To complement my two studies of the North Carolina Continental Line and militia/state troops, I’ve researched the demographics of the Georgia Continental Line and militia using Federal pension applications.[1] The colony of Georgia at the beginning of the Revolutionary War consisted only of a series of counties along the Savannah River running from the Atlantic coast […]
One of the greatest sources of information on the American Revolution is the collection of pension applications submitted by American veterans of the war or their families. Over 80,000 files are available to researchers as part of the National Archives and Records Administration microfilm publication M804. Intent on finding some desired morsel of information, however, […]
Anyone who has ever tackled genealogical or historical research knows that the process is very much like putting a jigsaw puzzle together or working on a cold case crime. Sometimes you are fortunate and all of the pieces or clues are available and easily come together to produce a definitive result. More often than not, […]
The Healey Library at the University of Massachusetts Boston defines primary sources as “immediate, first-hand documents of a topic, from people who had a direct connection with it.” As students of history, many of us make frequent use of primary sources: muster rolls, pay rolls, returns, letters, maps, etc. Generally speaking, primary sources are our […]
After nearly a quarter of a millennium, what do we really know about the militia and state troops that served during the Revolutionary War? Historians and researchers over the past century have dedicated entire volumes to addressing this question with numerous publications of militia rosters. While this research has proven invaluable, what does it really […]
James Fenimore Cooper published his wildly popular second novel, The Spy: a Tale of the Neutral Ground, in 1821. The book tells the story of Harvey Birch, a Patriot spy operating in the “Neutral Ground,” an uncontrolled region north of New York City that included Westchester County. Not long after Cooper published his novel, a […]
Over the years, historians have located about thirty first-hand accounts of the American expedition into Canada in the fall of 1775. These accounts detail the hardships encountered as the Americans marched through the wilderness in an attempt to capture the British stronghold at Quebec. There may be other journals that have not yet been discovered; […]
Wars were fought by soldiers, but it is the campaigns and commanders that are remembered and studied. This is a shame because the soldiers had a remarkable range of fascinating experiences, often more exciting than those of the policymakers they served. And yet, the farther back in history one goes, the fewer personal stories of […]
I plan to write about how the Tory guerrilla David Fanning changed after being made a Loyalist Colonel and given his own red coat, but I keep being lured down Carolina bypaths. For this present detour, on Fanning’s official adversary, Brigadier General John Butler of the North Carolina Militia, I compiled first-hand statements from men […]
