Chapter 8

In August of 1777 Anne Amelia Conroy celebrated her eighteenth birthday at the old plantation known as Pirate's Luck, a rambling manse on the Eastern Shore with acres of worn-out tobacco land, overgrown pastures, a rickety pier, crooked tobacco barn and rude slave quarters. Her father, with tears in his eyes, gave her a strand of matched freshwater pearls that had been her mother's.

They dined on Bay oysters, roasted duck and home-cured ham. The junior Dulanys crossed the Bay, sailing through a fast-moving squall line that nearly blew them onto the shoals of Kent Island. They arrived wet and unhappy.

The table talk centered on the weather, the new constitution and the brawling government in Annapolis that was busily confiscating the property of loyal citizens and on the mystery of General Howe's plans to capture Washington and crush his puny army.

Jamie Dulany said that watermen had told him that a huge British fleet had been spotted moving up the Bay and that oystermen had reported horse bodies in the water near the mouth of the Potomac.

"Horses?" Anne's sister gasped. "How awful."

"Well if it's Howe, they left New York, or more properly Jersey, so I've been told, a month ago so some of their mounts may have died along the way. The winds have been contrary." Young Dulany adjusted his frilly stock and pulled down his straining vest. "Feast for the crabs, eh?"

The girls' father nodded. "Philadelphia will fall and the war will be over, and we can all breathe freely again." He managed a seldom-seen smile.

"Do you really think so, Father?" asked Priscilla, her hand on her young husband's forearm. "One of our dearest friends is leaving, selling everything. We purchased their fine pianoforte. Got it for a song, as they say."

"Heading for Canada are they?" asked Anne.

"No," said Dulany, "sailing for Charleston, have some kin down that way, rice growers I believe. Loyal to the very heart and soul."

"How's your family doing?" Margaret Conroy asked from the other end of the table.

"Old Daniel's still a recluse, not even writing any more diatribes, and I fear my father is failing." Jamie Dulany shook his head and looked sad or perhaps disappointed. His Uncle Daniel had been a Maryland leader for a generation, often a voice of reason in the tumult.

"I certainly miss the Second Citizen," said Anne's father. "We were on the Council together."

"He says he is neutral, but no one can be neutral can they?" Dulany sneered, adjusting his fancy cuffs, at least six inches deep and then, out of habit, his wig.

"Of course not. Ridiculous!" cried Anne.

"No one asked you, miss," snapped her stepmother. "Mind your manners. I mean, really, just because it's your birthday."

"I am entitled to my opinion, madam, and I will say it. We must stand for what is right." She raised her half-filled glass. "To our King, long may he rule!"

While they drank, Howe's army was landing at the far end of the Bay, and Washington was hurrying his troops down to meet him. Somewhere in the 4th Maryland regiment marched Billy Fields, hungry and foot sore but eager for a fight.

The family stayed on the shore all through the summer and well into the fall and then retreated to their Annapolis home that was much easier to heat in the winter. By unspoken agreement, no one raised the question of taxes.

The growing scandal was of various Scottish factors, the only ones who always had hard money, buying up the property of those who could not pay their doubled taxes or who had fled. One Scot was said to have acquired 20,000 acres in newly organized Montgomery County.