Adamson Tannehill

Adamson Tannehill (May 23, 1750 – December 23, 1820) was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania.

Adamson Tannehill 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 and engaged in agricultural pursuits. He held several local offices and served as lieutenant colonel of Westmoreland County (Pennsylvania) militia starting in 1788 and as brigadier general of Pennsylvania Volunteers in the United States service from 25 September to 31 December 1812.

Tannehill was elected as a Republican to the Thirteenth Congress. He was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1814 to the Fourteenth Congress. He resumed farming and 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.

Sources

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 and the Virginia Historical Society)

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

• Adamson Tannehill at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
• The Political Graveyard

Donate to Wikimedia