Robert N. Fanelli is Secretary of the Washington Crossing American Revolution Round Table. He serves as a Trustee of the Swan Historical Foundation, which owns the excellent collection of revolutionary era artifacts on display in the museum of the Washington Crossing State Park in Titusville, New Jersey. He is particularly interested in Pennsylvania’s role in the American Revolution, and lives along the flanks of Edge Hill, site of an encounter between the American and British armies on December 7, 1777. He is the author of Lydia’s Tale: The Mystery of Lydia Darragh, Irish Quaker, Patriot Spy, published by Westholme.
William Penn founded the Province of Pennsylvania to be a haven for the Religious Society of Friends, “The People Called Quakers” as they described themselves. The new colony was intended as a “holy experiment,” an example to the world that people could govern themselves according to principles of truth, peace and harmony.[1] Friends’ dissenter religion […]
Though Quakers were admonished by their religious leaders to remain neutral and refrain from participation in the American Revolution, some did lend active support to one side or the other. One man who did so paid the ultimate price for his involvement. When the British army occupied Philadelphia in the Fall of 1777, they built […]
The Royal Navy was designed not just protect the island of Britain and its commerce, but to project Great Britain’s power across the seas. Britain’s success as a sea power led to the creation of a large overseas empire and, by the latter half of the eighteenth century, naval dominance of the Atlantic world. One […]
A fire fight erupted on the densely wooded Pennsylvania ridge. Caught in a crossfire from three sides, men of the 2nd Connecticut Regiment began falling. Several got off a few shots in response, but the pressure was too great to withstand. In a matter of minutes, before they could form a proper line, one of […]
The British evacuation of Philadelphia had been under way for several days. Given the honor to be among the last units to leave, the Brigade of Guards slept on their arms by the redoubts north of the city the night of June 17. At daybreak, they embarked on flatboats to cross the Delaware into New […]
Common wisdom paints William Allen, a wealthy and prominent Pennsylvanian, as a traitor to the cause of American independence. As the revolution grew, the politically powerful Allen, unwilling to break entirely with Britain, retired from public life, while three of his sons—attainted of treason and forced into exile—had much of their property confiscated. Despite their […]
In his last moments, with calculated efficiency, he bolted the bedroom door so no one could interrupt the execution of his final act. Charles Craig ended his life with the same cool determination and secretiveness that characterized his public service as a soldier, a cavalryman and an able practitioner of the dirty business of intelligence. […]
On an October day in 1820, a fourteen-year-old African American boy trudged along a rural lane near the town of Barkhamsted, Connecticut. Two hundred miles from home, in a strange place he had never visited before, the boy tugged at a string trailing behind him. Tagging along at the other end was his father, Bristol […]
In late November 1777, Col. William Grayson and a group of gentlemen gathered in a tavern near Whitemarsh, Pennsylvania, a mile and half in front of their lines, glad to be out of the cold, but apprehensive that the enemy might even now be marching against them from their winter quarters in Philadelphia. They sat […]