Wilmington

Wilmington, Delaware, and the Revolutionary War: A City at the Crossroads of Independence

When British warships began threading their way up the Chesapeake Bay in the sweltering August of 1777, the small but strategically vital town of Wilmington, Delaware, found itself standing directly in the path of the largest expeditionary force the Crown had yet assembled in North America. What followed over the next year would transform this modest milling community along Brandywine Creek into a focal point of the war for American independence — a place where armies clashed, a future nation's capital fell under enemy occupation, and the machinery of revolution was tested nearly to its breaking point. Wilmington's Revolutionary War story is not merely a footnote in the larger Philadelphia campaign; it is an essential chapter that illuminates the precariousness of the American cause and the resourcefulness that ultimately sustained it.

To understand why Wilmington mattered, one must first appreciate its geography. Situated at the confluence of Brandywine Creek and the Christina River, just two miles from the Delaware River, the town occupied a position of considerable logistical importance. The Brandywine's fast-moving waters powered a constellation of flour and powder mills that had become critical to the Continental Army's supply chain. Brandywine Village, the flour milling center that adjoined Wilmington, had been founded around 1753 by prominent Quakers William Shipley, his wife Elizabeth Levis-Shipley, and their partner Thomas Canby Jr., and by the eve of the Revolution contained twelve mills and more than sixty homes.

"Brandywine Superfine" flour was shipped all along the Atlantic coast and to the West Indies before the American Revolution.

Prior to the Revolution, the energy of three men — Oliver Canby, Thomas Shipley, and Joseph Tatnall — had given impetus to the building of eight tidewater mills on the Brandywine, with four on each side of the stream. Joseph Tatnall (1740–1813) was a prominent Quaker merchant, miller, and banker who had established a mill on the Brandywine River outside Wilmington, where he helped develop Brandywine Village into a center of early American industrialization.

During the Revolution, Tatnall hosted Generals George Washington and Lafayette at his stone mansion at 1803 Market Street, lent his parlors to General Anthony Wayne to use as a headquarters, and kept his flour mills "going day and night" to provide food for the Continental Army.

Reportedly, Tatnall told Washington, "I cannot fight for thee, but I can feed thy men."

Washington, recognizing the military significance of Delaware's mills, ordered the "runners" or upper millstones throughout the area to be removed and carted to hiding places so they could not be used by the British.

Some can be seen today embedded into walls, terraces, and used as patriotic symbols from Claymont to Newark, Delaware.

By the summer of 1777, George Washington recognized Wilmington not only as a potential defensive position but also as a supply base whose mills could grind grain into the flour that kept his army fed. When intelligence reports confirmed that General Sir William Howe had embarked some 17,000 British and Hessian troops aboard a vast fleet and sailed south from New York, Washington moved his forces through Wilmington and established supply depots there, understanding that the town's milling infrastructure could sustain operations during what promised to be a grueling campaign.

Howe's plan was audacious. Rather than march overland through New Jersey — where Washington had already demonstrated a painful ability to strike at exposed columns, as at Trenton and Princeton — the British commander chose to approach Philadelphia by sea, sailing down the Atlantic coast, into the Chesapeake Bay, and up to its northern head. On July 21, 1777, 261 British ships arrived in the Delaware Bay, but after lear ning from HMS Roebuck's Captain Andrew Snape Hammond about the chevaux-de-frise obstructions installed below Philadelphia, the ships turned south, rounding the Delmarva Peninsula to head north into the Chesapeake.

These ships arrived at Head of Elk on August 25 and proceeded to land British troops; almost simultaneously, George Washington led his American soldiers down Philadelphia Pike into Wilmington.

Washington set up his headquarters at a house atop Quaker Hill in the southwestern portion of Wilmington on August 25, 1777 — the very day Howe landed his forces near Head of Elk.

Wilmington sat halfway — twenty-six miles — between Howe and Philadelphia.

Planting his headquarters at this distance strategically placed Washington nearly midway between the capital and the British threat. With several waterways intersecting Delaware near Wilmington — the Brandywine River, Red Clay Creek, White Clay Creek, and Christina Creek — Washington correctly hedged that a sound defensive position could be staked out within an hour's horse trot from Wilmington.

Local tradition places Washington at 303 West Street in late summer 1777, with the Marquis de Lafayette staying nearby at 301 West Street.

To navigate this unfamiliar terrain, Washington turned to local expertise. While in Wilmington, he personally conducted a reconnaissance of the Brandywine River and its fords between Wilmington and Chadds Ford, using a map of Delaware made especially for him by Jacob Broom, a Wilmington surveyor who would later become a Delaware signer of the Constitution.

The map — now held at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania — depicts the Brandywine region of Delaware and was used during the Battle of Brandywine.

On August 26, Washington conducted a thirty-six-mile round-trip reconnaissance to Head of Elk, returning the following morning to his Quaker Hill headquarters.

According to a newly discovered letter by Robert Forsyth, "most of" Washington's generals accompanied him on this reconnaissance — a larger expedition than previously understood. The two Virginia divisions of Continentals encamped around Quaker Hill included Major Generals Nathanael Greene and Adam Stephen and four brigadier generals.

Future president James Monroe and future Chief Justice of the Supreme Court John Marshall were also part of the Army in Delaware at this time.

Most noteworthy about the 33,000 opposing soldiers in Delaware in the five-day interval before the Battle of Brandywine is that for the first time in the war, Washington's total available army of approximately 17,000 — upwards of 14,000 Continentals plus 3,000 Pennsylvania and Delaware militia — was numerically on par with Howe's 16,000 troops.

On September 3, 1777, the only Revolutionary battle fought on Delaware soil occurred at Cooch's Bridge near Newark, where General William Howe's forces met a small band of rebels. Three days later, Washington convened a critical council of war. On September 6, 1777, at the Hale-Byrnes House near White Clay Creek, Generals Washington, Lafayette, Wayne, Maxwell, Sullivan, and Greene planned the defense of Wilmington.

As recorded in the order book of Captain Robert Kirkwood of the Delaware Regiment, "the general officers of American army September 6th, 1777, were directed to meet at the brick house by White Clay Creek and fix proper picquets for the security of the camp."

In one of the quirks of history, the Council of War was held at a pacifist Quaker's home — that of Daniel Byrnes, a