Author: Kim Burdick

Kim Burdick is the founder and Chairman of the American Revolution Round Table of Northern Delaware. As 2003-2009 National Project Director of the Washington-Rochambeau Revolutionary Route (now W3R-NHT), Kim coordinated a 9-state and DC effort celebrating the 225th Anniversary of the Yorktown Campaign. Advisor Emeritus to the National Trust for Historic Preservation and former Chairman of the Delaware Humanities Council, she has served as project director for some of Delaware’s most innovative public history programs including the nationally-recognized June 2014 symposium entitled George Washington: Man and Myth; the Delaware Memorial at Gettysburg; and a one-act traveling play, entitled “Delaware Ghosts.”

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Letters and Correspondence Posted on

L’Expédition Particuliere: Winter 1780 and the Battle of Cape Henry

In July 1780, after three and half months at sea, nearly 6,000 thousand men[1] and supplies crammed on four frigates, seven ships of the line, and thirty-six transport vessels, sailed into Narragansett Bay. Ludwig von Closen of the Royal Deux-Ponts was dispatched to alert Gen. George Washington that the French allies had arrived. Washington quickly […]

by Kim Burdick
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Politics During the War (1775-1783) Posted on

L’Expédition Particulière crosses the Atlantic: The French Rally to the American Cause

Following American success at Saratoga in the autumn of 1777, French King Louis XVI signed the Treaty of Amity and Friendship, establishing open French assistance to the American cause. In May 1780 nearly 6,000 soldiers and sailors left the Port of Brest in northwest France and sailed across the Atlantic, arriving in Rhode Island in […]

by Kim Burdick
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Features Posted on

America’s First Ally: France in the Revolutionary War

Norman Desmarais, professor emeritus at Providence College, is one of America’s most important scholars of French involvement in the American Revolution. Desmarais has long researched and written extensively on the topic. His translation of the Gazette Françoise, the French-language newspaper published in Rhode Island by the French fleet that brought Rochambeau and his troops to […]

by Kim Burdick
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Food & Lifestyle Posted on

Fever

Throughout the American Revolution, opposing armies fought a common enemy. Primary documents on both sides are full of complaints, descriptions and responses to the attacks of a stubborn adversary; fever. As the Declaration of Independence was being prepared, Joseph Hewes of North Carolina complained from Philadelphia on May 17, 1776, “An obstinate ague and Fever, […]

by Kim Burdick
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People Posted on

A Quaker Struggles With the War

A Quaker miller named Daniel Byrnes (1730-1797) began appearing in New Castle County, Delaware land records in 1760, buying and selling land bordering the south side of Wilmington’s Brandywine River.[1] That year, Byrnes and William Moore built a mill with an overshot wheel “across the Brandywine near French Street” and fellow Quaker, William Marshall built […]

by Kim Burdick