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. I am finally sharing that here today.
This is a roll of who was or likely was in the battle on June 17, 1775. It is not exact, complete, or the last word. The early historians, Swett, Frothingham, Loring, et. al. agreed there is no basis to accurately compile an exact list. I completely agree with them. I intend this roll as a 21st-century digital convenience. It is for those who wish to get a faster start on researching patriot ancestors, town histories, etc.
The 17 volumes of Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors of the Revolutionary War, a Compilation from the Archives is a bit of a beast to search through. Massachusetts soldiers and sailors of the revolutionary war v1-17 Sep 2022Download Follow this post to receive updates, please comment with any issues. Also, see the list of updates at…
Does your book provide any new contributions to our understanding of history? In Honor and Valor, I divide the contributions to historical understanding into two categories:
Here's a great article, following up on the intersection of Joseph Gray's narrative and the Van Veghton family's accounts of the New Hampshire Continental troops assisting in the evacuation of Schaghticoke, NY in August of 1777. I am re-writing that part of Book 2 in Duty in the Cause of Liberty for the third time…
Got to love the Internet for providing the basis to connect the threads of history! See my comment proposing the connecting the thread at the end.
In the last post, I related a Knickerbocker family legend that the fort near the Mansion was occupied by Hessian soldiers at the time of the battle of Saratoga. Though I doubt very much that that was true, there is no doubt that there were bands of Tories, Indians, and perhaps Hessians and British roaming through the area during the summer of 1777 before the battle of Saratoga. Major Dirck VanVeghten of the local militia unit, the 14th Albany County, was killed by one band when he came from Saratoga just before the battle to check on his home in Schaghticoke. One source states that VanVeghten came home on “an intelligence gathering mission.” In either event, he was accompanied only by Solomon Acker, one of the soldiers in his company of the 14th Albany County Militia.
The story of Major VanVeghten really illustrates the great variety…
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As I've been writing "Honor and Valor", book two of Duty in the Cause of Liberty, I have had to get back into research mode. I always look for journals written by the men who were there--these journals have an authenticity historians cannot replicate.
A recent posting on the George Washington's Mount Vernon site, Committees of Correspondence, got me thinking about how much I've depended on the records of such committees for my research.
In an earlier post, I described using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to facilitate my research to trace Isaac Frye's path through the American Revolutionary War. Occasionally using GIS produced more than just a map; it produced new historical insight. One such instance occurred while researching Sullivan's Expedition, or as it is sometimes called, the Iroquois…
When I started learning about Isaac Frye, one my earliest goals was to put a pencil on the map, so to speak, and trace where he went during the American Revolution. Geographic Information Systems software, commonly called GIS, turned out to be the perfect solution.
Duty in the Cause of Liberty 