influential editor of the Niles’ Weekly Register, who reported the evening’s proceedings arguing that England “… forcibly impresses our seamen, and detains them inhumanely in an odorous servitude – she obstructs our commerce in every channel…she had murdered our citizens within our own waters…” Such were the sentiments of the delegates many of whom were connected by livelihood to the popular “free trade and sailor’ rights” issues, one of several that led the U.S. to declare war upon England on June 18, 1812.

Judge Nicholson was a well known and eloquent orator rose to address the gathering:

“…We have assembled here to-night, for the purpose of determining whether we will give it our support in the might struggle into which [our country ] is about to enter …Is there an American sword that will not leap from its scabbard to avenge the wrongs and contumely treatment under which we have suffered? No, my countrymen, it is impossible. Let us act with one heart, and with one hand; let us show to an admiring world, that however we may differ among ourselves about some of our internal concerns, yet in the great cause of our country, the American people are animated by one soul and by one spirit…”

In May 1814, he organized a U.S. Volunteer militia artillery company known as the Baltimore Fencibles, whose muster rolls included mercantile merchants, ship-owners and bankers. In May 1814 with an invasion of the Chesapeake eminent, Nicholson informed the U.S. Naval Secretary “We should have to fight hereafter, not for ‘free trade and sailors’ rights,’ not for the conquest of the Canadas, but for our national existence.” During the bombardment of Fort McHenry they manned the guns within Fort McHenry. After the war he conbtinued on the judicial bench until his death in Baltimore on March 4, 1817. He was buried at Wye House, home of the Lloyds of Maryland in Talbot County, on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.

Source: “Joseph Hopper Nicholson: Citizen-Soldier of Maryland,” by Scott S. Sheads (Maryland Historical Magazine, vol. 98, No. 2, 2003).

Published in:

on March 25, 2011 at 10:05 am Comments Off

Maryland in the War of 1812

Celebrating the 200th Anniversary of the War of 1812

Baltimore Bellona Gunpowder Manufactory (1801-1856)

Capt. Thomas Quantrill & the “Homespun Volunteers,” Hagers-town, Md.

Baltimore Bellona Gunpowder Manufactory (1801-1856)

British “Return of Killed and Wounded in action with the Enemy, near Baltimore, on the 12th of September 1814.”

Defenders of Fort McHenry, September 13-14, 1814

Battery Babcock, 1813-1814

Camp Eagleston on Bear Creek

Alfred Jacob Miller (1810-1874)

James McHenry (1753-1816)

Joseph Hopper Nicholson (1770-1817)

Categories

About the Author