#stephen moylan

[nordleuchten]

24 Days of La Fayette: December 6th - Major Carter Page

The American born Carter Page (1758 to April 9, 1825) was La Fayette aide-de-camp from June of 1781 until November of the same year. Six eventful months in total. But his war service started long before his stint as La Fayette’s aide-de-camp. Page was commissioned a Captain of the 3rd Virginia Regiment, a Regiment of Dragoons, under the direct command of Colonel George Baylor, on April 10, 1778 – the Marquis de La Fayette in his position as Major-General was the commander of the whole division. On April 11, 1778, George Washington wrote to Colonel Stephen Moylan:

Capt. Jones and Lieut. Page have not been in Camp to my knowledge.

“From George Washington to Colonel Stephen Moylan, 11 April 1778,” Founders Online, National Archives, [Original source: The Papers of George Washington, Revolutionary War Series, vol. 14, 1 March 1778 – 30 April 1778, ed. David R. Hoth. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2004, pp. 479–480.] (09/04/2022)

Washington still referred to Page by his former rank. While the muster rolls of Valley Forge noted his commission in April 1778, they did not note the date of his arrival at camp. Page came from a prominent Virginian family, and it is therefore no too surprising, that he was made a Captain by the age of 19/20. Further promotions were scarcer, though by the end of the war he had been promoted to the rank of Major. On May 18, 1781, La Fayette wrote in a letter to Nathanael Greene:

There are also Some few Volunteer Gentlemen Under Captain Page. They are Very clever But Volonteers. We Had Some Militia Horse. Their time Was out and they Went Home this Morning. Happy I Have Been that we Have Got Some Accoutrements furnished to them By the public.

Idzerda Stanley J. et al., editors, La Fayette in the Age of the American Revolution: Selected Letters and Papers, 1776-1790, Volume 4, April 1, 1781-December 23, 1781, Cornell University Press, 1981, p. 110-114.

Carter Page was at this point in time not yet one of La Fayette’s aide-de-camps and I actually knew of only one letter that La Fayette wrote Page while the latter served in the described capacity. The letter was written on July 5, 1781 and the Marquis instructs the Captain that the British allegedly plan to infect the population of the Williamsburg area with smallpox. La Fayette instructs Page to come up with ideas to thwart this design.

Carter Page was born to Jane Byrd (Page) and John Williamson Page. He was brother to f Mann Page III, William Byrd Page, Jane Byrd Page, Judith Carter (Page) Nelson, Mary Page, Maria Molly Page, Matthew Page, Robert Page, Lucy Page and Thomas Page.

He married twice during his life. Firstly Mary Cary (Page) shortly after the War of Independence on April 4, 1783. The couple were the parents of eight children, namely John Cary Page, Henry Page, Carter Page, Lavinia Randolph Page, Carter Page, Mann Page, William Page and Mary Isham Page. Four of their children, Carter Page, Lavinia Randolph Page, Carter Page and William Page died young, none older than three years old. Their youngest daughter Mary Isham Page also died young. She was killed at the age of 17 in the Richmond Theatre fire in Virginia, on December 26, 1811.

Carter married a second time; 1799, about two years after the death of his first wife, he married Lucy Nelson (Page). With Lucy, Carter had an additional seven children, namely Thomas Nelson Page, William Nelson Page, Lucy Jane (Page) Cushing, Nelson Page, Robert Burwell Page, Thomas Page and Mary Maria (Page) Dame. This time, thankfully all of the children except young Thomas Nelson Page survived infancy and early childhood.

Carter’s children married and had families of their own. Their descendants were still proud to cite Carter Page’s Revolutionary War service and two of his descendants were featured in different books, including elaborate ancestry charts.

First is the Reverend George W. Dame, the husband to Carters youngest daughter Mary Maria:

Frank Munsell, Thomas Patrick Hughes, editors, American Ancestry, Giving Name and Descent, in the Male Line, of Americans Whose Ancestors Settled in the United States Previous to the Declaration of Independence, A. D. 1776, Vol. 7, Joel Munsell and sons, Albany, 1892, p. 189-190.

Secondly we have a veteran of the American Civil War, Richard Canning Moore Page, MD.

The University Magazine, Volume 10-11, Harvard University, Cambridge, 1894, p. 56.

[kafa1010]

Y E A H ⭐

[revolutionary-pirate]

Washington tried to halt [the retreating men], to rally them. "Take the walls!" he cried. "Take the cornfield!" Some of them ran to the walls, some into the cornfield. With Putnam and several other officers he tried to form them behind the walls, but there was no controlling them. Washington's anger was spectacular. "He dashed his hat upon the ground in a transport of rage," crying out, "Are these the men with whom I am to defend America?" He snapped a pistol at them. With his riding cane, "he flogged not only private soldiers, but officers as well," a colonel, even a brigadier general. But nothing would do. At the sight of sixty or seventy Hessians coming at them they broke, flung away muskets, knapsacks, even coats and hats, and ran "as if the Devil was in them." "The ground was literally covered" with such discarded encumbrances. And they left Washington almost alone within eighty yards of the oncoming Hessians. Blinded with rage--or with despair--he sat his horse, taking no heed of his imminent danger. He would have been shot or captured had not an aide-de-camp seized his bridle and "absolutely hurried him away."

The War of the Revolution, Vol. 1, by Christopher Ward [pg 243]

Chernow mentioned aides (plural) in Washington: A Life when describing this scene, McCullough specified two aides pulled him away “with great difficulty” in 1776, and Lefkowitz used the same source as Ward did in Washington’s Indispensable Men, stating that there was just one aide. Regardless, none of the books or their sources, when followed back, specify which aide(s)-de-camp galloped out there to save Washington’s life at Kip’s Bay, but possible candidates for the role include any of the following who were on staff September 15, 1776:

Military Secretary: Robert Hanson Harrison  Assistant Secretaries: Stephen Moylan and Tench Tilghman Aides-de-camp: George Baylor, Samuel Blachley Webb, Richard Cary, and William Grayson

[revolutionary-pirate]

The very first known usage of the phrase “United States of America” is found in a letter from Stephen Moylan to Joseph Reed, both aides-de-camp, on January 2, 1776 (Moylan being Reed’s temporary stand-in as Military Secretary while Reed was on leave) [x x]. Until then they had been the “United Colonies” or the “United Provinces of North America” and Moylan himself had even written “United Colonies” just eight days before his letter to Reed on January 2nd. Something changed in that week between Christmas and New Years. Likely candidates are two things that had happened on January 1st: The arrival of King George III’s speech to Parliament in which he announced his determination to crush the Rebellion in the Colonies for good with the help of foreign powers, and the unfurling of the Grand Union Flag for the very first time. It’s quite possible that the aides-de-camp were the ones who named America. It’s unknown who exactly we can credit with the naming of the country, but it’s quite certain that the first time the phrase was ever uttered was most likely within that small house in Cambridge being used as Washington’s headquarters. At the time, headquarters staff consisted of Stephen Moylan, George Baylor, and Robert Hanson Harrison and any one of them or even Washington himself could have been the first person to ever utter the phrase.

[revolutionary-pirate]

The Signatures of some Aides-de-Camp John Fitzgerald | Richard Varick David Cobb | Caleb Gibbs Stephen Moylan | David Humphreys James McHenry | Tench Tilghman Thomas Mifflin | Joseph Reed

[revolutionary-pirate]

Oh, man. I gotta tell you about the time someone tried to kill Richard Varick. At Fort Ticonderoga on November 18, 1776, a man named Lt. Col. Anthony Walton White barged into the tent of General Gates, where Varick had been quietly working. White yelled at Varick and accused him of anonymously insulting his character in relation to the allegations that White had looted and ransacked the home of Sir John Johnson, a crime from which he had just been released from a court-martial for. White then challenged Varick to a duel, drew his sword (which actually belonged to Col. Anthony Wayne), and lunged at Varick, who was completely unarmed, out of nowhere. Varick managed to side-step the attack and escape the potentially deadly encounter while White was restrained by the other officers. White managed to break free from his captors and likewise escaped the scene and search parties were sent out to look for him. When they found White, he was sitting on a tree stump outside the fort with two loaded pistols (which, again, belonged to Col. Wayne) in hand and three swords at his side, just waiting for Varick to show himself so he could attack him a second time. White was arrested and then transferred to Albany “for attempting to assassinat Mr Van Varrick the Deputy Muster Master General near Head Quarters” [x] and was set to be court-martialed again. At a promise from White that he would leave Varick alone, Horatio Gates and Wayne both agreed to let him be paroled while awaiting trial. Varick was paranoid that Wayne might have been secretly trying to set up a situation in which White would be able to attack him again (I hardly blame him, White had attacked him using Wayne’s weapons) and also felt that since Wayne was a friend of Gates he was, therefore, not to be trusted. In the end, the court-martial was completely bypassed and White was simply transferred to the former aide-de-camp, Stephen Moylan’s, newly formed 4th Continental Light Dragoons Regiment. This transfer was most likely the work of Gates and other very powerful friends of White’s who practically made him untouchable throughout his life and secured him prestigious positions despite his repeated offenses, violence, and controversies. Varick declared that he would do whatever it took to kick White out of the army and was even more bitter towards Gates for letting White go free after he’d threatened Varick’s life like that.  It’s unclear if White’s accusations against Varick were true or not. One of Varick’s biographers thinks that they were probably true based on Varick’s lack of filter and tendency towards open criticism, but there is no definitive evidence going one way or the other. What is clear is that White was judged to be mentally unstable and both Philip Schuyler, who was Varick’s mentor, and Gates took Varick’s side in the dispute. And, yet, White had still walked free without punishment. [x x x x Lefkowitz]

[kaztial-does-art]

So I’ve been thinking about how back when they were first putting together the Continental Dragoons, Stephen Moylan decided to use the uniforms of captured British soldiers to clothe his men, which worried General Washington a bit.  

Later some Continental soldiers shot at the 4th Dragoons thinking they were British, which really freaked out General Washington and he made Moylan dye all the uniforms a different color.