Samuel Nicholas, First Commissioned Marine Officer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Happy 250th U.S. Marines! Two hundred fifty years of storied tradition and patriotic inspiration. Wow. If only they made a movie about them. Or a TV series.
I always wanted to be a Marine. I don’t know why. Maybe it was the dress blues. That’s the uniform I wanted for my G.I. Joe. I was just the right age to get the first run of G.I. Joe action figures. Mine was the “Action Soldier.” It came in Government Issue regular army green fatigues, not the camo fatigues of the Marine version. Still, I insisted he was a Marine. My family allowed it; after all, I was only five years old. (FYI: My uncles and great uncles were in the Army and Air Force. They didn’t seem to mind.)
Naturally, I still have my Gomer Pyle U.S.M.C. lunchbox. The thermos was broken when we purchased it. Those were the days when it was hard to return things. Besides, I would never use it as the school sold milk for lunch. To prevent confusion, my brother got the Rat Patrol lunchbox. His thermos worked. Maybe he used it once or twice.
Back then, the Marines weren’t yet 200 years old. This year, on November 10, 2025, will be the 250th birthday of the Marines. At least that’s the official birthday according to the official website of the United States Marine Corps.1
It’s true that the Second Continental Congress passed a resolution establishing the “American Marines” on the cold afternoon of Friday, November 10, 1775. The resolution reads plain as day (from the official journal):
“Resolved, That two Battalions of marines be raised, consisting of one Colonel, two Lieutenant Colonels, two Majors, and other officers as usual in other regiments; and that they consist of an equal number of privates with other battalions; that particular care be taken, that no persons be appointed to office, or enlisted into said Battalions, but such as are good seamen, or so acquainted with maritime affairs as to be able to serve to advantage by sea when required; that they be enlisted and commissioned to serve for and during the present war between Great Britain and the colonies, unless dismissed by order of Congress: that they be distinguished by the names of the first and second battalions of American Marines, and that they be considered as part of the number which the continental Army before Boston is ordered to consist of.”2
Two entries just before that order hint at a bolder strategy. They reveal an intriguing story that, if it worked, might have shortened the war and pushed America’s border farther north.
The committee responsible for offering the resolution spent a week working on it. It was in response to a letter received from the inhabitants of Passamaquoddy, Nova Scotia, who “applied to the Congress to be admitted into the association of the North Americans, for the preservation of their rights and liberties”3
The first resolution authorized sending two persons “to Nova Scotia to enquire into the state of that colony, the disposition of the inhabitants towards the American cause…”4 The second directed General George Washington to attack Nova Scotia should he judge it “practicable and expedient.”5 Congress then ordered a copy of the three resolutions to be sent to Washington.
The General was miffed. As politely as possible, he returned his reply to Congress on November 19, 1775. He wrote, “I beg leave to submit it to the consideration of Congress, if those two battalions can be formed out of this army, whether this is a time to weaken our lines, by employing any of the officers appointed to defend them on any other service? … would it not be eligible to raise two battalions of marines in New York and Philadelphia, where there must be numbers of sailors now unemployed?”6
Congress received and read the letter on November 27. By November 30, they agreed with Washington and passed a resolution to suspend the raising of two battalions of Marines from the army.7 Oddly, they likely made their decision on November 28. That was the day they commissioned Samuel Nicholas as the first officer of the Marines.8
With an amphibious assault of Nova Scotia off the books, attention turned elsewhere. The British suspected the Marines would target New York or Boston. The Marines made the move in Nassau. Not the one in Long Island, but the one in the Bahamas. They seized the British armaments there without firing a single shot.
Legend has it that Nicholas was responsible for recruiting the first few companies of Marines at Tun Tavern. It’s more likely he used his connections with the Schuykill Fishing Company and the Fox Hunting Club to recruit. A look at the membership rolls of those two organizations shows some overlap with the first group of Marines.9
After the success of Nassau, Nicholas returned to Philadelphia. In the summer of 1776, Congress tasked him to recruit four companies of Marines. He did something smart. He recruited the recruiters. One of those men, Robert Mullen, inherited Tun Tavern (a.k.a. “sign of the Old Tun”10) from his father in 1775, Thomas “Mullan” (yes, the names were spelled differently in the primary source material).11 Other contemporary sources spell Robert’s last name as “Mullan.”12
Mullen (or “Mullan”) not only ran the Tun, but he was also a member of the Masonic lodge that met there. Between being an innkeeper and active in a fraternal organization with more than 300 members, Mullen was the perfect man to recruit Marines. 13
Many histories (including that of the Marine Corps itself) incorrectly associate Mullen and the Tun Tavern with the November 10, 1775, birthdate of the Marines. Some even place Nicholas at the Tun, but he clearly recruited from his sportsman clubs. He may have also recruited from the Tun, especially since it was located on Water Street and frequented by the many sailors from the nearby docks.
While the Tun may be legend—or, more accurately, misplaced history—the shores of Tripoli ring true. Following the end of the Revolutionary War in 1783, Congress disbanded the Continental Marines. Their retirement was brief due to the harassment by the French; Congress reestablished the Marines as the United States Marine Corps on July 11, 1798.
The U.S.M.C. earned its stripes—actually, its sword—during the Barbary Wars in 1805. 1st Lieutenant Presley O’Bannon and only eight Marines (but with 500 mercenaries), captured the city of Derna, just outside of Tripoli. Following that battle, the defeated Ottoman Prince presented O’Bannon with a Mameluke sword. Twenty years later, a replica of that sword became part of the ceremonial dress of all Marine officers.
That victory also inspired the line “shores of Tripoli” in the Marine Hymn (which wasn’t made official until 1929). Speaking of songs, “Semper Fidelis” is not only the motto of the U.S.M.C. (adopted in 1883), but it is also the title of the official Marine march. Composed by John Philip Sousa in 1889, it’s featured prominently during the movie Patton. Ironically, the movie is about the Third Army, not about Marines.
It’s funny. I recently shared the Tun Tavern story with an audience. I started by asking any Marines to raise their hands. No one did. Among the several dozen sitting before me, there were plenty of veterans, just no Marines. I guess they really are “the few.”
I never became a Marine. The closest I came—vicariously at least—was my freshman year college roommate. I was such a great roommate that he left school and joined the Marines. He served in Lebanon (but was reassigned before the Beirut barracks attack). Got his picture in Newsweek in some anonymous B-roll shot.
He’s one of the few.
And he’s proud of it.
1 https://www.marines.mil/Marines250/ [Retrieved November 1, 2025]
2 Journals of the Continental Congress 1174-1789, Volume III. 1775 September 21 – December 30, Washington, 1905, p.348 Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774-1789 [Retrieved November 1, 2025]
3 Ibid., p. 316
4 Ibid.
5 Ibid.
6 Ford, Worthington Chauncey, ed., The Writings of George Washington Vol. III. 1775-1776, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, The Knickerbocker Press, 1889, p225-226
7 Journals of the Continental Congress 1174-1789, Volume III. 1775 September 21 – December 30, p.393
8 Image of actual commission letter from the Marine Corps Museum. https://destroyerhistory.org/fletcherclass/0_449nicholas/commission.html [Retrieved November 2, 2025]
9 A History of the Schuylkill Fishing Company of the State in Schuylkill, 1732-1888, Philadelphia: Members of the State in Schuylkill, 1889, pp. 367, 407.
10 The Pennsylvania Gazette, Wednesday, September 6, 1770, p.4
11 The Pennsylvania Journal and Weekly Advertiser, Wednesday, April 26, 1775, p.4
12 The Pennsylvania Gazette, Wednesday, May 10, 1775, p.5
13 Moore, Rev. Henry D., The Masonic Review, Vol. 77 No. 1, February 1892, p.154
America’s Forgotten First Frontier
Before the wild wilderness of Alaska, before the trans-Mississippi west, even before the Appalachian forests and the Cumberland Gap, the Greater Western New York region stood as America’s First Frontier. It was a rugged place where individuals could test the fruits of its promise—and sometimes discover its limits.
But it was tamed.
Quickly tamed.
Too quick for history books to notice.
And so, it slipped quietly out of the national memory.
Until a sportscaster unintentionally reframed its true origin story.
When Chris Berman proclaimed, “Nobody circles the wagons like the Buffalo Bills,” he wasn’t merely referring to a professional football team. He was describing a people. Perhaps without realizing it, he was echoing the rich experience of the region’s earliest pioneers—men and women who braved brutal winters to build permanent homes in the post-Revolutionary War virgin arboreal woodlands and lush valleys of the Greater Western New York Region.
Far beyond the settled coastal cities of the Atlantic, this was the first true frontier of the new nation. Unlike what would later become Kentucky and Ohio, it lay within an original state rather than a federal territory. That distinction mattered more than history remembers.
Known as “terra incognito” during the colonial era, western New York was home to the Seneca and Cayuga, two member nations of the Iroquois Confederacy. The French were the first Europeans to pass through. Their explorers camped here. Their missionaries converted here. Their soldiers fought and built forts here.
But they didn’t settle here.
That omission was not accidental. Western New York was too valuable to ignore—and too dangerous to control without alliances.
It became a critical artery in the economy of New France, later brokered by the Dutch, and ultimately claimed by the British. That final transfer was secured not by force alone, but through alliance with the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy.
The Seneca served as “Keepers of the Western Door.” Ostensibly defensive, that door became a gateway to expansion. During the Beaver Wars, the Confederacy used it to eliminate the Erie tribe and to push its Algonquin adversaries off the map. This left the lands west of the Genesee River wholly vacated a century before the Revolutionary War.
The consequences were profound. French trappers lost their allies. British traders gained control of the valuable fur routes along the fertile waters that flow through western New York and beyond. And America’s First Frontier became one of the earliest battlegrounds for European supremacy in upper North America.
The Western New York region has always been a strategic crossroads.
Long before French missionaries first set foot in the New World, the feud between the Confederacy and its Iroquoian and Algonquin neighbors had been ongoing. The arrival of the Europeans didn’t change the dynamic. It intensified it.
At one time or another, all four Old World powers laid claim to the region. Ambitious Spanish claims, the French fur trade, the Netherlands river-based financial colonies, and the British desire for Empire, all collided here (and elsewhere).
Spain’s claim existed only on paper. They never came close. The Dutch, on the other hand, made the unfortunate decision to choose the Erie as their partners. When the Cat Nation disappeared, New Netherlands shortly followed, mostly without a fight. Mostly.
The French and the British, however, did what the French and the British always did. They went to war. Whether you call it “The French and Indian War” (as North Americans do) or the “Seven Years’ War” (as Europeans do), its outcome determined the fate of American colonies.
Decades later, before Horace Greeley championed Manifest Destiny when his New York Tribune pronounced, “Go West, young man,” New Englanders loaded up their wagons and headed down the ancient Central Trail of the Iroquois Confederacy. They looked past Geneva, at that time, the westernmost settlement in New York State (which itself became a point of controversy).
The Greater Western New York Region promised opportunity and risk in equal measure. It became the proving ground for a new nation’s first attempts to settle undeveloped land.
But it was more than that.
As George Washington quickly learned, America’s first frontier wasn’t just about the pioneers; in true mythic form, this west also posed diplomatic challenges regarding the conquered peoples who had previously claimed the land. The dance between state and federal power in the infant United States proved precarious. Fortunately, Washington’s wisdom and restraint helped protect both the State of New York and the Seneca Nation.
Still, uncertainty lingered.
Though technically part of New York State, the western portion of this original colony lacked clearly defined boundaries. Not until the War of 1812 would the dispute of the “Mile Strip” on the Niagara River be resolved.
Before then, however, the future of the Greater Western New York Region was cloudy at best. It stood on the cusp of history, on the edge of possibility.
Would that history be British, as part of Upper Canada?
Would it remain tethered to America and New York State?
Or would it become an independent state, following Vermont’s example?
Indeed, within a decade of the Paris Treaty that ended the Revolutionary War, no fewer than three attempts were made to separate Greater Western New York from New York State. What was the motivation for this? Why did they fail? How did state and local leaders respond? And what does that response reveal about the fragile architecture of the early republic?
Those unanswered questions are not historical curiosities.
They are the central mystery of our own backyard.
As we celebrate America’s 250th, perhaps now is a good time to rediscover a chapter of our past that unfolded quietly, quickly, and almost invisibly.
A history too often skipped in classrooms.
A history unfamiliar to many elected officials.
A history even seasoned historians sometimes overlook.
It’s the history of America’s forgotten first frontier.
And it leads, inevitably, to one enduring question that can finally be revealed to you:
Interested? Have you joined the 1786 Project yet? Go to http://1786project.com/ to access cool stuff about the history of the Greater Western New York Region! (And find out how to participate in the hidden treasure hunt!)