WHAT WOULD TENCH THINK?

In 1974 I started a reference folder that lingered in my files nearly half a century.  When I retrieved the original this year I found that some of the lengthy passages were preserved on carbon paper, written with the Royal Standard my father bought before I was born.

I intended to write of my distant cousin Lt. Col. Tench Tilghman (Old English spelling) as the first in a series built around my family’s history.  More information is available from the Tillman side than the Barretts, hence my decision.            

The Tilghmans/Tillmans probably were representative of most 18th century American families, moving from Continental Europe to Britain, thence to the New World.  Actually, without knowing it before the days of internet research and DNA sampling, I might have considered reaching back beyond recorded history when my ancestors walked out of the Caucasus Mountains 40,000 years ago.

Throughout our history, the hunting and warring instincts have been constant—perhaps an inheritance of our Teutonic influences.  Tillmans were warrior-leaders as both Jutes and Saxons.  My forebears settled in what became the Kent area of southern England in the mid Fifth Century, and by the late 600s were well established as land owners and military chiefs of feudal kings.

We are related by marriage to the Saxon kings of England as well as William the Conqueror and the Plantagenets.  Reportedly, before establishment of the heraldry school at Oxford, the Tilghman coat of arms was nearly identical to that of the royal family’s.  The crest still bears testimony to that heritage: a lion rampant wearing a crown.  The motto, Spes Alit Agricolum, had particular meaning to my ranching family: “Hope flies with the farmer.”

The first Tillman native in the New World was Gideon of the (Chesapeake) Eastern Shore, born in 1640 two years after his father Richard settled in Maryland.  The other branch of the family, descended from Dr. Richard Tilghman (Richards are numerous among us), arrived twenty-three years later in 1671, and his direct descendant, Lt. Col. Tench Tilghman, was George Washington’s aide-de-camp.

When Tench was born in 1744, life expectancy for white males was 28 to 32, depending upon demographic sources.  Tench died in 1785 at 41.  His mentor, George Washington, lived to 67.   And Tench’s friend the Marquis de Lafayette survived heavier odds than fate would allow, lasting an impressive 76 years.

There have been other notable Tillmans, but few with Tench’s credentials.  They include a United States Senator from South Carolina, one of Theodore Roosevelt’s political foes, though two navy ships bore his name.  Others include a superintendent of West Point; a well-known Oklahoma lawman; and the wife of airpower pioneer General Billy Mitchell. 

Tench’s family was rent by the revolution.  His father remained loyal to the crown, and a younger brother was a Royal Navy officer.  Throughout the war, Tilghman Island in the Chesapeake was a British base.  

Most notably, among dozens of Tench’s first cousins was Margaret “Peggy” Shipping, aka Mrs. Benedict Arnold.

Tench’s Philadelphia business was burned by British loyalists (Tories) in 1774, the year of The Intolerable Acts, which Tench publicly opposed.  They included blockading Boston Harbor against commercial traffic; imposed severe restrictions upon Massachusetts governance including only one public meeting annually; and requiring home owners to quarter British soldiers.

After a stint with the treaty delegation negotiating with The Six Nations of Indians in 1775, Tench turned his attention to the war.  He became Washington’s aide-de-camp in August 1776 and remained for most of the war.  Washington thought so highly of Tilghman that he chose his aide to tell Congress in Philadelphia of the momentous victory at Yorktown in 1781.

 The essence of American independence was aptly described two centuries later in the stage play and movie 1776 by Peter Stone and Sherman Edwards.  In debate over the Declaration of Independence, Benjamin Franklin (Howard Da Silva) tells fellow Pennsylvanian John Dickinson, “We've spawned a new race here, Mr. Dikinson. Rougher, simpler; more violent, more enterprising; less refined. We're a new nationality. We require a new nation.”

But London was determined to maintain its goal to “Make the world England.”  Apart from North America, the British Empire was engaged in the Caribbean, Ireland, India, and the Franco-Spanish siege of Gibraltar.  American independence finally came in 1783.

My hope to complete Tench’s story as a Bicentennial tribute to his nation languished while I wrote other things.  If he were alive today, undoubtedly he would observe the current state of the republic with mixed emotions.  From what I learned of the man, his joy at seeing what he helped birth two and a half centuries ago would be tempered—even blunted—by what our federal government has become.  Don’t forget: the Continental Army went to war opposing arbitrary decisions by remote bureaucrats.  It opposed excessive taxation and extravagant spending.  Widespread internal division and turmoil hampered the chances for a successful conclusion to a long, wearing struggle.  Tench’s wartime service was almost constantly against a more numerous, better equipped foe, and he would be astonished to see America’s diminished world standing despite its unexcelled military power.

On the other hand, what would Tench find for encouragement?  In 1974 I wrote, “Perhaps the most telling of all would be the fact that anyone who believes it necessary (and some who apparently do not) can openly and freely criticize his government without fear of censure or retaliation.  That kind of freedom was rare in the world that Tench Tilghman knew.  We can only pray that in another two centuries our posterity may find it still so.”