On Memorial Day, the story of the First Maryland Regiment — and the rearguard charge that kept the Revolution alive
By Michael Phillips | MDBayNews
ANNAPOLIS — It was August 27, 1776 — six weeks after the signing of the Declaration of Independence — and the American experiment was already on the verge of extinction.
The Continental Army, badly outmaneuvered by British General William Howe on the flat plains of Brooklyn, was folding. British and Hessian forces had swung around the American left flank — left unguarded by Washington’s commanders — and were rolling up the line. Thousands of Continental troops were pushing toward Brooklyn Heights with the East River at their backs. If Howe’s forces caught them before they could escape, the war was likely over.
What stood between Washington’s army and annihilation was a regiment of Marylanders — most of them having never seen combat — ordered to hold back a force five times their size.
They charged. And charged again. And again.
On this Memorial Day, their story deserves to be at the center of every Maryland classroom, courthouse, and conversation about what this state — and this country — was built on.
The Battle of Brooklyn
The Battle of Brooklyn — also called the Battle of Long Island — was the largest engagement of the Revolutionary War. The British had assembled an overwhelming force: experienced regulars, Hessian mercenaries, and artillery. General Howe divided his army, attacking the American main line head-on to pin it in place while Generals Cornwallis and Clinton executed a flanking march that cracked the American line open from the east.
With the army collapsing, General William Alexander — known as Lord Stirling — led roughly 260 to 400 men of the First Maryland Regiment in a desperate rearguard action against Cornwallis’s forces, concentrated at the Vechte-Cortelyou House, a Dutch farmhouse on the southwestern edge of Long Island that would later become known as the Old Stone House.
The math was staggering. The Marylanders faced at minimum 2,000 British regulars and artillery. They launched six separate counterattacks at the house — charging, falling back, regrouping, and charging again — buying time for Washington’s army to reach the relative safety of Brooklyn Heights.
The cost was devastating. More than 250 Marylanders were killed, wounded, or captured. On the final assault, Cornwallis’s reinforced troops overwhelmed the regiment. Those who weren’t cut down were swept into the Gowanus marshlands — some drowning in the mud, some unable to cross the creek. Lord Stirling himself was captured and later exchanged.
Washington, watching from high ground at what is now Cobble Hill in Brooklyn, is reported to have said: “Good God, what brave fellows I must this day lose.”
They Saved the Revolution
The Marylanders’ stand did not win the battle. The British triumphed decisively on August 27. But the First Maryland Regiment’s rearguard action bought the hours Washington needed to plan the retreat that saved the Continental Army — a nighttime evacuation across the East River to Manhattan that kept the Revolution alive.
One nineteenth-century historian called that bought hour “more precious to American liberty than any other in its history.” Without the Maryland 400, there likely would have been no Trenton, no Valley Forge endurance, no Yorktown. The nation we observe on Memorial Day might never have survived its first summer.
Washington’s admiration for the regiment’s discipline and courage followed it through the rest of the war. Some accounts credit him with calling them his “old line” — the term that would eventually give Maryland its nickname: the Old Line State. These soldiers, virtually all first-time combat veterans authorized by Maryland’s revolutionary government only months before, in January 1776, had earned a place in history their state would carry permanently.
Who Were They?
The name “Maryland 400” is something of an approximation — historians now believe the rearguard action involved closer to 260 men, with nearly 1,000 Marylanders participating in the broader battle. The “400” figure likely emerged from Victorian-era commemorations. But the collective name stuck, and it captures something real: these were ordinary men, farmers and tradesmen and frontier militia, thrown into the deadliest engagement of the war’s opening phase with bayonets and muskets against an experienced professional army.
The First Maryland Regiment traced its lineage to the earliest militia units formed to protect Maryland’s western frontier. The unit’s official formation date — June 14, 1775 — is the same as the birthday of the United States Army. The regiment’s first two companies were recruited as rifle companies, assembled in Frederick, Maryland, in the summer of 1775.
The Maryland State Archives and the Maryland Society of the Sons of the American Revolution have spent years trying to piece together the individual biographies of these soldiers. Their collaborative research project — Finding the Maryland 400 — is an ongoing effort to ensure the men who died in unmarked mass graves along the Gowanus canal are not lost to history.
Where They Rest
Most of the Maryland 400’s dead were buried by the British on a knoll within the Gowanus mill pond area — now the southwest corner of Third Avenue between 7th and 8th Streets in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn. Their remains were never formally recovered or reinterred. Historical markers note the site, but no dedicated burial ground exists.
In 1895, the Maryland Society of the Sons of the American Revolution commissioned a monument in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park — a 27-foot column of Maryland granite and bronze, designed by noted architect Stanford White at no charge. The monument’s inscription reads: “In honor of Maryland’s four hundred, who on this battlefield Aug. 27, 1776 saved the American army.” On the west face, Washington’s attributed words: “Good God! What brave fellows I must this day lose.”
The Old Stone House itself — the farmhouse where the final charges were made — has been reconstructed on its original site in Brooklyn’s J.J. Byrne Park, using original materials. It still displays a Maryland flag from one of its windows.
A Memorial Day Worth Keeping
Memorial Day was established to honor those who died in service to the United States. It is a day defined by its weight — not celebration, but remembrance. And yet the Maryland 400 rarely appear in the holiday’s discourse, overshadowed by conflicts closer in time.
They should not be. The men who charged six times into a wall of British regulars at an old stone farmhouse in Brooklyn in August 1776 died before the United States existed as a sovereign nation — before there was a Constitution, a Congress, a flag anyone would recognize. They died for the idea of a country that had not yet proven it could survive.
Maryland carries their sacrifice in its official name. It is worth carrying it consciously, too.
Sources: Maryland State Archives / Finding the Maryland 400 project: msamaryland400.com. Boundary Stones (WETA): “In 1776, the Maryland 400 Saved the Continental Army at the Battle of Brooklyn” (November 2025). Emerging Revolutionary War Era: “The Maryland 400” (August 2017). American Battlefield Trust: Battle of Brooklyn facts and summary — battlefields.org. NYC Parks Department: Maryland Monument, Prospect Park — nycgovparks.org. The Old Stone House & Washington Park, Brooklyn: Battle of Brooklyn history — theoldstonehouse.org. Outlook by the Bay: “The Maryland 400” (July 2025). Maryland Society, Sons of the American Revolution: Maryland 400 Honorary Regiment — mdssar.org.
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