After his exploits during the French and Indian War, Robert Rogers (1732-1795) was indisputably the most famous military leader born in the thirteen colonies; however, he played only a cameo role in the Revolution because both the British and American commanders-in-chief, Thomas Gage and George Washington, not only scorned him but actually arrested him for […]
Alexandria, Virginia, is well known as George Washington’s hometown, but its role during the American Revolution is not widely understood. Like the rest of Northern Virginia, Alexandria was largely spared the fierce warfare that raged across the country. Nonetheless, the Revolution profoundly affected the community. Founded in 1749 along the Potomac River, Alexandria was a […]
Thomas Pownall, the eldest son of William and Sarah Pownall, was born on September 4, 1722 in Lincoln, England. His father, a country gentleman, died when he was thirteen. Pownall attended the Lincoln grammar school until 1740 and then Trinity College, Cambridge from which he graduated in 1743. Two years earlier, his younger brother, John, […]
George Rogers Clark and William Croghan: A Story of the Revolution, Settlement, and Early Life at Locust Grove by Gwynne Tuell Potts (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2020) “The phenomenon of fame confounds and fascinates, indiscriminately raising some to glory while consigning apparent equals to exile.” This is Gwynne Tuell Potts’s insight in her new book […]
In the wake of the Seven Years’ War in North America, the costly British triumph seemed complete. Thus, when a coda to the Seven Years’ War erupted in the interior of North America, it came as an unwelcome shock to the British Empire. War broke out anew, nominally led by the Ottawa chieftain Pontiac, who […]
On a late spring afternoon in 1825, the two Bedinger brothers—Henry and Michael, old men now, seventy-four and sixty-nine respectively, proud immigrants from Alsace-Lorraine—commanded attention among “a party of ladies and gentlemen” gathered for an “elegant [midday] dinner” to keep a fifty-year-old pledge to their other “brothers” in arms. They were at Daniel Morgan’s Springs, […]
