No front of the American War of Independence was more consistently violent than the northern frontier in what is today central New York State. Relative to the size of the forces involved, the costliest battle of the war took place at Oriskany near present-day Rome, New York, where the Patriot casualty rate exceeded 50 percent. […]
During the American Revolution, some of the hardest-fought and most bitter battles occurred in the land of the Six Nations, the Iroquois lands stretching from the Hudson River on the east to Lake Erie in the west of what is now upstate, central and western New York State. Both the Americans and British were campaigning […]
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 […]
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 […]
