Posted on by Charlie Frye

Behind the Maps: The American Revolution’s GIS Journey

While writing, Trials of War, I got the opportunity of a lifetime to work as an advisor for Florentine Films on The American Revolution. My job was to help them create nearly 100 maps that appear throughout the six-episode series. I really enjoyed that experience, and I thank PBS, Florentine Films, Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein, David Schmidt, Mike Welt, Grace Bartosh, and the many others for the chance to work with them.

My role was mostly the research behind the maps, verifying each place, region, road, path, and so on. I did that using ArcGIS, and I admit it took several thousand hours, most of which were spent before Florentine Films found me.

Once I began working with Florentine Films, I expanded the historical GIS of Colonial America I’d been developing, from the places Isaac Frye traveled during the American Revolution, to include the rest of the North American continent. During the last year or so of production, I created a web map for the graphics team at Phea.TV and the researchers at Florentine Films to check my work and verify their work. I reworked the styling of that map from the high-contrast look that made checking for errors easier to one that hopefully most people will appreciate exploring.

Click here to explore the online map of Colonial North America.

How NYC looked in Colonial North America

This excerpt shows just some of the territory that New York City occupies today.

The map includes a collection of layers that depict where the European colonists lived, but also where the North American Indian tribes lived in 1775 and 1607.

For anyone who is already an ArcGIS user, I’ve shared the web map and all of the layers in the Colonial North America Layers and Maps group in my ArcGIS Online Home Use account. The data, layers, and maps are free to use under a CC BY 4.0 SA license.

You can learn more about how we created the maps in the series by watching the LinkedIn Live stream video, The Maps Behind the American Revolution, where I, Mike Welt, and Grace Bartosh tell the story of how we made them.

-CEF

Posted on by Charlie Frye

“The Trials of War” is Available

I am pleased to announce that The Trials of War is available. Normally, when I publish a new book, I share the most interesting aspects of the research in my posts. This time, my research began with family history. Abiel Frye, Isaac’s oldest brother, shows up in a surprising way. Then the challenge of unraveling how Isaac Frye came to be court-martialed late in 1779.

Ten years ago, when I first sketched out the plot for The Trials of War, I had not known Abiel would factor in. Then, a few years later, while reading Daniel Livermore’s journal entries, Abiel Frye is mentioned in the May 23, 1779 entry: “… I passed the evening very agreeably with our own corps of officers, and Mr. Abial Frye. …”

That led to some research under the auspices of, ‘What are the odds?’ First, Abiel Frye is not a common name in Colonial America. Only Isaac’s father, who died in 1757, and Isaac’s oldest brother appeared in any searches I’ve made, which include Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.org. Even with all the time afforded me during the COVID-19 shutdown, it took months to finally work out that the 3rd New Hampshire officers indeed dined with Isaac’s older brother, and I also tracked down the story of how they came to cross paths in north-central New Jersey. Here are some of the items I found:

  • This 1912 entry in the Daughters of the American Revolution’s publication, American Monthly Magazine, page 273, includes many pertinent details about Abiel Frye via a sketch of his father-in-law, Eliab Farnam’s service during the American Revolution:

“(2) Farnam (Varnum) — Fry. — Eliab Farnam is called Varnum in Miner’s History (4668), and a reference made to his regiment (p. 191). He was ensign of the first militia in Preston, Conn., Oct., 1771 ; lieutenant in same company May, 1774; and captain of the 8th Co., or train band in the 24th Conn., Oct. 11, 1775. The 24th was formed in May, 1775, and consisted of men from the town of Westmoreland, now Wilkes-Barre, and vicinity, in Pa. His second child, Joshua, was killed by the Indians in 1779 (Miner, p. 466). Abigail, dau. of Eliab Farnam, m. (1) Eleazer Owens, March 20, 1779, who was killed in the Battle of Minisink, July 2, 1779. A posthumous son, Eleazer Owens, was b. Jan. 1, 1780, and m. Margaret Buck (dau. of Elijah and Margaret (Foster) Buck). Abigail Owens, the widow, m. (2) Abiel Fry (or Frye), ensign and second lieutenant in the French and Indian Wars. He was son of Capt. Abiel, and descendant of John Fry, of Andover, Mass. He went from Andover to Pa. in 1763, and was the schoolmaster of the settlement (the Wallenpaupeck) for several years (see Miner, p. 467). Feb. 2, 1784, he m., in Goshen, Orange Co., N. Y., the widow Owens, as before stated, and lived in Goshen for ten years ; was town treasurer, a member of Solomon’s Lodge (No. 1), Poughkeepsie, Dutchess Co., N. Y (which he joined in 1775), and a member of the Presbyterian Church. In 1794, he and his wife and five children moved to Tioga Co., N. Y., but in 1806, while in Goshen on business, Abiel Fry d. of a fever. Is this service sufficient to entitle his descendants to recognition in the D. A. R.?”

That entry and question gave me my first clue, given the Frye family genealogies I’ve read indicated that Abiel Frye, had died in Goshen, NY, which is just north of the New Jersey border, only a few miles from the route taken by the troops marching from Camp Soldier’s Fortune to Easton, PA. The reference to Miner’s History of Wyoming, pages 464-476, gives more details, particularly regarding the settlement in Lackaway Township. today called Lackawana, Pennsylvania.

  • Another reference, this time in the September 1903 edition of Sons of the American Revolution’s Spirit of ’76 magazine on page 19 (link to PDF of scanned pages), provides the following:

“Two interesting articles on the early history of Masonry appeared in the October 1901, and the April 1902 issues of “The Spirit of ’76’. In neither one of those was any mention of Solomon’s Lodge, No. 1, Poughkeepsie, N.Y. The records of this lodge contain a demit to the effect that one Abiel Fry was raised to the sublime degree of Master Mason on the 14th day of June, in the year of Masonry 5775, and the year of our Lord 1775.

The above Abiel Fry or Frye was born Nov. 8, 1734, in Andover Mass.; was in the Alarm list there, April 29, 1757; at Fort William Henry Aug 10, 17 57, and continued to serve during the French and Indian wars of 1758-59 and ’60. In the year 1763 he went to the then Province of Pennsylvania. In “Miner’s History of Wyoming”, pages 466-67, reference is made of a certain schoolmaster named Fry. In all probability this is the same Abiel Fry. On the 2d of February, 1784, he married Abigail Farnum Owen (widow), in Goshen … In 1794 he with his family removed to Chemung, N.Y., and in 1793 was made an elder in the First Presbyterian Church of Chemung and Newton, now Elmira. …

Further information regarding the Above Abiel Fry or Frye, between 1763 and 1784, especially any information or proof of any service he may have rendered his country or any department, civil or military, is desired. Certain references to him in family history lead to the supposition that he may have been in the Commissary department.”

  • The latter item was attributed as a letter from Mrs. David Gillespie of Lincoln, IL.

Based on the above, I was able to fill in the gaps of Abiel’s history and fully bring him into the story.

Next, I had one rather disturbing fact to figure out. Again, this came from Daniel Livermore’s journal, this time the October 26, 1779 entry: “… and a brigade court martial is called, of which Major Titcomb is President, for the trial of Capt. Isaac Frye, of the third battalion of New-Hampshire forces of which I was a member. The charge brought against Capt. Frye was ungentlemanlike behavior and defrauding the officers of the regiment of public stores. …”

There was a lot to unpack, including the idea that Livermore may have edited his journal after the initial writing, given the clause qualifying that he was a member of the third battalion of the New Hampshire forces. Defrauding the officers, but not the enlisted soldiers, also caught my eye. Two months earlier, Livermore made a remarkable midnight journey, crossing the Great Swamp, riding fifty miles back to Easton and beyond in less than two days. He never explains the reason for his mission, but I found that it occurred the evening after a letter for Brigadier General Enoch Poor, who commanded the New Hampshire Brigade. That letter was from Major Caleb Gibbs, the commander of General Washington’s lifeguard. Gibbs mentions a quantity of liquor captured by Anthony Wayne’s forces at Stony Point. Coincidence? I doubt it. Rum and alcohol of any variety were in scarce supply. You’ll need to read the book to see how this turns out.

-CEF

Posted on by Charlie Frye

Battle of Breed’s Hill Patriot Locator Map

Years ago, I decided to figure out where my ancestor, Isaac Frye, who fought in the Battle of Breed’s Hill on June 17, 1775, was positioned on that battlefield. My background as a geographer led me to map the battle using GIS and keep adding details until I succeeded.

One thing I learned is that because I located my ancestor, I could likely locate every American who likely fought, though I would need to do a few things first. These included figuring out who fought or was on the battlefield, then using GIS to place each soldier on the map at the location of their respective regiment or company.

In the spirit of keeping this post short, here is the link to the Battle of Breed’s Hill Patriot Locator Map. Use the search box to enter the surname, and if needed, the first name of any American who fought in the battle.

There are about 200 American soldiers whose names I do not know because no rolls for their companies exist any longer, or they are not in the usual repositories such as the National Archives or their respective state archives. If I’ve omitted your patriot, I would love to add them, but I will need information about their unit and some proof of their service. Contact me via a comment or an email.

CEF

Posted on by Charlie Frye

The American Revolution, the new Ken Burns series

For those who have been patiently waiting for Trials of War to be released (I’m still editing and making good progress), there was a good reason this book has taken so long. I was invited to work on the American Revolution Film Project at Florentine Films, where I advised and assisted in creating nearly 100 maps that appear in the series. For the past two and a half years, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed dedicating a significant amount of my free time to contributing to the series.

For me, this involved the background research I had already been doing to produce the maps that appear in my books, and expanding it to include all of North America. I highly recommend setting aside time to watch Ken Burns’s The American Revolution, which will air and stream on PBS beginning Sunday, November 16. The six-part, 12-hour documentary series directed by Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein, and David Schmidt, explores the country’s founding struggle and its eight-year War for Independence.

I am also excited to share that I’ll be a part of @Esri’s Mapping the American Revolution Live Stream on Tuesday, November 18, 8am PT / 11am ET. If you’re interested, please use the link to register.

Finally, if you have some exposure or experience using ArcGIS, the software I use to create the maps, I invite you to explore this web map of North America in 1775. The map features the collection of GIS data I produced as the starting point for the maps in The American Revolution.

-CEF

Posted on by Charlie Frye · 1 Comment

ArcGIS Pro Map Package for Battle of Breed’s Hill

Happy 4th of July! After publishing the List of Americans in the Battle of Breed’s Hill from the Rolls last year, I had intended to also publish the ArcGIS Pro map I used as part of the research to compile the list. Today, I am finally sharing that here today.

Download: Battle of Breeds Hill Troop Locations and Movements.

The above link will open the ArcGIS Online homage page for the map package. In the upper right, click Download, and then in ArcGIS Pro, use the Import tab to add this map to your Pro project.

Included in the Map Package

  • Layers for the initial deployment of troops and artillery at the regiment and, when it was needed, at the company level.
  • Layers for locations of troops and artillery during the initial phase of the battle.
  • Layers for locations of troops and artillery during the final phase of the battle
  • Muster of the names of the Americans who fought (note this is not as current as the spreadsheet in the List of Americans in the Battle of Breed’s Hill from the Rolls.

Requirements

This map package requires using ArcGIS Pro version 2.8 or newer. ArcGIS Pro is available as Part of university site licenses or, like I use it, via the Personal Use Account.

I advise having at least an intermediate or greater level of experience/comfort using ArcGIS Pro to get full value from this map. In particular, skills to query tables within a moderately complex relational data model are needed.

Posted on by Charlie Frye

Aaron Oliver and Ezra Fuller – Memorial Day

In researching my books I learn some of the details about little-known soldiers of the American Revolution who made the ultimate sacrifice. Each year when Memorial Day nears, I try to carve out time to share those stories. This year I chose two who chose to fight for American Independence from Great Britain.

I began learning about Aaron Oliver and Ezra Fuller while researching Honor and Valor because they were soldiers who enlisted in the Continental Army company my great-great-great-great-grandfather, Isaac Frye, captained. In early 1777, the regiment was recruiting and I wrote about how Isaac recruited from the towns near his home in Wilton, New Hampshire.

My habit before writing is to research the histories of the men who served in the Continental Army with Isaac Frye. Early in my research, I found the enlistment documents for Isaac Frye’s company. The first was signed by enlistees who gathered in Wilton, New Hampshire on April 1, 1777. Aaron Oliver and Ezra Fuller were present and they enlisted as private soldiers in the Continental Army for a term of three years. Their signatures are indicated in the image with red arrows.

I research genealogical information for each soldier. I found Aaron Oliver was born on 25 August 1750 in Malden, Massachusetts, and that he was married to Abigail Townsend and they had three sons, Luther, Ezra, and Aaron Jr. In 1777. They were living in Temple, New Hampshire when Aaron enlisted. Ezra Fuller was younger, born in 1757 in Lynn, MA; he was not married. He lived in Mason, New Hampshire when he enlisted.

As I continued my research, I found two unexpected references for Aaron Oliver. The first was a Daughters of the American Revolution publication, Forgotten Patriots, African American and American Indian Patriots in the Revolutionary War, A Guide to Service Sources, and Studies; and the second was Glenn A. Knoblock’s African American Historical Burial Grounds and Gravesites of New England. Forgotten Patriots provides that Oliver was of mixed heritage, “mulatto”. That got me curious and I searched for the names of all the men in Isaac Frye’s company. Ezra Fuller was included as “African American”. Knoblock provides additional history about Oliver and uses his case to illustrate the practice of “warning out”, a practice where towns ousted unwanted or burdensome people from dwelling within their boundaries.

I learned a good deal more about Oliver and Fuller from town histories and several of the muster rolls Isaac Frye and the officers of his company made each month. Several facts that applied to Oliver and Fuller have stuck with me.

  • They were born, and died, as free men.
  • Each could sign his name and therefore I presume could read and write – something three in ten of their white counterparts could or did not do.
  • The monthly muster rolls show Oliver and Fuller were not segregated within Captain Frye’s company. The rolls list the men in groups of five by their “messes”, meaning those who shared meals and tents. Frye’s rolls show messes were initially determined alphabetically. All men in the company were equals in pay, misery, risk, and soldierly duties.

Despite these inferences, I found no specific references to the character or accounts of either Oliver or Fuller in any diaries, journals, or contemporary writings. Their service was as exemplary as any other private soldier in the Continental Army.

Aaron Oliver’s Service

As the Continental Army evacuated from Fort Ticonderoga in early July of 1775, Oliver and two other men, Ensign Samuel Leeman, and Private Jonathan Foster were assigned to guard the baggage and invalids. Thus, these three were caught in the Battle of Hubbardton. Leeman was killed and Foster escaped to the east but was unable to rejoin the company until later. Knoblock provides that Oliver was taken prisoner, and taken to and held in the British prison ships at Wallabout Bay in New York. Oliver’s health deteriorated and he was released from captivity and returned home to Temple in April 1778. Isaac Frye’s muster roll for November 1778 has a notation of Oliver dying on April 30, 1778. At his death, Aaron Oliver was twenty-seven years of age. In December of 1778, Oliver’s widow, Abigail, was warned out of Temple – the town would or could not support them.

I found that fact troubling for having learned Josiah Parker’s story, and after his passing, the Town of Wilton, of similar size and means, appeared to support his widow Phebe and their children until Phebe married recently widowed John Greele a year and a half later.

It is also troubling that I have never found evidence that Aaron Oliver was ever paid or that his widow, Abigail, received any compensation for his service.

Added April 25, 2024: I happened to find one additional enlistment for Aaron Oliver in the Massachusetts Rolls (Vol. 11, p. 635): Oliver, Aaron, Temple. Descriptive list endorsed ” August 4 1775; ” Capt. Ezra Town s co., Col. James Read‘s regt.; rank, Private; age, 25 yrs. : stature, 5 ft. 10 in.; eyes, black; occupation, farmer; birthplace, Malden; residence, Temple; enlisted April 23. 1775; mustered July 11, 1775 ; reported a mulatto ; also reported absent on command.

Ezra Fuller’s Service

Ezra Fuller served in the place of Deacon Amos Dakin, who may also have paid his town or state bounty, a bonus for enlisting. Fuller was apparently very ill at the time Captain Frye’s company marched to Fort Ticonderoga,, as Fuller does not appear on the rolls until joining the company in September after the Battle of Freeman’s Farm. Fuller apparently fits into the company and marches with them into the Battle of Bemis Heights in which he is wounded.

Fuller spends several months recovering in Albany and is among the first to march from there to Valley Forge to join his company at some point between the muster rolls taken on April 4, 1778 and May 2, 1778. However, Fuller is immediately listed as sick. He was apparently taken to one of the hospitals in the area. Because he was not with the company and Captain Frye was also sick, but remained in the camp at Valley Forge, his disposition was unknown. He is listed on the monthly muster rolls as sick at Valley Forge through April of 1779. However, I found a record indicating he died on July 14, 1778 – he was just twenty-one or twenty-two years old. On August 28, 1782, Ezra Fuller’s father, David Fuller, was given his son’s pay.

-CEF

Posted on by Charlie Frye · 6 Comments

List of Americans in the Battle of Breed’s Hill from the Rolls

This is a roll of who was or likely was in or at the June 17, 1775 battle. It is not exact, complete, or the last word. The early historians Swett, Frothingham, Loring, et al. agreed that there is no basis for compiling an exact list. I completely agree with them, though we can compile useful from all of the available information.

Americans in the Battle of Breed’s Hill from the Rolls – Feb 2024Download
Method for Compiling Battle of Breed’s Hill from the Rolls (DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.20817.75367)Download

Newly available in April 2026: Interactive map for locating patriot soldiers on the Breed’s Hill battlefield: Battle of Breed’s Hill Patriot Locator. This map is based on recent research aimed at revising and improving the locations of the British units.

I intend this roll as a 21st-century digital convenience. It is for those who wish to get a faster start researching patriot ancestors, town histories, etc.

Beyond appearing in each of the state rolls, there were two criteria for including soldiers in this roll:

  1. There was a “positive” statement of their being in the battle. This included being a casualty, prisoner, losing items, or being specifically listed on a roll as in the battle. There is a “Positives” column in the Company Summary tab reflecting the count of soldiers with a positive statement.
  2. The dates of service include June 17, 1775.  This is not positive proof, but proof of the potential to have taken the field. Typically, this was a roll taken between June 18 and August 2. These rolls gave enlistment dates in April, May, or June, and durations of service. There were a few rolls taken before the battle that established a term of service after accounting for those who marched and served for the April 19, 1775, alarm.  Many men who marched on April 19 went home within a week and did not return to the siege.  It is also worth noting omissions to the state rolls. There were quite a few soldiers who served from late April or early May only until the end of July and were not part of the Continental Army. There are cases where the Aug 1st Massachusetts rolls were not taken or did not survive, and I would assert as many as 250 men were not included in the state rolls or this digital version of them. There were also dozens of soldiers who fought but were from other units that are not recognized as marching. These men were on details or among friends and chose to march with their companies and regiments. There were also men who marched, took the field, and then were sent on duties, or left, and went back to camp. Such men are included as they were on the field at a time when others were in physical and mortal danger. The Company Summary tab has two fields 1B and 1A that indicate Y or N for a roll before the battle (1B) or a roll with service dates after the battle (1A).

Last, on the company summary tab, there are fields for phases and zones. Phases represent the three British offensives during the battle. Zones represent areas of relative conflict. Zone 1 is the accepted main line of battle, including the range of a musket on either side of where that line moved. Zone 2 is the rest of the Charlestown Peninsula, which required an act of bravery in and of itself to march onto via the Charlestown Neck. Zone 3 is the area beyond the Charlestown Neck including Lechmere Point. General Ward sent units to guard against a second landing of the Regulars. Col. Paul Dudley Sargent noted unfavorable winds also prevented this landing. However, these troops took casualties from cannon and grapeshot from the floating gondolas and smaller ships that could make their way deeper into the Back Bay.

If you note some one is missing or wrongly included, please email me at duty_liberty@mail.com, or comment on this blog – I generally can respond within a day or two. Follow this post to be notified of updates, which are listed below.

-CEF

Updates:

3/15/2021: Added Captains Abraham Dodge and Ezra Lunt from Col. Moses Little’s regiment.

3/14/2021: Removed most men from Capt. Abel Wilder’s company of Col. Doolittle’s Regiment – only part of the company was there. Added Capt. John Harnden’s company of Col. Bridge’s regiment. Added several individuals found due to improving the quality of the Massachusetts rolls file. Removed three duplicated soldiers.

3/10/2021: Added several from Connecticut.

3/9/2021: Added Daniel Shay

4/21/2022: Added Henry Farrington and Ichabod Farrington – previously omitted due to garbled OCR in Massachusetts rolls file.

2/29/2024: Learned of Samuel Bradish of Abel Wilder’s Company in Doolittle’s 18th Mass. Regiment. In Bradish’s record, the service dates included the battle and that he was wounded. I was surprised to see these service dates had been omitted from Capt. Wilder’s record. Based on this, I added Bradish and 44 additional soldiers from Wilder’s company. These men were predominantly from Winchendon and Royalston, with a few from Boston and Lunenberg.

Posted on by Charlie Frye · 1 Comment

Improved text for searching MA Soldiers and Sailors

The scanned text of 17 volumes of Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors of the Revolutionary War, a Compilation from https:archive.org, was difficult to search through because there were so many errors, including misrepresented names, broken words, and garbled entire pages of text.

Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors of the Revolutionary War v1-17Download

After several years of gradual progress, I have completed the work to correct hundreds of thousands of systematic errors in the OCR (optical character recognition) process is complete. Each record is now on one line in the file with no breaks, making it a better basis to determine the composition of companies or regiments at various times, inventory of which towns the soldiers were from, traits of soldiers from rolls that described the men (hair, eyes, height, ethnicity, occupation, etc.; and which men were in specific battles — in the form of a positive claim containing the words like killed, wounded, captured, or lost items or a tacit claim for being in the unit at the time of the battle.

The original “text view” was copied into files for each volume. I processed those files using Python to remove the arbitrary end of lines, thus concatenating the text for each soldier. My goal was to be able to do wildcard searches per soldier such that I could find matches between company commanders and regiment commanders. For instance, searching for “ilder.*Doo” would find men in Capt. Abel Wilder’s company., Col. Ephraim Doolittle’s regt. That syntax is for Notepad ++. I got tired of doing that manually in each of the 17 volumes. This also addresses not having to search across volumes for sound-alike names such as Ayres and Eyres.

This is a large file – STRONGLY RECOMMEND using in Notepad++ or do a bit of programming in Python (DO NOT ATTEMPT IN: NotePad, WordPad, or even MS Word). Both Notepad++ and Python support wildcard and extended character searching, e.g., “\n\r”. Notepad++ is limited to one wildcard, so for complex sequences, Python is the only option (using the regex library and conditional logic to mimic an SQL query with multiple WHERE clauses).

Removing end-of-line characters described above generally worked, but issues with the OCR process resulted in many false interpretations of characters and unintended insertions of new lines. So, I also started replacing some of the safer sequences:

Daxiei to Daniel x4
Daxiel to Daniel x68
Aakon to Aaron x3
Reubex to Reuben x 35
AxLEX to Allen x7
Johx to John x452
JoHx to John x63
Jamks to James x7
AVigglesworth to Wigglesworth x36
Woodbridjje to Woodbridge
Bexoxi to Benoni x5
Bexjamix to Benjamin x98
Williaji to William x70
Joxathax to Jonathan x51
Lejiuel to Lemuel x5

If you are tempted to do similar, please be aware that many seemingly safe find/replace pairs will produce unintended changes Use Find first to locate a large number of prospective changes to be certain of avoiding changing valid information.

Sometimes the OCR process in combination with a poorly printed page created a mess. For instance:

An^TT.w SPr-eant Capt. Joseph Uichards’s co.; enlisted Aug. 11, 1779; ser'”‘^”^^ZZ 3 a”;n^.’detach,nent under Capt. Samuel Fisher at Rhode Island.

Should be:

Allen, Abijah, Sergeant, Capt. Joseph Richards’s co.; enlisted Aug. 11, 1779; service 1 mo. 3 days with detachment under Capt. Samuel Fisher at Rhode Island.

Thus, if you’re looking for specific person, the scanned version on archive.org is your best option.

-CEF

Posted on by Charlie Frye

Battles of Saratoga 243rd Anniversary

Of all the work and research I put into the writing of Honor and Valor, chapters 7 and 8 which deal with the Battles of Freeman’s Farm and Bemis Heights proved the most challenging. Over the last two decades I read many books about these battles. I particularly enjoyed the works of Richard M. Ketchum and Sean Snow, and Don Troiani & Eric Schnitzer.

Plaque dedicated to the New Hampshire Continentals who fought at Saratoga in 1777.

My goal in reading those and many others was to get my bearings and then shadow the 3rd New Hampshire Regiment and my ancestor, then Captain, Isaac Frye on these battlefields. I cross-referenced the sources from the above-mentioned works and several others to piece together a series of minute-to-minute sequences that plausibly occurred on the afternoons of September 19 and October 7, 1777.

I also spent a day walking the battlefields, doing my best to see the terrain as soldiers saw it in 1777. Many first-hand accounts of the battles included the tremendous sounds of cannon, musketry, and anguished screams of the wounded and dying men. Combine that with all the smoke and smells and I found myself duly impressed with the valor of those who fought.

If you’re like me and have pursued a deeper understanding of these battles, and wondered what it was like to have been there, please invest some time and read Honor and Valor. I learned a great deal writing it, especially when it came to realizing the great fortitude and commitment the men on both sides of these battles brought to bear through the brutality of war and the sufferings produced by 18th Century armies in a months-long campaign.

The best histories are the stories of specific people and why they did what they did. In my writing, I strive to revive the stories of several people that many historians might only include as flavoring in their writings rather than the main course. Names like Isaac Frye, Ezekiel Goodale, William Adrian Hawkins, and Will Burton do not make the indexes in most histories and historians have not written about their families or their everyday concerns for well over a century.

-CEF

P.S. If you should read or have read Honor and Valor or The War Has Begun, and any of the other books mentioned above, their authors and I would very much appreciate a review on Amazon, as more reviews means Amazon helps promote my books and others on the American Revolution.

I am also happy to include that the e-books editions are now available to borrow from libraries that use the Biblioboard service for loaning e-books to their patrons.

Posted on by Charlie Frye

Will Burton and July 5, 1777

While researching and writing Honor and Valor I found journal and diary entries telling of the first commemorations of the July 4th in 1777. The evening of 5 July, 1777 turned out to be substantially more important. As the sun set that day on the American soldiers at Fort Ticonderoga, outnumbered by 3:1 by General Burgoyne’s army several miles to the north, they loaded what they could carry and left. On boats they carried cannon and baggage south toward Skenesborough (now Whitehall), though most marched east and then turned south toward Hubbardton.

The Americans at Fort Ticonderoga numbered about 3,000 with a majority being Continental Army soldiers and the rest Massachusetts and New Hampshire militia.

Will Burton, barely 15-years-old, a fifer with the 3rd New Hampshire Continental Regiment, and likely full of adrenaline marched with them toward Hubbardton. Will, like my ancestor, Isaac Frye, was from Wilton, New Hampshire. Each of the nine companies in the regiment had a fifer and a drummer. Isaac Frye was at that time a Captain and commanded one of the companies in the 3rd NH, the same one Will had enlisted in three months earlier.

When I wrote the outline of Honor and Valor, I was telling Isaac Frye’s story. I was loosely aware of Will Burton’s service and knew I wanted to include it, but had not worked out how until I began writing the book. After getting stuck trying to introduce Will, I realized he would need to be a major character and a significant part of the story would need to come from his perspective.

I had no idea how important Will’s perspective would prove to be. Isaac Frye was an officer, and any who know the U.S. Army know an officer’s life and experiences are different than those of the privates (the short form of “private soldiers”, the 18th Century term for enlisted men).

Having been a private when I was barely 18-years old in the modern U.S. Army, I had some idea of Will’s role in the Continental Army. Being at the dirty hands end of the chain of command and bound by a sense of duty and a sacred oath builds character. Like Will, I learned it takes more than an oath to become a soldier.

-CEF

The image features the cannon at Fort Ticonderoga guarding against approaches on Lake Champlain.