I am lucky to have a wife with a talent for doing interviews, and to have fallen in with the Written by Veterans program founded by Andreas Kossak. They collaborated to produce this interview in the Written by Veterans Magazine. It is also available in CultScoop Magazine. It was a great opportunity for me to…
Wilton Meetinghouse and surrounding town today. The festive raising of the Wilton meetinghouse turned to tragedy in 1773 when a worm-eaten support post gave way. All 53 of the men working on the roof beams fell 27 feet among axes, planks, hammers and crowbars. The Essex Gazette of Salem called it ‘the most melancholy Accident…that…
“Voted, to raise as minute men 25 privates, two commissioned officers, two sergeants, twenty nine in all. Voted, 6 dollars a month to each officer and soldier after they are called to an expedition, till they have proper time to return after they are dismissed.” From the minutes of the town of Wilton, New Hampshire,…
When I first began to think about writing a book on the experiences of Isaac Frye and his family during the American Revolution, I felt naked in spite of wearing my twenty-first century clothes. A great deal about life in the eighteenth century was different. Since then I've sent quite a few days in these…
As I summarized in The ‘Battle at McIntire’s Farm’, on October 3, 1780 Lord Cornwallis sent Maj. John Doyle on a foraging party north... The post Avenging Francis Bradley, the Mecklenburg Marksman: A Family Story appeared first on Journal of the American Revolution. via Avenging Francis Bradley, the Mecklenburg Marksman: A Family Story — Journal of…
In the title, "A slain patriot, a historic letter and the push to preserve a NJ battlefield" of an article by Jerry Carino for Asbury Park Press, the words "historic letter" caught my eye. The image of the letter got me to read, but about half-way down, there is a line about this being the only surviving…
Photo Credit: Tom George Davison PhotographyDear Reader,One of the most pernicious and hard to eradicate myths about the eighteenth-century is that people were quite short, roughly 3/4ths the size of Americans today. Visitors to historic sites and reenactments frequently offer it as an example of their knowledge of the period, or inquiry regarding soldiers' height. In……
The Americans and British around and in Boston in the last weeks of June and early July of 1775 needed some time to take stock, bury the dead, heal the wounded, and determine what to do next. During the aftermath of the Battle of Breeds Hill, there was no other place on Earth where sorrow…
As I researched how Sullivan's Brigade made its way north from Albany to Fort Ticonderoga in the late spring of 1776, I came across a remarkable document. It was a project plan...
Duty in the Cause of Liberty 