I, poor creature, worn out with scribbling, for my Bread and my Liberty, low in Spirits and weak in Health, must leave others to wear the laurels which I have sown; others, to eat the Bread which I have earned. John Adams to Abigail Adams June 23, 1775[1] … flour was laid upon a flat […]
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 […]
In the late summer of 1776, Nathan Hale was a handsome, tall, charismatic twenty-one-year-old school teacher from Coventry, Connecticut with no battle experience but eager to do his duty for his country’s rebellion. “I owe to my country the accomplishment of an object so important…”[1] His accomplishment is well known, but not in the way […]
The highest ranking Continental Army officer to be killed during the Siege of Yorktown in 1781 was Col. Alexander Scammell, 34-year old commander of the New Hampshire Regiment.[1] The descriptions of his capture and wounding in the many published accounts of the siege contain inconsistencies about where he was captured and associated events. In addition, […]
In August 1780, Lieutenant-Colonel Abraham Van Buskirk of the 4th Battalion, New Jersey Volunteers, received orders to form a light infantry company.[1] The commanding officers of five other Provincial battalions around New York City also were directed to form light infantry companies composed of men drawn from the rest of their battalions. It was typical […]
In December 1775, British Colonel William Faucitt and Hessian minister Martin Ernst von Schlieffen drafted a treaty promising the Hessian Landgraf Friedrich II a large sum of money in return for soldiers.[1] The British had spent the fall of 1775 offering subsidies to German states of the Holy Roman Empire they were allied with in […]
Jamaican-born Scotsman Colonel Ann Hawkes Hay of the 2nd Regiment of Orange County Militia looked over his property in Haverstraw, New York towards the wide expanse of Haverstraw Bay in the Hudson River on the morning of March 23, 1777. What he saw shocked him: British sails in the river. Col. Hay wrote to General […]
Following the Battle of Monmouth in late 1778, the traditional narrative of the American Revolution becomes lost for many non-specialists. With the existing dichotomy of “American Patriot” versus “British Redcoat” in popular culture, newcomers are often bewildered by the terrible brand of violent politics that so typifies the war on the frontiers of New York […]
In the summer of 1774 when the 38th Regiment of Foot arrived in Boston harbor, amongst the 450 officers and men who disembarked were two trained artists – Joseph Dunkerley and Richard Brunton. While miniature painter Dunkerley’s history and accomplishments have been well documented, new details concerning engraver Brunton’s life and times and his artistic […]
But what still hightens our Apprehensions is that those unexpected proceedings may be preparatory to new Taxations upon us: For if our Trade may be taxed why not our Lands? Why not the produce of our Lands and every Thing we possess or make use of? This we apprehend annihilates our Charter Rights to Govern […]
When a party is formed within the State which ceases to obey the sovereign and is strong enough to make a stand against him, or when a Republic is divided into two opposite factions, and both sides take up arms, there exists a civil war. … it is perfectly clear that the established laws of […]
On March 10, 1782, Colonel David Fanning led a band of vengeful Loyalists on a path of slaughter and arson in northern Randolph County, North Carolina, his Bloody Sabbath house-calls. Most of our information about this episode has been from E. W. Caruthers’s 1854 Revolutionary Incidents and Fanning’s own Narrative, first published in 1861, thirty-six […]
