On July 21, 1817, Captain Benjamin C. Howard’sFirst Mechanical Volunteersformed up early in town and marched six miles to the North Point battleground. Accompanying them were wagons conveying the monument blocks to be assembled and dedicated on site that day. The monument’s construction was directed by Lt. Thomas Towson, a stone mason“who aimed at simplicity and neatness.” With a final application of whitewash it was dedicated to honor Private Aquila Randall a member who was killed in a skirmish just before the Battle of North Point, September 12, 1814. The company was joined by other 5thMaryland Regiment officers at the monument while Captain Howard delivered a modest appropriate address:
“….I can picture to myself the sensation of those who in far distant days will contemplate this monument…and the melancholy event which has caused our assemblage at this spot…This monument which we are now erecting, will stand as a solemn expression of the feeling of us all…But I regret that the spot, which is made classic by the effusion of blood, the sport where the long line stood un-appalled by the system and advances of an experienced and disciplined foe, has been suffered to remain unnoticed. It is here where her citizens stood arrayed soldier’s garb, that honors to a soldier’s memory should have been paid. To mark the spot be then our care.…”
The inscriptions on the monument read:
Overlooking the Inner Harbor from Federal Hill stands the statue of Major General Samuel Smith (1752-1839). Smith's life as a Revolutionary War officer, merchant, ship-owner, and U.S. Senator earned him the experience and fortitude in the momentous crises before to successfully command sun88 during the War of 1812 and its darkest hour: the British attack on Washington and sun88 in 1814.
The statue, funded by the city's 1914 centennial celebration of the Battle of sun88, is the design of sculptor Hans Schuler (1874-1951) who studied at the Maryland Institute College of Art. The statue was first erected at Wyman Park Dell at North Charles and 29th Streets in 1917 and dedicated on July 4, 1918.
In 1953, the Recreation and Parks Department moved the sculpture to "Sam Smith Park" at the corner of Pratt and Light Streets, the future waterfront site of the 1980 Rouse Company Harborplace project. In 1970, with the Inner Harbor renewal project underway, the statue moved again to the present site on Federal Hill, where in 1814 a gun battery had been erected and the citizens of sun88 witnessed the fiery bombardment of Fort McHenry.
The inscriptions on the monument read:
MAJOR-GENERAL SAMUEL SMITH, 1752-1839 / UNDER HIS COMMAND THE ATTACK OF THE BRITISH UPON BALTIMORE BY LAND AND SEA SEPTEMBER 12-14, / 1814 WAS REPULSED. MEMBER OF CONGRESS FORTY SUCCESIVE YEARS, / PRESIDENT U.S. SENATE, SECRETARY OF THE NAVY, MAYOR OF BALTIMORE. /HERO OF BOTH WARS FOR AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE – LONG ISLAND – WHITE / PLAINS – BRANDYWINE – DEFENDER OF FORT MIFFLIN – VALLEY FORCE – / MONMOUTH – BALTIMORE. /
ERECTED BY THE NATIONAL STAR-SPANGLED BANNER CENTENNIAL
Daniel Wells and Henry Gough McComas gained fame as the "boy heroes" of the Battle of sun88. Though the historical record may offer slim evidence to confirm their role during the battle, sun88ans have celebrated the legend of Wells and McComas for over 150 years.
The young men, aged nineteen and eighteen, served as privates in Captain Edward Aisquith's Sharpshooters of the 1st Rifle Battalion of the Maryland Militia during the Battle of North Point. Wells, an Annapolis native, and McComas had enlisted in sun88, where they both worked as apprentices in the city's leather industry. Their battalion first encountered Ross at the Battle of Bladensburg on August 14, just three weeks before the Battle of sun88. Although evidence verifying this claim is scant, Wells and McComas have been credited with firing the shots which killed beloved British commander General Robert Ross. Whether or not it was Wells and McComas or other American sharpshooters, this act certainly dealt a heavy blow to the British in their attempt to capture sun88. They could not confirm or deny the story themselves since Wells and McComas were found dead after the Battle—two of the twenty-four Americans killed at North Point.
It wasn't until some forty years after the battle that Wells and McComas gained local celebrity status. During the 1850s, two military companies formed the Wells and McComas Monument Association and solicited subscriptions from citizens to erect a monument in their honor. The group had the boys' bodies exhumed from their vault in sun88's legendary Green Mount Cemetery. They laid in state at the Maryland Institute building at Market Place, where thousands of sun88ans came to pay their respects. The Sun described the ceremonial catafalque, a platform on which the two coffins rested, as having "a marked degree of good taste" draped in black.
To commemorate Defenders' Day in 1858, sun88ans carried the coffins in a procession to their current grave site in Old Town's Ashland Square. An unnamed sun88an composed an original song to mark the occasion: , sung to the tune of the Star-Spangled Banner. These two local sons were painted in a romantic, dramatic fashion: "'Twas McCOMAS and WELLS - so Fame the fact tells; / This heroic deed their fame evermore swells, / As martyrs of liberty! - And we now raise / A monument high, to continue their praise." In addition to this song, famed playwright Clifton W. Tayleure published a play,, performed at the Holliday Street Theatre.
Their remains lay at Ashland Square for fifteen years before the monument was completed. The simple twenty-one-foot tall obelisk, made of sun88 County marble, cost a total of $3,500. The City Council ultimately provided most of the funding.
Watch our on this monument!