US-Mid-Atlantic Archives - Genealogical.com

“They are all noted villains”: Maryland Runaways, 1782-1788

Barry Chodak — Mon, 12 Aug 2024 20:05:50 +0000

This is the fifth volume compiled by Mr. Boyle containing 18^th-century Maryland runaway servant ads posted in local newspapers. It follows runaways from the final years of the American Revolution to the adoption of the U.S. Constitution. While most of these ads concern runaway servants, apprentices and slaves, quite a few name lawbreakers, both men and women, horse thieves, an occasional murderer, and other lowlifes. Most of the crimes beyond running away pertained to thefts of clothing or money.

In addition to an individual’s age and whereabouts, the ads tell a great deal more about the character and physical appearance of runaways than we are accustomed to learning from most source records. While many of the physical descriptions found in the ads are generic, some stand out. One was Michael Toole with “fore teeth like a hog’s tusks.” Irishman Daniel Dunleavy had a scar on his face “and marked with gunpowder all over it, by firing a blast in his hands”. A Black slave named Joe “has a remarkable seam on one side of his head, occasioned by the cut of a hand-saw.” Advertisements by men whose spouses “eloped” from them are included. Francis Brumfield reported that wife Elizabeth “eloped from my bed and board without any provocation” and forbad anyone to deal with her. Adam Strickstroke’s wife, Otillow, eloped and “carried with her my Bed, Furniture and several other Articles.” Black slaves and Indians listed in these advertisements are listed by race as well as by surname, when one is given.

In preparing this latest volume in the series, Mr. Boyle consulted more than twenty late 18^th-century newspapers from New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware, as well as from Maryland. Indeed, some runaways made their escape from places beyond their base in Maryland. The roughly 1,000 ads found here name close to 4,000 persons.

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“Famous for inventing Lies”: Pennsylvania Runaways, 1784-1790

Barry Chodak — Thu, 25 Jan 2024 15:17:54 +0000

For many years, Mr. Boyle has assembled the names of servants whose runaway status was advertised in colonial and Revolutionary-era American newspapers. Mr. Boyle has produced multiple volumes of runaway collections for Pennsylvania, as well as Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, and New England. The Pennsylvania book at hand marks the first collection of runaways based on newspaper ads placed following the Treaty of Paris of 1783 that concluded the American Revolution.

The runaway ads abstracted for this new volume are more diverse than have appeared in previous ones. For instance, multiple ads for slave and Native American runaways appear, and they are identified by race and surname (when available). The Pennsylvania Slave Act, passed on March 19, 1780, which was the first extensive abolition legislation in the western hemisphere, likely encouraged some African Americans to seek their freedom in Pennsylvania. The act stopped the importation of slaves into the state, required all slaves to be registered, and established that all children born in the state were free, regardless of race or parentage. Many of the newspaper ads provide distinctive physical features of the escapees, such as “a slow hobbling gait” or “his feet remarkably deformed,” or “both his arms are marked with the letters W. H.” As he has with previous books, Mr. Boyle has included ads placed by men whose spouses “eloped” from them for one reason or another.

Mr. Boyle’s transcriptions of the runaway ads, taken from twenty-eight different newspapers (including papers from Rhode Island to Virginia, as well as Pennsylvania), provide valuable demographic information, giving name, age, sex, height, place of origin, clothing, occupation, speech, physical imperfections, and sometimes personal vignettes. Individuals whose very existence would have been hidden from us in late 18^th-century newspapers.

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Victory or Death

Barry Chodak — Tue, 13 Jun 2023 18:26:08 +0000

In this fascinating volume, Revolutionary War expert Jack Darrell Crowder explores the impact of the major leadership decisions that influenced the eventual outcome of that war. According to the author, “we cannot attribute the American victory to one solitary decision; rather, students of the Revolution should consider the combination of good and bad decisions that altered the course of history.”

Each chapter in Victory or Death provides a summary of specific events that were key to the War’s outcome. At the conclusion of every chapter, the author reviews the decisions, for good or ill, that led to the result. For example, he shows that England’s pyrrhic victory at Bunker Hill both raised the morale and preserved the numbers of American combatants, while exposing the danger of British overconfidence. Making good use of illustrations of the people and places of the American Revolution, Mr. Crowder focuses on these momentous choices made by leaders on both sides:

Selection of George Washington as America’s Commander-in-Chief
Britain’s frontal assault on Bunker [Breed’s] Hill
America’s ill-fated siege of Quebec
General Howe’s reluctance to finish off the Americans in New York
Washington’s attack on Trenton
Britain’s miscues at Saratoga
Significance of Washington’s Spy Ring
How decisions about African Americans affected the outcome
Choices made at Valley Forge to preserve the American army
The Battle of King’s Mountain
Appointment of Nathaniel Greene as Commander of America’s Southern army
Yorktown

Victory or Death concludes with the author’s endnotes, a bibliography, and a detailed index to persons and places. Clearfield Company is pleased to add it to its collection of Revolutionary War titles written by Jack Darrell Crowder.

About the Author: Jack Darrell Crowder is a retired teacher and administrator with forty plus years in the classroom. He holds B.A. and master’s degrees from Texas Christian University and has written twelve books on the American Revolution. He gives talks on the Revolutionary War to school classes, historical societies, and Daughters of the American Revolution chapters.

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“He loves a good deal of rum”: Military Desertions during the American Revolution, 1775-1783. Volume Three

Barry Chodak — Thu, 01 Dec 2022 18:50:17 +0000

Volume Three of deserter ads is the final volume in this series. It is based on an examination of thirty-eight newspapers published from Massachusetts to South Carolina between 1775 and 1783. Included in this volume’s list of newspapers for the first time are issues of the Virginia Gazette. As Virginia allowed officials from South Carolina and Georgia to recruit in Virginia, readers will discover many deserters from units for those two states in the pages of the Gazette. Though most of the deserters named in this volume are from various American units, British, German, and French ones are also included, as well as naval deserters from both sides of the conflict.

Soldiers deserted from all theaters of the Revolution, although roughly as many deserted during the first two years of the war as in the period after June 1777, as the Patriot army became more professionalized. When soldiers ran away, a designated officer placed an advertisement in the local newspaper describing the deserter in considerable detail and offering a reward for his capture. Each ad describes the deserter by physical features, his place of birth or last residence, occupation, company served in, date missing, and other characteristics.

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Missing Relatives and Lost Friends

gpcdevel — Fri, 03 May 2019 20:23:00 +0000

Researchers on the trail of elusive ancestors sometimes turn to 18th- and early 19th-century newspapers after exhausting the first tier of genealogical sources (i.e., census records, wills, deeds, marriages, etc.). Generally speaking, early newspapers are not indexed, so they require investigators to comb through them, looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack.

With his latest book, Robert Barnes has made one aspect of the aforementioned chore much easier. This remarkable book contains advertisements for missing relatives and lost friends from scores of newspapers published in Maryland, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Virginia, as well as a few from New York and the District of Columbia. The newspaper issues begin in 1719 (when the American Weekly Mercury began publication in Philadelphia) and run into the early 1800s. The author’s comprehensive bibliography, in the Introduction to the work, lists all the newspapers and other sources he examined in preparing the book. The volume references 1,325 notices that chronicle the appearance or disappearance of 1,566 persons.

The notices are arranged alphabetically by the surname of the missing person. The majority of the notices mention a place of birth, date and last place of residence, and relationship, if any, to the person who posted the notice. Some go quite a bit further, citing the names and ages of family members, occupation, military service, and so forth. Many contain the reference, “to his/her advantage,” suggesting that something of monetary value was waiting for the missing person. In a number of instances, Mr. Barnes was able to enhance the original notices with additional information on the sought-after individuals. This work references about 5,000 persons, everyone of whom is named in the index at the back of the volume.

NB. Missing Relatives and Lost Friends contains no notices pertaining to runaway wives, servants, or slaves, as these were so numerous as to fill another volume.

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Lists of Officers of the Colonies on the Delaware and the Province of Pennsylvania, 1614-1776

gpcdevel — Fri, 03 May 2019 20:22:47 +0000

Identified herein are the names and dates of service of virtually every civilian and military officer to have served in the Colonies on the Delaware and the Province of Pennsylvania. Each entry gives the name of the official (governor, councilor, justice, commissioned officer, and so on) and either his date of appointment, assumption of office, or commission. All told some 4,500 colonial Pennsylvania and Delaware officials are identified.

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“Villainy and Maddness” Washington’s Flying Camp

gpcdevel — Fri, 03 May 2019 20:22:00 +0000

The “Flying Camp” is a vaguely understood episode of the American Revolution. In May 1776 the Continental Congress authorized the formation of a force of 10,000 militia, conceived by General George Washington as a “mobile reserve” that would both defend the army’s garrisons in the Middle States and spread alarm amongst the British. Most, but not all, of the putative organization was to come from the states of New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Maryland. In point of fact, the Flying Camp as an idea and actuality barely survived the year. In the wake of the New York and New Jersey campaigns of 1776 it became abundantly clear that what Washington needed was a reliable and substantial Continental Army, not short-term, undersubscribed militia haphazardly organized under the chimera of a “Flying Camp.” Despite its unsustainability as a military concept, the officers and noncommissioned members of the various elements of the Flying Camp rendered important service to the Nation in the campaigns of Long Island, Trenton, and Princeton, among others.
The full story of Washington’s Flying Camp is told for the first time in Richard Lee Baker’s new book, “Villainy and Maddness” Washington’s Flying Camp. Drawing on original sources, particularly the correspondence of the Continental Congress, state committees of safety, the George Washington papers, and more, Baker fills in the gaps in the history of the Flying Camp that have eluded historians until now. In his able hands, we trace the Flying Camp from its beginnings in Washington’s imagination, to the dispatches of the new Congress enjoining the Middle States to commit specified numbers of militiamen to this important cause, to the logistical difficulties in achieving the objectives in General Washington’s master plan, and to the actual service of Flying Camp militia in the campaigns of 1776.

The author devotes a separate chapter to Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, delineating each state’s response to the call for a Flying Camp contingent, difficulties in assembling the forces on a timely basis, and the unending problem of militiamen returning home to tend to their crops following their abbreviated terms of service. At the same time, however, Baker sheds light on the valuable service rendered by Flying Camp members on the battlefield as well as in their capacities as engineers, physicians, and artillerymen.

Genealogists will appreciate the many references to actual members of the Flying Camp throughout the narrative, including General Hugh Mercer, one of Washington’s best generals and a fatality at the Battle of Princeton. The work concludes with a list of Flying Camp commanders and officers, a comprehensive bibliography, and a full-name index.

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The Colonial Clergy of the Middle Colonies

gpcdevel — Fri, 03 May 2019 20:22:00 +0000

The Colonial Clergy of the Middle Colonies is an annotated alphabetical list of approximately 1,250 colonial clergymen who settled in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, the annotations furnishing such useful genealogical information as place and date of birth and death, names of parents, college of matriculation, date of ordination, denomination, names of parishes, with dates, in which tenure was held, and a variety of similar matter.

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The Colonial Clergy of Maryland, Delaware and Georgia

gpcdevel — Fri, 03 May 2019 20:22:05 +0000

This work lists approximately 700 clergymen under their respective states, each one the subject of a concise and informative paragraph. In addition, this volume contains an alphabetical list of the colonial churches in each of the three states covered.

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Buried Genealogical Data

gpcdevel — Fri, 03 May 2019 20:21:09 +0000

Up to the time of Benjamin Franklin’s appointment as Postmaster of Philadelphia, in 1737, letters were held at a post office until called for. Desirous of improving the system, Franklin began the publication of names of persons for whom unclaimed letters were in the office under his jurisdiction. The first list appeared in Franklin’s Pennsylvania Gazette of 21 March 1738 and, as a result, the addressees, their friends, or messengers, picked up much of the mail.

These lists, which were printed from time to time throughout the colonial period, provide a wealth of genealogical information by locating thousands of individuals at various times and, upon occasion, identifying their trade, profession, or military rank. Sometimes The Gazette published lists from towns other than Philadelphia, specifically Chester, Lancaster, Trenton, New Castle, and Wilmington.The present volume–an innovative and ingenious tool for genealogical research–contains the names of approximately 27,000 persons whose letters lay unclaimed in the post offices of the above towns. All lists printed in The Gazette from 1748 throughout the colonial period are here published, with the names arranged alphabetically. Lists previous to 1748 appear in Mr. Scott’s Abstracts from Ben Franklin’s Pennsylvania Gazette, 1728-1748.

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