In early 1776, two men enlisted as privates in Edward Veazey’s Seventh Independent Company, part of the Maryland Line: 17-year-old Solomon Slocum, a foot feet, two and half inches tall man, and 21-year-old Andrew Meloan, who was five feet, seven inches tall. [1] There is evidence asserting that Meloan was likely born in Cecil County, but for Slocum, his exact birth place is not known but he likely was born on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. [2]

Many of those in the Seventh Independent Company were recruited from Kent, Cecil, and Queen Anne counties, and were in their twenties. [3] The average age was about twenty-five, but soldiers born in British America were slightly younger than those from foreign countries. [4]

The independent companies, early in the war, had a different role than William Smallwood‘s First Maryland Regiment. They had the role of securing the Chesapeake Bay’s shoreline from British attack. Smallwood’s men, on the other hand, were raised as full-time Maryland soldiers as part of the Continental Army, and were divided between Annapolis and Baltimore. The Seventh Independent Company was stationed in Kent County’s Chestertown and on Kent Island in Queen Anne County. [5] During this time, Veazey was uneasy that his company did not receive “arms nor ammunition” until June. [6]

While the independent companies were originally intended to defend Maryland, three of them accompanied the First Maryland Regiment when it marched to New York in July 1776. The transfer of the independent companies to the Continental Army showed that Maryland was more than willing to do its part to recruit the men needed for the revolutionary cause. [7] The independent companies and the First Maryland Regiment arrived in New York in early August, with the Battle of Brooklyn set between the Continental Army and the British Army, joined by their Hessian allies.

Meloan and Slocum served with his company at the Battle of Brooklyn in late August 1776. Apart with the companies of Daniel Bowie and Peter Adams, which suffered heavy casualties, sixty-eight percent of Veazey’s company were killed, wounded or captured. Specifically, Captain Veazey died on the battlefield while Second Lieutenant Samuel Turbett Wright and Third Lieutenant Edward De Coursey were captured. As a result of Veazey’s death, Lieutenant William Harrison took charge of the company. After the battle, only about 36 men remained out of the original force of over 100. [8] The loss of life confirmed the assessment of the British Parliament’s Annual Register which described how “almost a whole regiment from Maryland…of young men from the best families in the country was cut to pieces” even as the battle brought the men of the Maryland 400 together. [9]

The Battle of Brooklyn, the first large-scale battle of the war, fits into the larger context of the Revolutionary War. If the Maryland Line had not stood and fought the British, enabling the rest of the Continental Army to escape, then the Continental Army would been decimated, resulting in the end of the Revolutionary War. This heroic stand gave the regiment the nickname of the Old Line and those who made the stand in the battle are remembered as the Maryland 400.

By the spring of 1777, the command of the Seventh Independent Company was in disarray since Wright and De Coursey were prisoners, Veazey had been killed, and Harrison had resigned. [10] As a result, the company, among with the other independent companies, became part of the Second Maryland Regiment.

Both Meloan and Slocum survived the Battle of Brooklyn and were not taken prisoner. In the fall of 1776 and early 1777, they joined other Marylanders at the battles of White Plains, Trenton, Princeton, and elsewhere. After this point, both of them re-enlisted. Slocum, on January 25, 1777, reenlisted in the Fifth Maryland Regiment as a private, only staying until May 10, when he was discharged. [11] Likely not long after this, he enlisted in the Second Maryland Regiment for a three-year term as a private. [12] He served in a company commanded by Maryland 400 veteran John Hardman, until the fall of 1779. [13] In early 1780, he re-enlisted. During his military service, he was sick multiple times, including one time in the early spring of 1778 and another time in early 1779 which required his hospitalization. [14]

As for Meloan, on January 10, 1777, he enlisted as a private in Captain Samuel T. Wright’s company of the Second Maryland Regiment and had the duty as a waggoner for a short time. [15] On February 1, 1778, Meloan became a corporal in the Second Maryland Regiment. He stayed in the regiment until he was discharged on January 10, 1780. [16] Meloan fought at Staten Island (1777), Brandywine (1777), Germantown (1777), Monmouth (1778), and Stony Point (1779).

As a non-commissioned officer, Meloan would have shouldered some of the responsibility for ensuring order in camp and on the battlefield. The job of the corporals was to instruct their troops, keep order in their regiments, including breaking up disagreements between soldiers, and taking roll call every morning. [17] If corporals fell down on their tasks, they were “severly punished.” [18] During battles, corporals were responsible for keeping the companies lined up and together so they could effectively fight against British or forces loyal to the Crown.

Coming back to Slocum, in the summer of 1779, along with Maryland 400 veterans Patrick McNemar and Henry Mitchel, he served in the Corps of Light Infantry. [19] This was an elite, agile unit developed for quick military response. [20] On July 16, 1779, the light infantry stormed the British fort at Stony Point, on the west side of the Hudson River. [21] According to a recollection from Connecticut corporal Stephen Army, the army crossed the river “in the night with muffled oars to prevent the British on board of some English ships of war” stationed nearby from hearing their movements. [22] Once on land, they engaged in a surprise nightime bayonet attack, reportedly without loaded guns, with men chopping through the enemy’s half-completed fortifications. After the battle ended, over 500 British soldiers were captured, and the Continentals took possession of the fort.

After September 1780, Slocum deserted to the British and then re-joined the Second Maryland Regiment not long after, purportedly as a spy. [23] In the spring of 1781, the Continental Army tried Slocum, convicted him of spying and deserting. On March 25, he was executed. Sergeant-Major William Seymour of the Delaware Regiment wrote:

“On the twenty-fifth instant was tried and found guilty one Solomon Slocum, of the Second Maryland Battalion, for desertion to the enemy, joining with them, and coming in as a spy in our camp; when agreeable to his sentence he was hanged on a tree by the roadside in full view of all that passed by.” [24]

When Slocum was hanged, he was only age 22. No other information about Slocum’s life is known. Meloan had a much different life after he was discharged from his military service in January 1780 as noted earlier.

In the years following, Meloan settled down in Maryland. In 1781 or 1782 he married a woman in her late twenties, named Rachel Zilerfrow, in Cecil County. [25] This was Rachel’s second marriage, as she had three children with her first husband, John Zilerfrow. Through the following years, Andrew and Rachel would have eight children: Permelia (1782-1839), Thomas (b. 1784), Elizabeth (1786- 1869), Andrew Jr. (b. 1788), Izabel (b. 1790), Obediah (1792-1859), Alexander (1794-1798), and Perry O. (1797-1833). [26] They lived in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina in the 1790s, and Meloan owned a 60 acre plot of land, near McDowell Creek, by June 1799. [27] By the early 1800s, they moved to Kentucky.

In 1810, Meloan, Rachel, and their children, were living in Montgomery County, Kentucky and were small slaveowners and farmers, owning three enslaved blacks. [28] They lived there until at least 1830 and continued to be small slaveowners. Meloan owned four enslaved blacks in 1820 and six enslaved blacks in 1830. [29] The county, during this time period, was majority white, but had a significant minority of enslaved blacks, an average of about 2,233 living in the county, from 1810 to 1830. [30] Other aspects of their lives, during this time, are not known.

Meloan and his son Obediah were active members of the Republican Party, at a time that the party was dissolving. In 1828, they signed a letter which criticized President John Quincy Adams. It was among those assembled by a member of the Republican Party and former U.S. Representative David Trimble to prove statements he had made in 1824 and 1825. [31]

Sometime after 1831, Meloan, his wife Rachel, and their children, moved across the state and were living in Murray, a town in Calloway County, Kentucky, a county of about 5,100, which was over 91 percent white. [32] Meloan applied for his Federal veterans pension in 1832, when he owned enslaved blacks, which was granted the same year. [33]

On August 14, 1834, Meloan died in Calloway County. [34] After his death, his wife, Rachel, fought for her husband’s pension money. The pension was granted, and she continued to receive it until her death on July 29, 1839. Twenty-one years after her death, her children Thomas, Elizabeth, and Obadiah applied for their father’s pension benefits. [35] At this point, these were the only children of Rachel and Meloan who were still living. By 1894, the Meloan family was still living in Calloway County on the lot that Meloan had bought years ago, and had a “burying ground” in a local cemetery in the city of Murray. [36]

Notes

[1] This post combines sources from each of their respective biographies. Meloan was born on February 18, 1754. Since he was listed as twenty-one-year-old, this means he enlisted before his birthday in February.

[2] Descriptions of men in Capt. Edward Veazey’s Independent Comp, 1776, Maryland State Papers, Revolutionary Papers, MdHR 19970-15-36/01 [MSA S997-15-36, 1/7/3/13]. Pension of Andrew Meloan, Revolutionary War Pension and Bounty Land-Warrant Application Files, National Archives, NARA M804, Record Group 15, Roll 1709, pension number W27972. Courtesy of Fold3.com. Since Meloan he enlisted in Cecil County, it is possible he was born in the same county. His name is sometimes spelled Melone, Malone, Maloan, Melawn, Milean, Meloon, and Miloan. Slocum’s is last name is also spelled Slocome.

[3] Mark Andrew Tacyn, “’To the End:’ The First Maryland Regiment and the American Revolution” (PhD diss., University of Maryland College Park, 1999), 24-25, 97; Descriptions of men in Capt. Edward Veazey’s Independent Comp.

[4] For more information, see “Demographics in the First Maryland Regiment” on the Finding the Maryland 400 research blog.

[5] Journal and Correspondence of the Maryland Council of Safety, July 7-December 31, 1776, Archives of Maryland Online Vol. 12, 4; Journal and Correspondence of the Maryland Council of Safety, August 29, 1775 to July 6, 1776, Archives of Maryland Online Vol. 11, 245, 272, 547, Tacyn, 33-34.

[6] Journal and Correspondence of the Maryland Council of Safety, August 29, 1775 to July 6, 1776, Archives of Maryland Online Vol. 11, 318, 468; Tacyn, 37, 39.

[7] Arthur Alexander, “How Maryland Tried to Raise Her Continental Quotas.” Maryland Historical Magazine 42, no. 3 (1947), 187-188, 196.

[8] Revolutionary War Rolls, NARA M246, p. 92, From Fold3.com; Tacyn, 98; “Mortuary Notice,” Salem Gazette, Salem, Massachusetts, March 1, 1833, Vol. XI, issue 18, p. 3.

[9] Tacyn, 4.

[10] List of Regular Officers by Chamberlaine, December 1776, Maryland State Papers, Red Books, MdHR 4573, Liber 12, p. 66 [MSA S989-17, 1/6/4/5].

[11] Muster Rolls and Other Records of Service of Maryland Troops in the American Revolution Archives of Maryland Online Vol. 18, 290.

[12] Service card of Solomon Slocum, Compiled Service Records of Soldiers Who Served in the American Army During the Revolutionary War, National Archives, NARA M881, Record Group 93, Roll 401. Courtesy of Fold3.com; Muster rolls of the Second Maryland Regiment, Revolutionary War Rolls, 1775-1783, National Archives, NARA M246, Record Group 93, Roll 0033, Folder 15. Courtesy of Fold3.com.

[13] Service card of Solomon Slocum.

[14] Service card of Solomon Slocum; Muster rolls of the Second Maryland Regiment, Revolutionary War Rolls, 1775-1783, National Archives, NARA M246, Record Group 93, Roll 0033, Folder 15. Courtesy of Fold3.com.

[15] Pension of Andrew Meloan; Service Card of Andrew Melawn, Compiled Service Records of Soldiers Who Served in the American Army During the Revolutionary War, NARA M881, Record Group 93, Roll 0400; Second Maryland Regiment, 1778, Revolutionary War Rolls, 1775-1783; NARA M246, War Department Collection of Revolutionary War Records, Record Group 93. Courtesy of Ancestry.com.

[16] Service Card of Andrew Melawn; Muster Rolls and Other Records of Service of Maryland Troops in the American Revolution, Archives of Maryland Online Vol. 18, 138, 405; Journal and Correspondence of the Council of Maryland, 1789-1793, Archives of Maryland Online Vol. 72, 239; Pension of Andrew Meloan; Second Maryland Regiment, 1778, Revolutionary War Rolls, 1775-1783; NARA M246, War Department Collection of Revolutionary War Records, Record Group 93. Courtesy of Ancestry.com. In his pension application, Meloan said he left the service in 1780, meaning that Andrew Mallone who enlisted in the Fifth Maryland Regiment in 1781 was not him.

[17] Frederick Stueben, Regulations for Order and Discipline of the Troops of the United States, Part I (Philadelphia: Styner and Cist, 1779), 6, 82, 98-100.

[18] Stueben, 72.

[19] Service card of Solomon Slocum; Muster rolls of the Second Maryland Regiment, Revolutionary War Rolls, 1775-1783, National Archives, NARA M246, Record Group 93, Roll 0033, Folder 15. Courtesy of Fold3.com.

[20] Todd W. Braisted, “Light Infantry Never Surrender!,” Journal of the American Revolution, May 19, 2015. Accessed November 11, 2016; John W. Wright, “The Corps of Light Infantry in the Continental Army,” The American Historical Review 31:3 (Apr. 1926), 455-457.

[21] Tacyn, 5, 173, 186, 196-197, 205-209, 210, 295, 311; Pension of David Moore, Revolutionary War Pension and Bounty-Land Warrant Application Files, National Archives, NARA M804, Record Group 15, Roll 1753. Courtesy of Fold3.com; Pension of Samuel Ferguson, Revolutionary War Pension and Bounty-Land Warrant Application Files, National Archives, NARA M804, Record Group 15, Roll 1038. Courtesy of Fold3.com; Pension of Robert Humphries, Revolutionary War Pension and Bounty-Land Warrant Application Files, National Archives, NARA M804, Record Group 15, Roll 1367. Courtesy of Fold3.com; Pension of John Trotter, Revolutionary War Pension and Bounty-Land Warrant Application Files, National Archives, NARA M804, Record Group 15, Roll 2414. Courtesy of Fold3.com; Pension of Abram Acherson, Revolutionary War Pension and Bounty-Land Warrant Application Files, National Archives, NARA M804, Record Group 15, Roll 6. Courtesy of Fold3.com; David Schuyler, Sanctified Landscape: Writers, Artists, and the Hudson River Valley, 1820-1909 (London: Cornell University Press, 2012), 154; Joseph Plumb Martin, Ordinary Courage: The Revolutionary War Adventures of Joseph Plumb Martin (ed. James Kirby Martin, New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2013), 107; Jeremy Black, Crisis of Empire: Britain and America in the Eighteenth Century (New York: Continuum, 2008), 160; Michael Schellhammer, George Washington and the Final British Campaign for the Hudson River, 1779 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2012), 138-153; George C. Daughan, If by Sea: The Forging of the American Navy – From the Revolution to the War of 1812 (New York: Basic Books, 2011, paperback), 191; Arthur R. Bauman, General “Mad” Anthony Wayne & The Battle of Fallen Timbers: A Look at Some Key Events in the Life and Times of General Wayne (Blommington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2010), 4-6; Ithiel Town, Detail of Some Particular Services Particular Services (Beford, PA: Applewood Books, 1835), 88. Reportedly Anthony Wayne, leading the attack, told George Washington, that he would “storm hell” if Washington planned the attack.

[22] Pension of Stephen Avery, Revolutionary War Pension and Bounty-Land Warrant Application Files, National Archives, NARA M804, Record Group 15, Roll 96. Courtesy of Fold3.com. The wife of Virginia soldier David Moore, Jane, recalled her husband saying that “they were made to go into battle with unloaded guns” made him suspect that was only what he and his fellow soldiers were told.

[23] Muster Rolls and Other Records of Service of Maryland Troops in the American Revolution Archives of Maryland Online Vol. 18, 162.

[24] Charles Patrick Neimeyer, America Goes to War: A Social History of the Continental Army (New York: New York University Press, 1996), 211; Robert Kirkwood, The journal and order book of Captain Robert Kirkwood of the Delaware regiment of the continental line Part I: A journal of the Southern campaign, 1780-1782 (Wilmington: The Historical Society of Delaware, 1990), 15; Hugh F. Rankin, The North Carolina Continentals (Chapel Hill: Univesity of North Carolina Press, 2005, updated), 314; Lawrence E. Babits and Joshua B. Howard, Long, Obstinate, and Bloody: The Battle of Guilford Courthouse (Chapel Hill: Univesity of North Carolina Press, 2009), 179; William Seymour, “A Journal of the Southern Expedition, 1780-1783 (concluded).” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 7, no. 4 (1883): 379.

[25] Pension of Andrew Meloan; Parish register 1694-1784, St. Stephen’s Church Collection, p. 131 [MSA SC 2507-1-1, 0/8/4/14]; A Calendar of Delaware Wills New Castle County 1682-1800 (New York, NY, USA: Frederick H. Hitchcock, 1911), 87; Jacob Ozier as a witness, 1796, Delaware, Land Records, 1677–194, p. 346, Recorder of Deeds, New Castle County, RG 2555, Subgroup 000, Series 011. Delaware Public Archives, Dover, Delaware. Courtesy of Ancestry.com. Rachel’s maiden name, before her first husband was Ozier. She was born on May 23, 1753 in Cecil County’s St. Stephen’s Protestant Episcopal Church in North Sassafras Parish to John Ozier, who died in 1777, and Sarah. She also had a brother named Jacob Ozier, born on November 22, 1754, who was living in Delaware in 1796. Her Find A Grave says she was born in 1763 but this is clearly a mistake.

[26] Pension of Andrew Meloan; Kentucky. Kentucky Birth, Marriage and Death Records – Microfilm (1852-1910). Microfilm rolls #994027-994058. Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives, Frankfort, Kentucky. Courtesy of Ancestry.com. Permelia later married Robert Caldwell, Obediah married Emily W. Shruggs, and Elizabeth married Andrew Lackridge Jr. Meloan’s son.

[27] “Clarification,” Murray Ledger & Times, May 31, 2006. Accessed October 11, 2016; Grant for Andrew Meloan, June 2, 1799, grant number 154, book 105, page 31, North Carolina Land Grants, Microfilm publication, 770 rolls, North Carolina State Archives. Courtesy of Ancestry.com.

[28] Census for Montgomery, Kentucky, 1810, Third Census of the United States, NARA M252, Bureau of the Census, Record Group 29, Roll 7, Page 365. Courtesy of Ancestry.com;

[29] Census for Montgomery, Kentucky, 1820, Fourth Census of the United States, NARA M33, Records of the Bureau of the Census, Record Group 29, Roll M33_25, Page 255, 257. Courtesy of Ancestry.com; Census for Montgomery, Kentucky, 1830, Fifth Census of the United States, NARA M19, Records of the Bureau of the Census, Record Group 29, Roll 40, Page 17. Courtesy of Ancestry.com.

[30] Census of 1830 for Montgomery County, Universe: Total Population, Social Explorer Dataset, Social Explorer. Accessed October 11, 2016; Census of 1820 for Montgomery County, Universe: Total Population, Social Explorer Dataset, Social Explorer. Accessed October 11, 2016; Census of 1810 for Montgomery County, Universe: Total Population, Social Explorer Dataset, Social Explorer. Accessed October 11, 2016. Data shows the number of enslaved blacks in the county growing from 1810 to 1830.

[31] “From the Kentucky Argus: David Trimble,” United States Telegraph, Washington, D.C., October 27, 1828, Vol. III, issue 125, p. 2; United States Telegraph, Washington, D.C., October 25, 1828, p. 4.

[32] Census of 1830 for Calloway County, Total Population (SE:T025_001), Social Explorer Dataset, Social Explorer. Accessed October 11, 2016.

[33] Pension of Andrew Meloan.

[34] Record of Andrew Melone, 1834, United States Revolutionary War Pension Payment Ledgers, 1818-1872, Kentucky, United States, NARA T718, roll 8; FHL microfilm 1,319,388, p. 242. Courtesy of Familysearch.org; Record for Andrew Melone, Final Payment Vouchers Index for Military Pensions, 1818-1864, Index to Selected Final Payment Vouchers, 1818-1864, National Archives, Record Group 217, roll: box06_00008. Courtesy of Fold3.com.

[35] Pension of Andrew Meloan. Obediah, Andrew’s son, was the administrator of Rachel’s estate after her death.

[36] Will of P.O Meloan, 1894, Kentucky County, District and Probate Courts, Calloway, Kentucky, Wills, Vol D-G, 1885-1961, p. 108-110. Courtesy of Ancestry.com.