The 1st Rhode Island Regiment, famously known as the “Black Regiment,” is renowned for its key role in helping to repel three enemy charges at the Battle of Rhode Island on August 29, 1778. What is not widely appreciated is that Rhode Island’s two Continental Army regiments were multi-racial before the famous “Black Regiment” was […]
I recently came across the recollections of Simeon Thayer, who served from 1777 to 1781 as a major in Rhode Island Continental Army regiments. He was one of the outstanding military figures from Rhode Island during the war. His recollections start with him as a teenager during the French and Indian War serving in Maj. […]
The amazing story of Benoni Simmons’s military service in the American Revolution spans some fourteen years, perhaps the longest term of service by anyone in that conflict. More so, his astounding dedication to the cause of independence despite his grievous wounds make him a true American hero.[1] Benoni Simmons was born August 4, 1755, the […]
James W. Whitall (1717-1808) was a prominent Quaker businessman and farmer in the southern region of New Jersey. In 1739 he married Ann Cooper (1716-1797), a devout, no-nonsense Quaker, and together they built a house situated on a farm consisting of over four hundred acres of land along the Delaware River in Red Bank, New […]
A motorist travelling northbound through New Jersey along Interstate 295, which tracks the east bank of the Delaware River from the Delaware Memorial Bridge, passes opposite Philadelphia, and ends a short ways beyond Trenton, might think he or she is in Europe, based strictly on fleetingly observed exit signs rather than any resemblances evoked by […]
