They’ve been dubbed the Maryland 400: a regiment of volunteers considered the state’s most disciplined and well-equipped military force.
In July 1776, with thousands of British soldiers already in New York readying themselves for war against a woefully unprepared Continental Army, the men in the First Maryland Regiment made the trip to Gotham to assist.
After the Battle of Brooklyn began on August 27 (250 years ago this week), the number of American casualties and captures was steep.
Still, it wasn’t a complete rout. General Washington was able to evacuate thousands of surviving troops across the East River—thanks to the 256 Maryland soldiers who charged the British at the Old Stone House in a courageous act of self-sacrifice and were subsequently killed.
But where were the soldiers of the First Maryland Regiment buried? In January 1957, three young men guided by the official historian of Brooklyn began digging up the basement of a former paint factory searching for their remains.
“The digging has been going on since Monday morning in the basement of the former Red Devil Paint Company, Third Avenue and Eighth Street, Brooklyn,” wrote the New York Times (top photo).
James A. Kelly, the Brooklyn historian, explained to the Times that the defunct paint factory was part of the old Van Brunt Farm, where the Battle of Brooklyn took place.
After the Marylanders were killed, the British buried them “in fifteen long trenches,” said Kelly, adding that the site today extends from Seventh to Eighth Street, and from Third Avenue to a line 120 feet to the eastward.
The burial trenches were still visible in 1905, Kelly told the Times, until someone paved over them to make a coal yard.
Kelly was encouraged by the fact that a man who lived down the block at 427 Third Avenue (fourth photo) “found some bones and part of a gravestone in his backyard two years ago, but threw them away.”
In the end, the digging was fruitless; no remains were found. But Kelly and his team must have been onto something.
Around the corner at American Legion Rawley Post 1636, a plaque (third image) honors the “Maryland Heroes” whose remains, the plaque states, rest on this site.
Despite the plaque, apparently the debate isn’t settled, as no remains have officially been identified. But a website dedicated to locating a burial site tries to narrow it down and offers lots of fascinating info.
[Top image: NYC Department of Records & Information Services; second image: Wikipedia; third image: Finding the Maryland 400]