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. […]
Count Carl Emil von Donop was at the pinnacle of his military career as his corps of Hessians marched victoriously south into New Jersey in the fall of 1776. Von Donop’s professional ambition had been to obtain an appointment to the Prussian Army, widely considered the best in Europe, yet his previous service in the […]
The 1776 campaign season had ended badly for General George Washington and the Continental Army as the dejected Patriots struggled through foul weather over primitive New Jersey roads as they marched toward Trenton in early December. To compound matters, Washington was faced with certain termination of the conflict if the situation did not dramatically improve. […]
“When a man chooses a calling, he must do everything that can be done in that calling so that he can never suffer reproach for having done only half of his duty. On this account, I keep among the mottoes in my portfolio, to serve at times as a reminder, the following from Boileau: ‘Honor […]
One of the more intriguing limited actions of the Revolutionary War was the Battle of the Clouds on September 16, 1777, a meeting of the armies of Gen. Sir William Howe and Gen. George Washington in the Great Valley of Chester County, Pennsylvania. Although more than 25,000 soldiers were present to battle, a tremendous eighteen-hour […]
The walls grew weak; and fast and hot Against them pour’d the ceaseless shot With unabating fury sent, From battery to battlement; And thunder-like the pealing din Rose from each heated culverin Lord Byron, “The Siege of Corinth,” VI The enthusiast in search of the storied Revolutionary War bastion on the west bank of the […]
Their feet were leaving noticeable imprints in the grassy field. It was another two hundred yards to the hedgerow, and then a steep climb up the narrow footpath that snaked around the rising slope of hill in front of them. If they could make it without injury, perhaps there was a chance to dig in […]
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 […]
