Crime Archives - Journal of the American Revolution

Posted on November 3, 2019

This Week on Dispatches: Eric Sterner on the Gdnadenhutten Massacre

On this week’s Dispatches host Brady Crytzer interviews JAR contributor Eric Sterner about the Gnadenhutten Massacre, the murder of ninety-six Delaware Indians—men, women, and children—at a Moravian Mission settlement in Ohio by Pennsylvania Militia and settlers in 1782. A complex and tragic story that embodies the prejudices, cultural clashes, and brutality of the western frontier during the […]

by Editors

Posted on October 28, 2019October 27, 2019

Courts-Martial of the Corps of Light Infantry, 1779

Orderly books are great sources of information for military historians. Their contents are a treasure, and include everything from general and regimental orders, returns, lists, troops movements, guard postings, and the day to day activities of the men themselves. They also include the results of courts- martial, giving insight into what a particular soldier did […]

by Michael J. F. Sheehan

Posted on March 25, 2019March 20, 2019

Terror in the Ramapos

While there were many Revolutionary-era outlaws, Claudius Smith and the Cowboys of the Ramapos stand apart. Their story has long been exaggerated and romanticized through local legends, but the true account of their actions is far more violent. Smith and his band—comprised of his children, outlaws, deserters, Native Americans, and local Tories—terrorized the Whigs of […]

by Charles Dewey

Posted on March 4, 2019March 4, 2019

Donald McCraw of the 42nd Regiment Wields his Broadsword

In March and April of 1780, there was a string of home invasions and robberies around the villages of Jamaica and Flushing on Long Island, New York. The farming region had been a British army garrison since the autumn of 1776, and was teeming with residents, soldiers, sailors, prisoners of war, refugees, and an assortment […]

by Don N. Hagist

Posted on February 5, 2019February 4, 2019

Casualty of Revolution: The Sad Case of Betty Smith

On October 1, 1768, two regiments of British infantry with an artillery detachment—witnesses estimated 700 to 800 men in all—disembarked from transports in Boston Harbor and formed up on Long Wharf. Then, in a procession lasting several hours, they marched “with muskets charged, bayonets fixed, colours flying, drums beating and fifes . . . playing” […]

by Len Travers

Tag: Crime

This Week on Dispatches: Eric Sterner on the Gdnadenhutten Massacre

Courts-Martial of the Corps of Light Infantry, 1779

Terror in the Ramapos

Donald McCraw of the 42nd Regiment Wields his Broadsword

Casualty of Revolution: The Sad Case of Betty Smith