Captain Benjamin Price

Captain Benjamin Price was born in Maryland in 1732. He entered the Revolutionary War serving as a Lieutenant in the 2nd Maryland Regiment in January 1777, was promoted to First Lieutenant in April of that year, and rose to Captain-Lieutenant by May 1778. While the specific battles of his Revolutionary War service are not fully documented, the 2nd Maryland Regiment fought in the Philadelphia Campaign and served throughout the war's major engagements. He served his country through the close of the Revolution, emerging as one of the more seasoned officers who would answer his nation's call a second time.

In April 1791, at the age of 59, making him one of the oldest officers in St. Clair's entire expedition, Price was appointed Captain in the Maryland Battalion of the First Regiment of Levies. His decades of military experience made him a valuable commander in a force that was, by most accounts, dangerously undertrained and undersupplied. He participated in the full Northwest Territory military campaign of 1791, marching with St. Clair's army through the Ohio wilderness toward the Wabash River.

On November 4, 1791, Captain Benjamin Price was killed in action during the battle on the upper Wabash River. A man who had given his youth to the Revolution, he was nearly six decades old when he fell. His remains are buried in one of the mass graves beneath the monument at Fort Recovery, Ohio.

Sources

"Battle of Brandywine, 1777." Map, 1859. Public domain. Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Battle_of_Brandywine_1777,_Map_1859.jpg.

Lytle, Richard M. The Soldiers of America's First Army, 1791. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 2004

"General Orders, 27 January 1780." Founders Online. National Archives. https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-24-02-0222.

St. Clair's Defeat. Public Library of Fort Wayne and Allen County. Project Gutenberg. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/64870/64870-h/64870-h.htm.

Map of the Battle of Brandywine, September 11, 1777. Published 1859. The Battle of Brandywine was fought between General George Washington's Continental Army and British forces under General Sir William Howe — the largest single-day engagement of the entire Revolutionary War. Captain Benjamin Price served in the 2nd Maryland Regiment, one of the Continental units present during the Philadelphia Campaign of 1777 in which Brandywine was a defining engagement.