Tench Tilghman (25 December 1744-18 April 1786) was a lieutenant-colonel in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War and an aide-de-camp to George Washington.
Biography[]
Tench Tilghman was born on his family's Fausley plantation near Easton, Maryland in 1744, the son of Loyalist planer James Tilghman. He served as a commissioner to the Iroquois in 1775 and became an aide-de-camp to General George Washington in August 1776; the Tilghman and Washington families had familial connections. He was the only man among Washington's aides to have fluency in French, aiding in his communications with the Marquis de Lafayette and Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben. He carried Charles Cornwallis' surrender papers to the Continental Congress following the Siege of Yorktown in 1781, and Washington spoke highly of him at the war's end. Tilghman left the Continental Army with failing health, and he died in 1786.