“She had gone to the Army . . . to her Husband”: Judith Lines’s Unremarked Life
byWhen the War of the Revolution began in April 1775, Connecticut resident Judith Jeffords née Philips was nineteen years old, had been married for two…
Smallpox
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The Discovery of an Important Letter from a Soldier of the 1st Rhode Island Regiment
byLast spring, the Varnum Memorial Armory Museum in East Greenwich, Rhode Island, announced its discovery of a handwritten letter from a formerly enslaved man…
A Moonlighting British Army Surgeon
byDuring the American War of Independence, the British Army officer corps routinely relegated its surgeons and physicians to a secondary status among its ranks….
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The American Revolution in Alexandria, Virginia: Upheaval in George Washington’s Hometown
byAlexandria, Virginia, is well known as George Washington’s hometown, but its role during the American Revolution is not widely understood. Like the rest of…
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What Killed Prisoners of War?—A Medical Investigation
byEditor’s Note: This article contains graphic medical descriptions. Throughout the Revolutionary War, prisoners learned that dysentery accompanied starvation. Confined to the prison ship Jersey in…
Coronavirus 2020? Nope. The Speckled Monster of 1764
byIn January 1764, a “speckled monster” struck Boston, forcing businesses to shutter and residents to isolate themselves in their homes or flee the city…
Lessons from an Outbreak: Smallpox in the Hudson Highlands, 1781
byOn January 20, 1781, near New Windsor in the Hudson Highlands of New York, Dr. Samuel Adams wrote a brief entry in the diary…
This Week on Dispatches: Geoff Smock on the Influence of the Enlightenment on Thomas Jefferson
byOn this week’s Dispatches host Brady Crytzer interviews teacher and JAR contributor Geoff Smock on Thomas Jefferson’s enlightenment-influenced views on pandemics, the French Revolution, Shays’…
Memorial Day: Recovering the Service of William Tiller, American Soldier
byEvery now and then, one comes across a pension application of an old soldier that includes extraordinary detail. Occasionally the application includes a journal…
This Week on Dispatches: Katie Turner Getty on Combating the Spread of Disease Eighteenth-Century Style
byOn this week’s Dispatches host Brady Crytzer interviews attorney and JAR associate editor Katie Turner Getty on the use of smoke to fumigate refugees from…
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Smoking the Smallpox Sufferers
byAt about midnight on September 29, 1792, Ashley Bowen and his young assistant, Tucker Huy, heard a carriage clatter up the Boston Road and…