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:
Honor and Valor – Historical Insights
Memorial Day Tribute to Five of a 40-Man Scout
"a Scout of 40 men under Command of Capt. fry of Colo. Scammels Regt. was Surpris'd By a Body of Indians & others Consisting in the whole of about 300. we Lost out our scout 9 men kild & taken--"
Progress update 3/12/2019
Nearly two years ago, I published "The War has Begun". Six months later I began writing "Honor and Valor" ...
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…
Schaghticoke in the American Revolution, Major VanVeghten scalped
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…
View original post 662 more words
Reflections on Josiah Parker
This Memorial Day, take some time to consider what you've learned from a Revolutionary War soldier who was killed or died while serving.
Military Buckshot in the Mid-Eighteenth Century — Kabinettskriege
Reenactors portray Maryland troopsDear Reader,Today, we are going to examine a particular type of ammunition used by eighteenth-century soldiers: buckshot. For those unfamiliar with the term, buckshot consists of smaller projectiles, which spread out after leaving the barrel of the weapon. It is often used in a shotgun today. In the eighteenth-century, German language speakers… via…
Balancing the Balance of Power
On May 5, 1776, General George Washington wrote to Congress. Among the many items was this paragraph: "I beg leave to lay before Congress, a Copy of the proceedings of a Court Martial upon Lieutenant Grover of the 2d. Regiment, and of his defence, which I should not have troubled them with, had I not conceived the Courts Sentence upon the facts stated in the proceedings, of a singular nature; the small fine imposed, by no means adequate to the enormity of his offence
Nathan Weare’s 1777 Ticonderoga Diary was Actually Sullivan’s Expedition in 1779!
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.
Duty in the Cause of Liberty 