In the summer of 1775, George Washington assumed command of the Continental Army outside Boston and immediately began the process of organizing his forces. He demanded strength returns of all the regiments and an accounting of supplies available. In August, Washington learned that instead of 308 barrels of gun powder he had been led to […]
The Royal Governor’s April 21, 1775 removal from Williamsburg’s Powder Magazine of gunpowder essential to Virginia’s defense caused an immediate furor among Virginians as news spread throughout the colony. The governor’s action was in response to George III’s direction to colonial governors to take control of arms and powder throughout the colonies, direction which had […]
In 1775, the tension between the American colonies and Great Britain escalated into armed conflict at then-little-known places such as Lexington, Concord and Bunker Hill. As a result, throughout the spring and into the summer American colonial legislatures and the military were scrambling to secure supplies of every kind. Until that time much of the […]
In the summer of 1775, Gen. George Washington fell victim to bad information about the Continental Army’s gunpowder supply. When he finally received accurate data, it left him temporarily speechless, fearful of a British attack, and unable to carry out his plans to free Boston. Nearly two hundred years later, a historian created a counter-narrative […]
As we know from our history books, the War for Independence began with the shots fired at Lexington and Concord. Those shots required gunpowder, a substance that was in short supply throughout the colonies. In 1775 there was only one American gunpowder mill, the Frankford Mill in Pennsylvania, and it was turning out a miniscule […]
