Choptank River Trip - Col Richardson Revolutionary Trail

William Richardson served as Colonel of the 4th Maryland Battalion of the Flying Camp from July to December 1776.

His first orders were to march his regiment to Elizabethtown, New Jersey, to join with other troops of the Maryland Flying Camp under the command of General Smallwood.

After only a week with the Continental Army under Generals Smallwood and Washington, Richardson’s troops took part in action against the British regulars in New York.

On September 15, 1776, the American army under General George Washington marched from New York City toward the north end of Manhattan under heavy rains. That night the Americans slept in the open air, encamped along a line from the East River to the Hudson.  (The line was located near what is now the northeast corner of Manhattan’s Central Park.) Harlem Plains lay between the American and British lines.

The next day, September 16, three hundred British troops appeared in the open fields below the American position. Washington ordered an attack.  Virginians and Connecticut Rangers engaged the British in a severe fight on Harlem Plains.  The British infantry and Scottish Highlanders used artillery against the Americans.  Washington redoubled the attack by sending in New England troops, three Maryland Independent Companies, and Richardson's and Griffith's battalions of the Maryland Flying Camp. The Americans charged the British with bayonets and pushed them back to high, rocky ground (located at what today is the northern end of the Central Park east of Eighth Avenue.)  There the British troops were reinforced by 700 Germans and Britons.  Washington feared an ambush by a larger force and called off the attack.

Shortly after the Battle of Harlem Heights, Washington described the charge of Colonel Richardson and the Marylanders in a letter to Congress:

"These troops charged the enemy with great intrepidity, and drove them from the wood into the plain, and were pushing them from thence, having silenced their fire in a great measure, when I judged it prudent to order a retreat, fearing the enemy, as I have since found was really the case, were sent in a large body to support their part."  

Colonel Tench Tilghman, a Marylander on Washington's staff, wrote:

"The general finding they wanted support, ordered over part of Colonel Griffith's and Colonel Richardson's Maryland regiments. The troops, though young, charged with as much bravery as I can conceive; they gave to fires and then rushed right forward which drove the enemy from the wood into a buckwheat field, from when they retreated."

Although the Battle of Harlem Heights, and the bravery of the Maryland troops, encouraged the American troops, Washington’s position was untenable. The positive outcome of this engagement only allowed Washington to pause in his long retreat from Long Island, up Manhattan, and finally back into New Jersey.

British troops under General Howe watched while New York City burned on September 21.  But he did not pursue the Americans and remained in New York over the winter.