Colonel Tye

By: Graham Russell Gao Hodges

Source:

 Encyclopedia of African American History, 1619-1895: From the Colonial Period to the Age of Frederick Douglass

Colonel Tye

(b. c. 1755; d. September 1780),
black Loyalist and guerrilla warrior.

The son of unknown parents, Titus Corlies was born on the farm of John Corlies, a Quaker farmer and slave owner in Shrewsbury, New Jersey. John Corlies resisted the determination of Quakers to free members' slaves. When elders of the Shrewsbury Meeting visited Corlies at his farm in 1775, he angrily refused to manumit his slaves. Titus Corlies, then about twenty years old, was listening carefully.

After Lord Dunmore, the royal governor of Virginia, made his famous proclamation offering freedom to enslaved blacks who joined the British forces, Titus fled. John Corlies described the self-emancipated fugitive as “not very black near 6 feet high, had on a grey homespun coat, brown breeches, blue and white stockings”; he also noted that Titus took along a quantity of clothes. The fugitive slave perhaps joined Dunmore's Ethiopian Regiment when it arrived at Staten Island, New York, in December 1776. Little was heard of him until the battle of Monmouth, fought near Freehold, New Jersey, on 28 June 1778. Titus, then known as “Captain Tye”—he would become “Colonel Tye” by 1779—was cited by British officials for capturing Elisha Shepard, a captain in the Monmouth County Militia, and moving him to imprisonment in British-occupied New York City.

Tye's endeavors were part of a Loyalist effort to support the British military in New Jersey; over the next two years Tye consistently terrorized the Patriots of that state. On 15 July 1779 Tye commanded “fifty Negroes and refugees [white Loyalists] in a daring raid on Shrewsbury.” The “motley crew,” as the interracial force was known, plundered Patriots of cattle, horses, clothing, and furniture and captured several American sympathizers. The raid established a pattern: Tye, accompanied by black and white Loyalists, repeatedly raided Patriot towns and took prisoners, provisions, and animals. The British forces paid Tye handsomely for his feats, once rewarding him with five guineas—nearly half a year's wage.

Over the harsh winter of 1779–1780 Colonel Tye helped the beleaguered British garrison in New York City survive by providing fuel and food, which his forces seized from Corlies and his neighbors. During the spring of 1780 Tye regularly commanded forces that captured leaders of county militias. In the second week of June 1780 alone, he and his men raided Monmouth County three times. In one battle they captured Barnes Smock, a local captain, and spiked his cannon, a symbolically disheartening act for the Patriots; Smock and two of his brothers were imprisoned in New York City. Tye's incursions frightened local Patriots so much that they petitioned New Jersey's wartime governor, William Livingston, to declare martial law. Even that action failed to halt Tye's incursions, however, which continued throughout the summer.

Runaway ad for Titus, posted in 1775. Titus had fled after Lord Dunmore, the royal governor of Virginia, made a famous proclamation offering freedom to enslaved blacks who joined the British forces.

American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts.

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Tye's most famous venture came on 1 September 1780, when he commanded a small army of blacks, whites, and Queen's Rangers (an elite corps of British soldiers) against the stronghold of Josiah Huddy, a leading Patriot known for quick executions of captured Loyalists. After a fierce two-hour battle, Tye captured Huddy and started taking him back to New York City by boat. Along the way the state militia intercepted Tye's forces. Huddy jumped out of the rowboat in which he was being transported and swam to his rescuers shouting, “I am Huddy,” an incident that became legendary. In the fighting, Tye suffered a bullet to the wrist; lacking medical attention, the wound brought about a case of lockjaw that soon killed him.

In the ensuing decades Patriots recognized Tye's courage, affirming that had he fought for the American side, its victory over the British might well have come sooner. Today he represents one of the military choices African Americans made during the American Revolution.

See also American Revolution; Black Loyalists; Fugitive Slaves; Military; and Society of Friends (Quakers) and African Americans.

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