Otho Holland Williams Archives - Journal of the American Revolution

Posted on December 30, 2025December 29, 2025

Lt. Elijah Evans of Maryland: Unresolved Promotion in an Extra Continental Regiment

On Christmas day 1780, seven days before his discharge from the Maryland and Virginia Rifle Regiment (Rawlings’ regiment), Lt. Elijah Evans recorded in a troop return that he “claims a Captaincy from the 15th April 1779.”[1] This was his last attempt to highlight a conspicuous administrative oversight that had prevented his promotion throughout his time […]

by Tucker F. Hentz

Posted on February 13, 2024February 13, 2024

Love, American (Revolution) Style: the Romances of Otho Holland Williams

The senate chamber of the Maryland State House was more crowded than usual. It was December 23, 1783. Congress had recently relocated to Annapolis, and now George Washington was in town to fulfill a promise he made eight years earlier. “I went with several others to see Gen. Washington resign his Commission,” Annapolis socialite Mary […]

by Derrick E. Lapp

Posted on May 30, 2023July 24, 2023

Eutaw Springs and the Ambiguity of Victory

The Battle of Eutaw Springs, South Carolina, on September 8, 1781 was the last major open-field battle of the Revolutionary War and perhaps its most savage. The close-quarter fighting that occurred there ranks among the bloodiest and most intensely contested military encounters in young America’s quest for independence.[1] It has, however, been eclipsed in historical […]

by David Price

Posted on May 31, 2022May 30, 2022

Williamsport, DC? How a Maryland Town Vied to be the Nation’s Capital

After seven years of fighting in the Revolutionary War, Otho Holland Williams returned home. It was the Spring of 1782. When he left Frederick, Maryland, in 1775 he was the first lieutenant in a company of riflemen; now he was back from a long campaign in the Carolinas and was receiving a commission as a […]

by Derrick E. Lapp

Posted on September 1, 2021August 30, 2021

The Importance of a Small Skirmish during the Race to the Dan

The Race to the Dan is a famous part of the Southern War of the American Revolution, a strategic retreat by Gen Nathanael Greene, that once across the Dan River, allowed the Southern Army to regroup and resupply. Ten days later Greene recrossed the Dan, was reinforced and on March 15, 1781 fought the Battle […]

by Bruce L. Petersen

Posted on September 24, 2020September 25, 2020

The Mysterious March of Horatio Gates

Following the American surrender at Charleston on May 12, 1780, the Continental Army’s “Southern Department” was in disarray. Taken prisoner that day were 245 officers and 2,326 enlisted, including Maj. Gen. Benjamin Lincoln, the Southern Department’s commander-in-chief, along with militia and armed citizens, the most American prisoners surrendered at one time during the American Revolution.[1] […]

by Andrew Waters

Tag: Otho Holland Williams