Vincent Standiford and the Battle of North Point

  

The bombardment of Fort McHenry, by engraver John Bower, c. 1817.

 

On September 12, 1814, during the War of 1812, (212 years ago today,) British troops were marching north from Fort Howard into Baltimore when they met American soldiers at what became known as the Battle of North Point. Though the British eventually pushed back the patriots, the Americans were able to slow down their advance, which allowed US troops at Fort McHenry to reinforce and prepare for the Royal Navy’s attack on the harbor. British General Robert Ross was killed during the North Point fight—another setback for the invaders. The naval bombardment of Fort McHenry took place on the following night, which was chronicled by Francis Scott Key in “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

 

 

Sgt. Vincent Standiford, our 4th great-grandfather, served in Jacob Small’s company of the Maryland Militia during the British attack on Baltimore, and likely fought at the Battle of North Point. The 33-year-old was already married to Elizabeth Rockhold (our 4th great-grandmother), and they had four children at the time, including 3-year-old Joshua (our 3rd great-grandfather). The Standifords would go on to have three more children, and all seven lived to adulthood.

 

We visited Battle Acre Park on our 2018 trip to the East Coast. The battlefield was much larger than this 1-acre park, but today homes and businesses cover much of the land. About a block away stands the city’s original monument to the battle, the Aquila Randall Monument. (Aquila Randall was a 24-year-old soldier in the Maryland Militia who was killed that day.) The small cairn was designed by Jacob Small, the commander of Standiford’s regiment who later served as mayor of Baltimore from 1826 to 1831. It sits beside a drainage ditch separating a stone-carving company and a home with a very large motor home. There is another park (which we did not visit), the North Point State Battlefield Park described in the above video, that preserves 9 acres of land where soldiers fought.

 

Battle Acre Park and the Aquila Randall Monument, 2018.

 

Vincent Standiford’s widowed father, also named Vincent Standiford, passed away in Baltimore in 1822. (His mother Priscilla (Nearn) Standiford died in 1809, before the war.) Whether the elder Vincent’s death had anything to do with Vincent and Elizabeth moving west in the 1820s is impossible to say. But whatever the reason, in the 1830 Census the Standifords were living in Hopewell Township, Ohio, a small community nine miles west of Zanesville in Muskingum County.

 

The Standifords’ seven children all married; some stayed in Ohio, but others moved to neighboring states. Most were too old to serve during the Civil War, but their youngest, Elisha, enlisted in 1862 at the age of 42 (more on him in a future post). However, every one of their eligible grandsons—six in all—and all but one of their granddaughters’ husbands—another five—also enlisted in the Union Army.

 

Vincent Standiford died in Gratiot, Ohio, at the age of 82 on May 30, 1861, a month after the Battle of Fort Sumter, which ushered in the Civil War. Yet two of his grandsons had already volunteered for service when Vincent was buried at the Poplar Fork Cemetery in Gratiot, Ohio. Elizabeth died at age 89 on March 8, 1873, and was buried beside him.