An Unmarked Grave, in Such Hallowed Ground
“May I suggest that the U.S. Marine Corps at your discretion Bestows the honor to this Revolutionary Hero by placing an appropriate marker in his honor in the Hallowed grounds of the Friends Society.
Honor Samuel Nicholas in all his due ceremony possibly on November 10th the official Birthday of the U.S. Marine Corps that his name is celebrated in the Annals of mankind.”
- John P. Tinneny to Commandant Leonard F. Chapman, Jr., January 16, 1968.
Gentlemen, Rebel, & Quaker
1744
Samuel Nicholas is born to prominent Quaker parents, Andrew and Mary Schute Nicholas, in Philadelphia. The family are members of the Monthly Meeting of Friends of Philadelphia (MMFP), the Quaker community that continues to worship at Arch Street Meeting House today.
1766
Nicholas is a founding member of the Gloucester Fox Chasing Club, one of the first of its kind in the United States. Many of the club’s members later join the First Troop Philadelphia City Cavalry and serve in the Revolutionary War.
1768
Nicholas marries local Quaker, Mary Jenkins, and becomes the proprietor of her family’s business, the Conestoga Wagon Inn. The Inn is still formally owned by Mary’s mother, Mary Gray Jenkins.
April 19, 1775
The American Revolutionary War begins with the battles at Lexington and Concord.
November 10, 1775
The Second Continental Congress raises two battalions of Continental Marines, and on November 28, 1775, John Hancock appoints Samuel Nicholas as Captain.
June 25, 1776
Nicholas is promoted to Major of the Continental Marines.
July 1776
The minutes (records) of the Monthly Meeting of Friends of Philadelphia note that Major Nicholas accepts his removal from the Quaker community for his participation in the Revolutionary War. His wife, Mary Jenkins Nicholas, is later disowned by affiliation.
Despite their high social standing, many members of the Nicholas & Jenkins family are disowned.
In the same records, Mary Gray Jenkins, Nicholas’s mother-in-law, has been asked to grant her enslaved servants their freedom, but she refused. At this time, Pennsylvania Quakers have embraced abolition and prohibited enslavement. Both Mary Gray Jenkins and Mary Nicholas continued to enslave Africans through at least the late 1790s.
November 22, 1781
Samuel Nicholas retires from the Marines. By this time, his work had been primarily administrative, and he hadn’t seen combat in a few years.
April 1783
The Continental Marines are disbanded. Nicholas returns to life as a member of high society and proprietor of the Contestoga Wagon Inn. He joins another Quaker meeting, the Religious Society of Free Quakers.
Also called the Fighting Quakers, the Free Quakers worshiped at a new meetinghouse constructed in 1783 on 5th and Arch Streets. Among its worshippers are Betsy Ross, Timothy Matlack, and Samuel Wetherill.
August 27, 1790
Nicholas dies of an illness, presumably Yellow Fever, and is interred in an unmarked grave in the Friends Burial Ground at Arch Street Meeting House. It is unclear if he had repaired his relationship and been readmitted as a member of the meeting.
Mary Jenkins Nicolas continues to operate the Conestoga Wagon Inn.
July 11, 1798
President John Adams permanently reinstates the United States Marine Corps as a military force under the Department of the Navy.
April 19, 1805
After two years of construction, Arch Street Meeting House opens its doors for the first time.
Fun Fact
Despite the spelling, Nicholas is actually pronounced as “nickels,” like the 5-cent coin.
No known portraits of Samuel Nicholas exist from his lifetime. This painting was made by Maj. Donna J. Neary, USMCR, in 1989.Testimony of Peace
Quakers have lived according to the testimony of peace since the Religious Society of Friends’ earliest days in the mid-17th Century. Still, the Revolutionary War put this core belief to the test.
As the movement towards independence gained momentum in Philadelphia, many Quakers remained steadfast in their adherence to the pacifist tenet of nonviolence. They took a neutral stance by refusing to pledge allegiance to either the Patriot or the Loyalist cause.
The Revolution created deep divisions among Friends, and by 1785, over 1,700 Quakers were disowned or persecuted for supporting the War — either by directly taking up arms, providing supplies, affiliating with known participants, or other offences.
Samuel Nicholas was disowned from this Quaker community in July 1776.
“The Meeting was informed that the testimony against Samuel Nicholas has been deliverd to him, and the acknowledged the rectitude of ffriends Judgment manifesting a comendable disposition of mind on ye occasion.”
The Lost Commandant
On January 16, 1968, John P. Tinnenney wrote a letter to Commandant Leonard F. Chapman, Jr., in Washington, D.C., recommending that the United States Marine Corps (U.S.M.C.) honors Samuel Nicholas with a memorial gravemarker and annual ceremony.
This inquiry sparked decades of correspondence and research by Marines, Quakers, and historians into the life and burial of the Continental Marines’ first and only Commandant.
Commandant Chapman responds to Tinneny’s request on February 5, 1969, sharing that they “…have been advised that it is against the policy of the Society of Friends to erect monuments on the grounds…where [Samuel Nicholas’] body is interred.”
Alice Allen, the Curator of Archives for Arch Street Meeting House, receives copies of these letters from Tinneny in January 1968, and begins to assist in his research. In her findings, Allen discovers Samuel Nicholas’ burial records for the very first time.
Later that year, she was contacted by another Marine Corps Veteran, Edwin N. McClellan, with additional research questions about Samuel Nicholas.
By November 18, 1973, conversations about hosting the Marines at the meetinghouse for an annual ceremony had come to a close—members of the Quaker meeting had not reached a consensus (they did not all agree), so the request was denied.
However, Marines and local Quakers continued to conduct research and share correspondence. On August 2, 1997, a group of twenty-five former Marines traveled to ASMH’s burial ground to pay their respects to Nicholas and all Marines who lie in unmarked graves.
Paul and Cassie Catthall shared an early design of the Samuel Nicholas memorial gravestone in 1998. They used another simple, Quaker-style, ASMH gravestone as a reference.
The memorial was still not approved for another fifteen years, but this design (typos excluded!) was eventually used.
John P. Tinneny (1916-1988) was born in Philadelphia and joined the Marines in 1934. After basic training at Paris Island, he worked as a military policeman at the Philadelphia Navy Yard until Spring 1935, when he was sent to China.
He served briefly in Shanghai and then with the mounted Marine Guard at the U.S. Embassy in Peiping. After the Marines left China, he was stationed at Cavite in the Philippines until the end of his four-year enlistment.
On April 12, 1998, Paul L. Cathell, Jr., and Catherine “Cassie” Cathell wrote to Helen J. File, then Director of Arch Street Meeting House. The Cathells explain that they shared information about Nicholas with the 1st Marine Division Association and its Liberty Bell Chapter. They also wrote a short article in the U.S.M.C.’s Leatherneck Magazine.
Presumably penned by Paul, the letter describes how his initial interest in Samuel Nicholas was sparked by former Commandant Tom Rispoli, whom he spoke with at a flag-raising at Independence Hall on November 10, 1996, who mentioned Nicholas’ unmarked grave.
According to Cathall, “none of the Upland Detachment were aware of Commandant Nicholas’ burial site when [he] brought it to their attention.” This eventually led to the 1997 planned bus trip to Arch Street Meeting House with Commandant Rispoli and Garry Greenstein. Cathall made a VHS tape of the ceremony at ASMH and distributed it to any interested Marines.
By June 2012, the installation of a memorial gravestone for Samuel Nicholas was approved.
Birthplace of the Marines
Tun Tavern, or the Conestoga Wagon Inn?
With the founding of the Continental Marines on November 10, 1775, Samuel Nicholas was commissioned as Commandant and tasked with recruitment. Today, Tun Tavern is recognized as the primary recruitment location for the Continental Marines, but recruitment likely began at the Conestoga Wagon Inn.
Samuel Nicholas became the proprietor of the Conestoga Wagon Inn through his marriage to Mary Jenkins in 1768. The Jenkins family had constructed the Inn in the early 1700s on High Street (now Market Street), between 4th and 5th Streets, as a stop along the Great Wagon Road through the colonies. Many notable figures, including some of our nation's Founding Fathers, visited the Conestoga Wagon Inn. Among them was George Washington, whose visit was documented in his diary on May 17, 1775.
In June 1776, Robert Mullan, a local businessman and friend of Samuel Nicholas, was appointed as Captain of the Marines. At the time, Mullan was the owner and proprietor of Tun Tavern, one of the first and largest brew houses in Philadelphia. Most administrative work and meetings, such as officer rank assignments, took place at the Conestoga Wagon Inn, while recruitment primarily occurred at Tun Tavern due to its closer proximity to the wharf.
The preference for the Tun Tavern as a recruitment site may have stemmed not just from its location, but also from Nicholas's desire to distance the family business from the controversies surrounding the Revolutionary cause. After all, it was considered treason. At this time, Nicholas was also at odds with the local Quaker community, so limiting (or hiding) military activity at the Inn may have been an attempt to avoid social scandal.
After Nicholas retired from service, he continued his work as the Inn’s proprietor. Despite no longer being used as a meeting space for the Marines and their officers, the Inn remained an essential venue for local government officials and the community. On May 25, 1787, the Constitutional Convention met in Philadelphia at the State House, now known as Independence Hall, and several delegates stayed at the Conestoga Wagon Inn.
When Nicholas passed in 1790, his wife, Mary Nicholas, continued to operate the Inn, as her family still owned it. Nicholas’ mother-in-law, Mary Gray Jenkins, passed away on June 23, 1797, and requested that the Conestoga Wagon Inn be sold. Josiah Harmar, Nicholas’ brother-in-law, purchased the Inn on September 19, 1798, but he likely did not operate it.