Adamson Tannehill

Adamson Tannehill (23 May 1750 – 23 December 1820) was born in Frederick County, Maryland.

He served in the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War, initially as a sergeant in Capt. Thomas Price’s Independent Rifle Company, one of the original ten independent companies of riflemen from the frontier regions of Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia authorized by the Continental Congress on 14 June 1775. He received his commission dated 1 January 1776 as a third lieutenant while serving at the Siege of Boston. In June 1776 Tannehill and his company were incorporated into the newly organized Maryland and Virginia Rifle Regiment, at which time he advanced to second lieutenant. Later that year a large portion of his regiment was captured or killed at the Battle of Fort Washington on northern Manhattan Island. However, those members of the unit not taken in the battle, including Tannehill, continued to serve actively with Washington’s Main Army, participating in the Battle of Trenton and the Battle of Princeton, and in the spring of 1777 were administratively attached to the 11th Virginia Regiment. Tannehill was promoted to first lieutenant on 18 May 1777 and the following month was attached to the newly organized Provisional Rifle Corps commanded by Col. Daniel Morgan, which played a major role in the Battle of Saratoga and a peripheral role in the Battle of Monmouth. He returned to the Maryland and Virginia Rifle Regiment (his permanent unit) in mid-1778 when Lt. Col. Moses Rawlings, the regiment’s commander who had been exchanged from British captivity earlier that year, was marshalling the remnants of his unit and recruiting new members while stationed at Fort Frederick, Maryland. In early 1779 Tannehill and the regiment were assigned to Fort Pitt of present-day western Pennsylvania where they supplemented other Continental forces engaged in the defense of frontier settlements from Indian raids. Tannehill advanced to the rank of captain on 29 July 1779. He was discharged from service on 1 January 1781 when his unit was disbanded.

After the war Tannehill settled in Pittsburgh, as did a number of other Revolutionary War officers. He initially engaged in agricultural pursuits and was a tavern owner and vintner, president of the Pittsburgh Fire Co., and a trustee of the first Presbyterian church in Pittsburgh. He later served as a local Justice of the Peace, lieutenant colonel of Westmoreland Co. militia starting in 1788, a member of the Board of Trustees of the first bank in Pittsburgh (1804), one of five turnpike commissioners for the state starting in 1811, brigadier general of Pennsylvania Volunteers during the War of 1812, and president of a branch of the Bank of the United States starting in 1817.

Tannehill was also elected as a Republican to the Thirteenth U.S. Congress (1813-1815). He was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1814 to the Fourteenth Congress. Tannehill died near Pittsburgh in 1820. He was interred in the churchyard of the First Presbyterian Church and reinterred in Allegheny Cemetery in Pittsburgh in 1849.

ources

*Adamson Tannehill papers: Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania, MFF 2176, 10 p.

*Boucher, J. N., 1908, A century and a half of Pittsburgh and her people: New York, The Lewis Publishing Co., p. 376.

*Dahlinger, C. W., 1916, Pittsburgh: a sketch of its early social life: New York, G. P. Putnam's Sons, p. 130.

*_____________ , 1919, A place of great historic interest: Pittsburgh's first burying-ground: Pittsburgh, (no publisher given), p. 18.

*Foster, Morrison, 1932, My brother Stephen: Indianapolis, private printing, p. 16.

*Harper, F. C., 1931, Pittsburgh of today, its resources and people (v. 2): New York, The American Historical Soc., p. 754.

*Hentz, T. F., 2006, Unit history of the Maryland and Virginia Rifle Regiment (1776-1781): insights from the service record of Capt. Adamson Tannehill: Military Collector & Historian, v. 58, no. 3, p. 129-144. (Expanded unpublished manuscript at the Maryland Historical Society, Virginia Historical Society, and Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania.)

*Killikelly, S. H., 1906, The history of Pittsburgh: its rise and progress: Pittsburgh, B. C. & Gordon Montgomery Co., p. 111, 263, 362.

*Walkinshaw, L. C., 1939, Annals of southwestern Pennsylvania (v. 3): New York, Lewis Historical Publishing Co., p. 65.

*CongBio|T000036
* [http://politicalgraveyard.com/bio/tallmadge-tannehill.html The Political Graveyard]