Choptank River Trip - Col Richardson Revolutionary Trail

William Richardson was born to Talbot County Quakers in 1735.  When he reached early manhood, Richardson left Talbot County to take possession of a family plantation at Gilpin Point, in what was then Dorchester County.  He married Elizabeth Green, with whom he raised six children at the Gilpin Point plantation.

Richardson became a prominent landowner along the upper Choptank River.  He raised grain and sent it aboard his sloop Omega for trade in the Bahamas. He was elected as a Dorchester County delegate to the colonial legislature and led the effort to form Caroline County in 1774 from Dorchester and Queen Anne Counties.  One of his daughters married William Potter, another prominent citizen from the nearby plantation at Potter’s Landing.

Caroline County was formed even as the American Colonies were rising in rebellion against Parliament and the British Crown. When hostilities broke out, Richardson recruited a battalion for the Continental Army, supplied it from imports to his Gilpin Point wharves, and led troops under General Washington at the Battle of Harlem Heights in New York in September 1776.

Richardson was entrusted to protect and transfer the Continental treasury from Philadelphia just before the city was occupied by British troops.  He spent several years of the war commanding troops that operated against Tories on the lower Eastern Shore.  Near the close of the war, he was captured on the high seas and held in England before returning to America and Caroline County.

For many years after the Revolution, Richardson served as one of the original Commissioners of Caroline County under the new Maryland state government. He died at his Gilpin Point plantation on June 24, 1825. 

Follow the arrows to learn more about the life of this Caroline Countian and American Revolutionary War patriot.