100. Brigadier General Roger Nelson(28) (42) was born in 1759 in Frederick County, Maryland. He died on Jun 7 1815. Roger Nelson was born at the family homestead near Point of Rocks, Frederick County, Maryland. He studied at the College of William and Mary.
On Jul 15 1780, he joined the 5th Regiment of the Maryland Line and was commissioned a lieutenant. The regiment was sent south to join General Gates's army and fought at the Battle of Camden. Nelson was wounded during the subsequent retreat and, lying on the field, was surrounded by a band of British soldiers who wounded him further and left him for dead. When it was realized that he was not dead, he was taken as a prisoner of war and placed in one of the British prison hulks in Charleston harbor, where he remained for many months.
Exchanged, he transferred to the regiment of cavalry commanded by Col. William Washington, a cousin of general George Washington. At the Battle of Guilford Court House he took part in the charge against the British Guards that was led by Col. Washington and was the decisive moment of the Battle. He also fought at the Battle of Eutaw Springs in September of 1781 and was present when the surrender of Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown brought the Revolution to an end.
In 1793, he organized and led a troop of cavalry against the Whiskey Rebellion in western Pennsylvania. He was later commissioned a brigadier general in the Maryland Militia.
He was admitted to the Maryland bar in 1785 and practiced briefly in Taneytown before moving to Frederick, where he quickly developed a large practice. Not a brilliant lawyer, he was a brilliant orator and it was said that Frederick County juries found him irresistable. He was soon involved in politics, where his oratorical skills served him well. In one campaign, where he was opposed by a man of great influence, according to T. J. C. Williams in his History of Frederick County, Maryland, he sensed that he was making no headway with the audience. "Suddenly," Williams wrote, "he bared his breast and displayed the scars from the wounds he had received at Camden. That was a dramatic moment and had an electric effect upon his audience and he was triumphantly elected."
He served in the Maryland House of Delegates and, in November, 1804, was elected to the House of Representatives in Washington. A Jeffersonian, he was named a manager of the impeachment proceedings against Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase but refused to serve on account of Chase's services to the country during the Revolution. He supported Jefferson's Embargo Act, despite near universal opposition to it in his district, and he survived the election of 1808 only because of his own popularity.
He resigned from Congress in May, 1810, when he was named an associate judge of the 6th Judicial Circuit of Maryland, where he served until his death.
An article on General Nelson appears in the Dictionary of American Biography. He was married to Mary Brooke Sim in 1787.(43)
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28. T. J. C. Williams. History of Frederick County, Maryland. Regional Publishing Company
Baltimore, Maryland, 1967 (a reprint of the 1910 original).
42. Dictionary of American Biography.
43. T. J. C. Williams. History of Frederick County, Maryland. Regional Publishing Company
Baltimore, Maryland, 1967 (a reprint of the 1910 original). Page 131.
