Parsons Cemetery

5 days ago

Each day you will receive an entry from a journal that might have been written by Henry Handy who is buried at Parsons. These posts often seem calm with respect to what was going on throughout the colonies. Below is a broader perspective of what was happening 250 years ago

On June 11, 1776, the Continental Congress, meeting in Philadelphia, appointed a committee to compose a Declaration of Independence for Britain’s thirteen American colonies. Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Ben Franklin were included on the committee. Jefferson, working in a rented room in Philadelphia, took the lead in composing the document, and a draft of the Declaration was submitted to the Continental Congress on June 28th. One modern commentator has argued that our Declaration of Independence would become “arguably the most important piece of prose in modern history.”

Meanwhile, up and down the east Coast, the Revolutionary War raged on. On June 28th, a fifty-ship British attack force, led by Generals Clinton and Cornwallis and including 4,500 soldiers and seamen, attacked the port city of Charleston, South Carolina. Patriot artillery, positioned behind soft palmetto logs, was able to outgun the day-long British bombardment. The Royal Navy had suffered a “drubbing” at Charleston. Huzzah!

The British attack force then sailed north from Charleston, toward New York. Beginning on June 29th, British General William Howe’s force would also begin to arrive in New York waters, from Halifax. ... See MoreSee Less

Parsons Cemetery

6 days ago

With America's 250th anniversary coming up, we are going to start with stories about what was happening on Delmarva 100 years before Parsons Cemetery was established. This post is long but sets the stage for the shorter one to come.

250 YEARS AGO: PICKING SIDES IN THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION!
What were people doing on Delmarva two hundred and fifty years ago? The answer is: They were “picking sides” in the conflict between Great Britain and its American colonies. Up and down the East Coast, there had already been bloody fighting between Loyalists (Tories) and Patriots, especially in Massachusetts and Virginia.
The 1776 population of Maryland’s Eastern Shore has been estimated to be 88,000 people. This represented 46% of Maryland’s entire population. The Eastern shore of Virginia had about 15,000 people, and Delaware’s population was almost 38,000. Eighty-five percent of Delmarva’s males were engaged in agriculture - planting the soil and raising cattle, sheep and hogs. Some tobacco was also grown. The average farm size was less than 300 acres, but there were also large plantations. Towns were small, relatively widely separated, and mostly located on the numerous rivers, streams, and inlets. On Maryland’s Eastern Shore, Chestertown (then called “New Town”) had 130 houses and was the largest town. Salisbury, Cambridge, Princess Anne, Snow Hill, Easton, Vienna, Oxford, and each had about 40-50 houses.
After the 1775-76 bloody fighting had started in Massachusetts, historians have thought that the American colonial population was divided up as follows: 1/3 favored the Revolution (they were called “Patriots,” or “Whigs”); 1/3 were against the Revolution (they were called “Loyalists,” or “Tories”); and 1/3 were undecided, or in the middle. The “undecided” Americans might sometimes act as Patriots and sometimes as Loyalists.
Maryland’s Eastern Shore may have had a higher percentage of Loyalists than other colonies, because of the Shore’s general tendency toward conservatism. After all, the Patriots were demanding a great many changes, and these changes would require a bloody war to be fought. Loyalists opined that their lives were pretty good. They were enjoying peace and prosperity operating under the rightful aegis of King George III, mighty Great Britain, and the Established (i.e. Anglican) Church. Don’t rock the boat!
The Patriots were the “liberals” of their day. They wanted to elect representatives who would govern them. They wanted freedom to cross the Alleghenies and settle lands in the American West. They rejected taxation without representation! They didn’t want a government that rigged the economy to favor the mother country over the colonies. The didn’t want a hereditary monarchy, nor a hereditary aristocracy. They rejected paying taxes to support the Anglican Church.
On Delmarva, Loyalists were more concentrated along the coastal shorelines and numerous estuaries, rivers, and streams. The reason for this was simple: Great Britain, a mighty seafaring nation, had far more armed naval ships, boats, and barges to use and station along the waterways. But there were also concentrations of Loyalist in more central regions of Delmarva. For example, in early 1777, there was reported to be a worrisome concentration of armed Loyalists, possessing artillery pieces, and threatening to attack Patriots near Parker’s Mill (now called Leonard’s Mill Pond), just 9 miles north of Salisbury. The Continental Army’s Brigadier General William Smallwood, in Baltimore, organized 3,000 troops (including Continental Regulars) to be transported to the Salisbury region to confront this threat. The Tory force soon evaporated, but General Smallwood and some of his troops stayed in the regions of Salisbury, Princess Anne and Snow Hill for a time, to round up threatening Tories.
Delmarva’s farmers certainly did “pick a side” in 1781, at the siege of Yorktown, the last great battle of the American Revolution. George Washington led a combined Patriot and French force against General Cornwallis’s British troops. As described in Charles J. Truitt’s 1975 book, “Breadbasket of the Revolution,” Delmarva’s farmers provided 60,000 daily rations for American and French soldiers! ... See MoreSee Less