Général Thomas Glascock

• General Notes
  • Thomas Glascock served with the Georgia troops under the brave Pulaski, also lieutenant of Continental dragoons, 1779. He died, in 1841, in Richmond, Va.
    
    He rescued the body of the Count after he was mortally wounded and fell into the hands of the enemy.
    
    Thomas Glascock was born in Virginia in 1749 or 1750, and preceded the rest of his father's family to Georgia some years before the Revolution. He was educated at the best institutions of both the South and the North, and the eventful days of 1776 found him in the full vigor and enthusiasm of young manhood. He entered heart and hand and soul into the great struggle for American independence, and for a year or more before the battle of Savannah, had been in command of a company of cavalry, doing bold and signal service in the lower part of the state. He exhibited great bravery and military genius by attacking and defeating, with a small force, a large body of the enemy.
    
    Young Glascock conceived a romantic and devoted attachment to Count Pulalski; and the attachment seems to have been appreciated by the noble Pole, and to such an extent, indeed, that the older man treated the younger as if he had been a son or a much younger brother. Early in the battle of Savannah Count Pulaski, attempting to lead his men past an abatis of the enemy's works into the town, received a cannon shot in the groin from which he fell and in three days after died. On the retreat of the Continental troops it was recalled, and with bitter mourning by his legion, that the Count had been left dangerously wounded near the abatis. And now was shown the high courage and noble personal devotion of Captain Glascock, who, having chosen a few of his men, ready and willing, boldly volunteered to return and rescue the dying soldier. And this he did through fire and smoke and shot and shell; and, three days after, when the illustrious Polish patriot breathed his last, the young c!
    aptain of cavalry was by his side, a place he had not vacated from the hour of the rescue.
    
    During an expedition against the Indians, who had become troublesome on the western frontier of the young and struggling commonwealth, he was appointed colonel. A year after, in the fall of 1780, Captain Glascock, having risen through all the intermediate grades, was appointed and commissioned Brigadier-General in the Continental army. At this time he was in his thirtieth or thirty-first year, and soon after married Miss Mary Bacon, a sister of Edmund Bacon, Esq., of South Carolina, the eminent lawyer and wit, whom Judge Longstreet has handed down to us as Ned Brace in Georgia Scenes.
    
    In 1785 he served on an Indian commission, and on the 18th of November of that year was present at a meeting with the Cherokees at "Hopewell on Kiowee." On the 28th of the same month, he, with his colleague and the North Carolina delegation, issued a protest against the treaties as signed.
    
    In 1793, General Glascock, at the call of Governor Telfair, met in Augusta with Major-Generals Twiggs, Jackson and Clarke, and Brigadier-Generals Morrison, Irwin, Gunn and
    John Clarke to consider the condition of affairs as it related to the Indians. Having applied in vain to the Federal government for protection, it was decided to make an expedition against the Creeks the following October. The expedition was abandoned on the disapproval of President Washington.
    
    On June 5, 1794, President Washington commissioned him Marshal of Georgia. Descendants of General Glascock in Augusta still have the original commission.
    
    During Governor Irwin's administration he was appointed to the command of that quota of the militia which was designated by the general government to be furnished by Georgia. He was a member of the Georgia Mississippi Company.
    
    He was a member of the Constitutional Convention in 1798, but with General Gunn, of Camden, "asked and received leave to decline to sign the constitution because, by section 23, article 1, the state claimed and re-asserted its right of possession and jurisdiction over territory which they claimed as grantees under the usurped act of 1795."
    
    General Glascock was a bold financier and left large estates. He died in Richmond county,Georgia about the age of 54, and was buried at his country place, "The Mills," some miles to the northwest of Augusta,GA. White says of him: "In every situation to which he was elevated he never exhibited one mark of presumption, one mark of assumed authority over those with whom he was associated, but always exhibited that character with which we are mostly pleased-the friend of mankind."

Details of Thomas' family with Mary Bacon IV