America 250 Digital Portal

Everyone fighting this conflict was someone’s child, brother, father, or husband. The conflict had lasting impacts on every family, patriot or loyalist, and no one was exempt from the fear and violence of war.
Below is a portrait miniature of Anna Frisby Rousby Fitzhugh (1727-1793), who was born in Cecil County, Maryland. Anna first married John Rousby (1728-1750). He left her widowed with one child and in possession of Rousby Hall, an estate at the mouth of the Patuxent River in Lusby, Maryland. In 1752, she married Virginia lawyer, William Fitzhugh (1722-1798), a friend of George Washington and Thomas Sim Lee. Fitzhugh moved to Rousby Hall that same year and was soon involved in politics. William served in the British army during the French & Indian War, rising to the rank of colonel. He served in numerous political positions in Maryland. For resigning from the British Army in 1776, British soldiers later targeted the Rousby Hall estate and twice burned and looted their property of possessions and slaves (1780 and 1781). William, Anna, and their three children were driven from their home on both occasions.
The couple’s son, William Fitzhugh, enlisted and was set to march with Mordecai Gist’s southern army commanded by General Nathael Greene. The elder William Fitzhugh writes a friendly letter, linked below, to Gist asking him for “a continuance of that friendly attention, with which you have been so kind to honor Him—” and goes on to explain that if the young man’s skill in any way matches his enthusiasm for the cause, he should make a good soldier.

Enslaved laborers at Maryland’s ironworks, including Warwick, Principio, and Nottingham, produced the pig iron that would be transformed into weapons, tools, and other essentials for the Continental Army. Latrobe’s depiction of Warwick Furnace captures not only an industrial powerhouse but the everyday laborers whose work sustained the war effort. A 1770 bill of sale for Charlotte, an enslaved woman “about twenty-three years of age,” reveals that she was purchased by Legh Master, an owner and operator of an iron furnace in Westminster. Charlotte represents a group of people, such as enslaved laborers, more specifically enslaved women, who are often excluded from the revolutionary historical narrative.

This collection contains the correspondence of Brigadier General Mordecai Gist during the American Revolution. Topics include military affairs and the Maryland Line, accounts and returns (1779-83), and Gist family records, 1772-1813.

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Artificial collection of military documents of the American Revolution, primarily troop rolls and accounts for pay and provisions, 1776-1824.

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This collection (1781-1839) contains the papers of Otho Holland Williams (1749-1794), a Revolutionary War general and Collector of the port of Baltimore, as well as those of his sons, especially of William E. Williams. Letters relate to such subjects as eyewitness accounts of Revolutionary War battles; the setting up of the Society of the Cincinnati; the attitude of young men to George Washington; the beginnings of the federal government and the attendant politics; life in Baltimore and Western Maryland; and the treatment of disease at the end of the 18th century.

View the collection Finding Aid.