The Frenchman’s map of Williamsburg, Virginia served as a significant source for the restoration of Colonial Williamsburg. It indicated potential archaeological sites and served as a base for Dr. William Archer Rutherfoord Goodwin’s survey in 1927. The final draft of the map seems to be lost forever but a fine copy (see fig. 1) measuring […]
At the start of the American Revolution, Captain John Manley was a hero. George Washington praised him. Newspapers trumpeted his naval victories, and even his British enemies acknowledged his abilities. When Congress created the Continental Navy, it commissioned him as the second-ranking officer. Today John Manley is largely forgotten, and even his burial place is […]
BOOK REVIEW: Remembering the Revolution: Little Compton, Rhode Island by Steven Lubar. (Little Compton, RI: Little Compton Historical Society, 2026). $25.00 hardcover. Marjory O’Toole, the Executive Director of the Little Compton Historical Society, explains the value of the Society’s recent publication Remembering the Revolution: Little Compton, Rhode Island in the book’s Foreword: Imagine the thrill […]
In the dead of winter, the commandant of the Continental Army’s garrison on the Mohawk River received an unwelcome visitor. A batteau from downriver in the direction of Albany appeared at Fort Schuyler’s landing unannounced and set down a man named Grant Cottle and a shipment of one-hundred-and-eleven gallons of spirituous liquors. In short order, […]
The night was dark. Clouds blotted out the stars; the waning quarter moon would not rise until nearly dawn. Whaleboats under Capt. John Buchanan slipped silently down the Hudson River from Tarrytown on the ebbing tide. As they approached Manhattan, they glided with muffled oars past His Majesty’s twenty-gun post ship Mercury, lying at anchor […]
BOOK REVIEW: A Dear-Bought Victory: The Battle of Bunker Hill and the Siege of Boston, 1775-1776 by Daniel T. Davis and Phillip S. Greenwalt (Savas Beatie, 2026) $16.95 Paperback Studies of Revolutionary War battles tend to focus disproportionately on only a few of the clashes that occurred during the eight-year-long war. The Battle of Bunker […]
It should not be surprising to find Native American Patriots and men who intermarried into Native American families among the thousands of men who served during the American Revolution. Two of these men were James Bass and William Taburn, and today we can trace their relationship to the Nansemond Indian Nation. Linking these men with […]
“My Famely a Raived at this Place”—Lt. Henry Simmons, The Cascades, June 23, 1783 For the Loyalists who joined British General John Burgoyne’s army in the weeks and months leading up to the decisive battles at Saratoga in the fall of 1777, the British defeat meant far more than the loss of a battle. Men […]
BOOK REVIEW: Freedom Round the Globe: A World History of the American Revolution by Sarah M.S. Pearsall (New York, NY: Doubleday, 2026) $35.00 hardcover. Johns Hopkins history professor Sarah M.S. Pearsall has given American Revolutionary War scholars a one-of-a-kind look at the Revolution and its role as a world event. Instead of describing how the […]
The Marquis de Lafayette arrived in New York City to great fanfare on August 16, 1824. Two days later the sixty-six year old Frenchman and his entourage made their way across the East River to inspect the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Before returning to Manhattan, they paid a social call to the Brooklyn Heights home of […]
Introduction When most people think of medals, they think of portable discs often suspended from a ribbon and made of metal (frequently gold, silver, or bronze) that commemorate a deed, an event, or an achievement. Revolutionary War veteran David Steele’s medal was neither circular nor metal, embossed nor engraved. He received it not from the […]
BOOK REVIEW: The Loyalist Experience and Aftermath in Revolutionary Philadelphia by Kimberly Nath (Brookline, 2026) $32.95 hardcover. In an 1813 letter to his former congressional colleague Thomas McKean, John Adams provided his own conjecture as to what percentage of the American population actively supported the American Revolution. Clarifying McKean’s own inexact claim that “the great […]
The heady days of the Declaration of Independence, struggle, victory, and a new Constitution were all behind him. Now, within weeks of taking office as President of the United States, George Washington presided over a toxic political atmosphere. Despite initial hopes for national unity, a vicious partisan press had emerged. Mobs on the frontier flirted […]