Third Day Morn.,
October 20th.
I dare say thee is impatient
to know my sentiments of the officers; so, while Somnus embraces them, and the
house is still, take their characters according to their rank.
The General is tall,
portly, well made: a truly martial air, the behaviour and manner of a
gentleman, a good understanding, & great humanity of disposition,
constitute the character of Smallwood.
Col. Wood,1
from what we hear of him and what we see, is one of the most amiable of men;
tall and genteel, an agreeable countenance and deportment. These following
lines will more fully characterize him:
"How skill'd he is in each obliging art,
The mildest manners with the bravest heart."
The cause he is
fighting for alone tears [sic] him
from the society of an amiable wife and engaging daughter; with tears
in his eyes he often mentions the sweets of domestic life.
Col. Line2
is not married; so let me not be too warm in his praise, lest you suspect. He
is monstrous tall & brown, but has a certain something in his face and
conversation very agreeable; he entertains the highest
notions of honour, is sensible and humane, and a brave officer; he is
only seven and twenty years old, but, by a long indisposition and constant
fatigue, looks vastly older, and almost worn to a skeleton, but very lively and
talkative.
Capt. Furnival,3—I
need not say more of him than that he has, excepting one or two, the handsomest
face I ever saw, a very fine person; fine light hair and a great deal of it,
adds to the beauty of his face.
Well, here comes the
glory, the Major, so bashful, so famous, &c. He shou'd come before the
Captain, but never mind. I at first thought the Major cross and proud, but I
was mistaken. He is about nineteen, nephew to the Gen'l, and acts as Major of
brigade to him; he cannot be extoll'd for the graces of person, but
for those of the mind he may justly be celebrated; he is large in his
person, manly, and an engaging countenance and address.4
Finley is wretched
ugly, but he went away last night, so shall not particularize him.
1 JAMES WOOD, born in 1750, was a
son of Colonel James Wood, founder of Winchester, Virginia.
In 1774 the son was commissioned by Lord Dunmore a Captain of Virginia
troops, and in 1775 he was elected to the House of Burgesses from
Frederick County, Virginia. In 1776 he was appointed by the
House of Burgesses to serve as Colonel of the Twelfth,
afterward called the Eighth, Regiment of the Virginia Line, and served
until January 1, 1783. In 1783 he was commissioned a Brigadier-General. He was
elected Governor of Virginia in 1796. He died at Olney, near
Richmond, Virginia, July 16, 1813.-Heitman; Appleton's
"Cyc. of Biog."
2 GEORGE LYNE, of King and Queen
County, Virginia, represented his county in the Virginia Assembly in 1775. He received
the appointment of Captain of the Virginia State Forces,
March 8, 1776; Major of the Thirteenth Virginia Regiment, November
12, of the same year; Lieutenant-Colonel of the Ninth Virginia
Regiment, September 28, 1777. He resigned from the Army November 14, 1777, and
entered the Virginia House of Burgesses, where he continued until
1780. He also served as a member of the Board of War. -
Heitman; Journal House of Delegates, Virginia, 1833, Doc.
No. 31; Stanard, Virginia Register, 199.
3 ALEXANDER FURNIVAL, of Baltimore,
Maryland, born about 1752, was made Second Lieutenant of Smith's
Independent Company of Maryland Artillery, January 14, 1776. Later he
was raised to the rank of Captain. He retired from the Army in July,
1779. In 1793 he was Postmaster of Baltimore. He died September 14,
1807, at Harmony, Baltimore County, Maryland, in his 55th year; "for many
years a respectable inhabitant of this city." Federal Gazette
and Baltimore Advertiser, Sept. 17, 1807; Heitman; Maryland Journal, November
25, 1793.
4 WILLIAM TRUMAN STODDERT,
son of John Truman and Lucy Heabard (Smallwood) Stoddert, was born in
1759, probably on his father's part of the
plantation of "Southampton Enlarged," on Pomunkey Creek,
Charles County, Maryland. His great-grandfather, James Stoddert, a wealthy
planter of "Southampton,' Prince George County, who is said to
have emigrated from Scotland to Maryland in the latter part of the
seventeenth century, made his will (Upper Marlboro, Md., Liber 1, page 153)
March 29, 1726 (Probated May 31, 1726), leaving to his son John Stoddert a
plantation on Smith's Point.
John Stoddert, born
in 1704, and died October 20, 1730, aged 42 years, was married prior to 1730 to
Marianna Truman Greenfield, daughter of Thomas Truman
Greenfield, of Trent Hall, St. Mary's County, Maryland, by his wife
Susanna Cheseldine, daughter of Kenelm Cheseldine and his wife Mary
Gerard, daughter of Thomas Gerard, of the noble
family of Bromley. Thomas Truman Greenfield was a
son of Thomas Greenfield, of Prince George County (a
native, as he states in his will, dated 1715, of Gedling, England),
by his wife Martha Truman.
John
Stoddert, of Charles County, died May 12, 1767, aged 63 years, rich
in lands and negroes. In his will (La Plata, Md A. D. 5, page 364), dated May 6
and probated May 18, 1767, he directs that he be buried beside his deceased
wife, "in my own burying Ground without the least shew of pomp
or Grandeure more than the presence of a few of my neighbours
decently attending my Corpse to its place of Interement and their
witnessing its being covered with Clay, a Glass of wine may be asked
them to Drink without any other Expence. This also my Desire that
none of my Children put themselves into a mourning Dress for my
Deathe." He leaves to his grandson, William Truman Stoddert,
son of his deceased son, John Truman Stoddert, one
half of plantation "I now live on," called "South
Hampton Enlarged," 500 acres of which "I possed
his father John Truman Stoddert with but never Confirmed to him."
John Truman
Stoddert, son of John and Marianna Stoddert, and first
cousin of Benjamin Stoddert, first Secretary of the Navy,
was born July 18, 1732 (Register of St. John's Parish, Prince George
County). His wife was Lucy Heabard Smallwood, daughter of Bayne and
Priscilla (Heabard) Smallwood, and sister of General William
Smallwood of the Revolutionary War. She made her will (La Plata, Md.,
A. E. 6, page 35), November 2, 1767 (Probated October 22, 1768), and bequeathed
her estate to her only child, William Truman Stoddert, appointing her father,
Bayne Smallwood, executor. She mentions her sisters, Eleanor and Priscilla
Smallwood, Elizabeth Leiper, and Margaret Stoddert.
William Truman
Stoddert, thus left an orphan at the age of nine years, was probably
brought up in the family of his grandfather, Bayne Smallwood. He
attended Philadelphia College, now the University of Pennsylvania,
but did not remain to complete the course, leaving the institution in 1776, at
the age of seventeen as his son states, to enter the
ranks of the patriot army. He received the
appointment of Ensign of the Fifth Maryland Regiment,
December 10, 1776. From the early summer of 1777 to May, 1779,
although not regularly appointed by the State, he acted as
Major of Brigade to his uncle, General William Smallwood,
participating in the principal battles of the period. In May, 1779,
in the re-arrangement of the Maryland Line, Major Stoddert was
regularly appointed First Lieutenant of the Fifth Regiment, General
Washington, in a letter dated May 28, 1779, to Governor
Johnson of Maryland, stating that "Mr. Stoddert for near Two
years [has acted] as a Brigade Major to General Smallwood." (Md. Archives,
XXI., 430, 468, 469.)
Under
date of January 4, 1780, Sally Wister notes that "the worthy
Stodard is much indisposed at his home in " Maryland.
On January 1, 1781,
he was transferred to the Fourth Maryland Regiment, in which he served until
his retirement, January 1, 1783. (Ibid., XVIII., 522; Heitman.)
He was married to
Sally Massey, daughter of Rev. Lee Massey, of Fairfax
County, Virginia, for many years minister at General Washington's
place of worship, Pohick Church, near Mount Vernon, and lived the
life of a well-to-do Maryland planter on his estate called "Simpson"
at Smith's Point, on the Potomac, in Charles County. His fondness for the hunt
is attested by a curious relic that has descended to his great-grandson, Mr.
Gustavus Truman Brown, of Washington, D. C. This is an old hunting
horn, encircled by silver bands, one of which bears the legend:
“Major Willim T. Stoddert
Durba Hunt from his friend Wal Stone."
The
registers of Durham Parish show that he was an active
member of the vestry, and from 1787 until the time of his
death made annual contributions of tobacco for the
support of the church. In 1791 the amount of his
subscription was £3 78. 6d., his estimated crop of tobacco being 1000
pounds, which was exceeded in the parish only by that of his uncle
General Smallwood, who had a crop of 3000 pounds. On April 25, 1791,
Major William T. Stoddert, General William Smallwood, and several other
gentlemen, were appointed to act in the place of vestrymen to raise a
subscription to repair the church and build a vestry house. The last reference
to Major Stoddert in the registers is on June 3, 1793, when report is made that
a subscription had been received from him.
He died in 1793, his
son records, "at the age of 34 from disease caused by the
hardships of camp life," and was interred on his
plantation of "Simpson." In his will (La Plata, Md., A. K.
11, p. 173), dated April 5, 1789, probated August 17, 1793, in which he states
that he is "sick and weake in body," he leaves "my dwelling
plantation commonly known by the name of Simpson lying on Potomack
River at Smith's Point in Nanjemoy," one moiety of land called
"Southampton Enlarged," and all other real and personal estate, in
fee simple, to his wife, Sally Stoddert, whom he makes his executor. His
inventory, dated October 24, 1793, shows that he owned thirty-two
slaves, of which seventeen were at "Smith's Point" and
fifteen at "Pomunkey Quarter."
His only child,
Major John Truman Stoddert, who was educated at Princeton and represented
Maryland in Congress, lived at "Wicomico House," on the
estate of West Hatton, Charles County, where he died July 19, 1870,
leaving several children, of whom one is Mrs. Elizabeth Stoddert
Bowie, the present possessor of West Hatton, and
widow of Robert Bowie, son of Governor
Bowie, of Maryland.
SOURCE: Albert Cook
Myers, Editor, Sally Wister's Journal A True Narrative Being A
Quaker Maiden's Account Of Her Experiences With Officers Of The
Continental Army, 1777-1778, pp. 81-9
