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. Read more

Posted on by Charlie Frye · 2 Comments

Iroquois Network has Complete Coverage

Iroquois inline
Click to view an interactive web map.

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 Expedition. Read more

Posted on by Charlie Frye · 1 Comment

Using GIS to Research Isaac Frye

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. I used ArcGIS software from Esri.
To give you an idea of what is possible, I assembled a web map with some of the information I used.  Click the link to open the map.  Then pan, zoom, and click on the features to learn more.
Using GIS afforded me some additional benefits, such as being able to set up queries to find out how many days Isaac spent traveling, and how far he went.  In The War has Begun, Isaac traveled 1,270 miles during 79 of 630 days. This sort of information was eye-opening for me, as I assumed people, particularly farmers, during this time period did not get around much.  The records showed otherwise.
-CEF
Posted on by Charlie Frye

New Letters Uncovered

In The War has Begun, I include transcripts from the two letters my family has preserved. One is from Isaac to his wife, Elizabeth, in 1775, and the other from Elizabeth late in 1776. I spent hours thinking about the story between the lines of these letters, and am grateful my cousin found these in the attic of Isaac’s house in the 1990s.

Fast forward to this past Monday evening. I was having dinner in North Hampton with my uncle and cousin, celebrating getting the book published. My uncle asked to get scans of the two letters so he could share with others in the family. Last night we learned the steamer trunk where our two letters were found also contained five more documents wrapped within non-descript paper!

May 3 1775 letter from Elizabeth Frye to Isaac Frye
Elizabeth Frye writes to her husband, Isaac Frye is quartermaster of one of the New Hampshire militia regiments of minutemen who responded to the alarm raised on April 19, 1775.

The above letter is one of the five documents. How cool is that? This letter was written two weeks after the alarm, and confirms the militia were being supplied by their families and towns during the early days of the Siege of Boston. The part about whether Isaac owed money to Jeremiah Abbot illustrates the difficulty the wives, who were forced into the role of agent for their husbands. Note: there were no banks in these days–IOUs served as contracts between neighbors. 

Enjoy

-CEF