Item 9642

The First 24 Hours of the American Revolution. An Hour by Hour Account of the Battle of Lexington, Concord, and the British Retreat on Battle Road

Item 8521

So You Think You Know George Washington? Stories They Didn’t Tell You in School!

Item 8523

Victory or Death: Military Decisions that Changed the Course of the American Revolution

Item 9641

Women Patriots in the American Revolution. Stories of Bravery, Daring, and Compassion

Item 9643

Strange, Amazing, and Funny Events that Happened during the Revolutionary War

Item 8524

The Story of Yorktown: Told by the Men Who Were There

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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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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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Before 1800 Ireland was a separate kingdom but subject to the British king. The last king of Ireland was the Catholic King James II who encouraged the formation of Irish regiments. After James’ defeat at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690 most of his forces, around 2,000 men, went to France, in what is known as the “Flight of the Wild Geese”, where they formed regiments in the French Army such as Montcashel’s, O’Brian’s, and Dillon’s. Irish soldiers fought in various campaigns in Europe and in Canada, and probably the Caribbean, until the French Revolution when they were disbanded.

The British Army did not enlist Irish Catholics during much of the 18th century as they were considered likely to be unreliable when opposing the forces of Catholic countries such as France and Spain, which contained many of their countrymen. Ireland was garrisoned mainly by British regiments, though new regiments were raised in Ireland, such as The Royal Regiment of Foot of Ireland and the Inniskilling Regiment.

Irish settlers in colonial America were recruited into local militias, such as the Virginia Regiment or the Montserrat Militia, which are identified in this book. During the American Revolution people of Irish origin could be found in both Loyalist and Patriot units, including the “Volunteers of Ireland”. The Loyalist Claims proved very useful in identifying Irish fighting men.

Between 1789 and 1815 Britain was at war with Napoleon’s France, necessitating an expansion of the British Army. In the aftermath of the Battle of Waterloo the British government settled substantial numbers of demobilised soldiers, including Irishmen, in Canada. From about 1780 onwards the British regiments enlisted at least one-third of their recruits in Ireland; this increased to about 40% by the early 19th century owing to demand from the British Army and the East India Company.

For additional information about Irish recruits that served in the Colonies, see “A Historical Record of the 27^th [Inniskilling] Regiment”, by W C Trimble, [1851];  Richard Cannon’s “Historical record of the 18^th [Royal Irish] Regiment of Foot”, [London 1848]; and Steven M Baule’s “Protecting the Empire’s Frontier, Officers of the 18^th [Royal Irish] Foot”, [Ohio, 2013]; as well as the journals of the Army Historical Research Society, and those of the “Irish Sword”.

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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.

The post “He loves a good deal of rum”: Military Desertions during the American Revolution, 1775-1783. Volume Three appeared first on Genealogical.com.

Mr. Boyle examined thirty newspapers, from New England to Maryland, including The Vermont Journal, The Boston Evening Post, The Boston Gazette, The Connecticut Courant, The Connecticut Journal, The Essex Gazette, The Massachusetts Spy, The New Hampshire Gazette, The Newport Mercury, Pennsylvania Ledger, The New York Journal, The Norwich Packet, and The Maryland Gazette.

Each ad gives a number of details about the runaway and his/her master, including names and aliases of the runaway, physical description, personality quirks if any, location in New England (including the future states of Vermont and Maine), and where to contact the advertiser. This book contains about 1,200 ads and names over 2,200 persons.

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Curiously, several ads seem to have been intended to let the runaways know how little the master thought of them as very low rewards were posted. In 1774, Jesse Kimball advertised for his apprentice, Nathan Estry, but offered only “One Shilling reward, but No Charges.” The next year David Robinson offered “three Spanish Potatoes Reward” for William Jenneis, a runaway boy. Hezekiah Stevens offered only “ONE PENNY Lawful Money REWARD” for his apprentice John Campbell. The printers of The Boston Evening Post offered but “ONE PENNY” for apprentice James Hogan, who had developed great proficiency in “Profaneness, Lying, and some ancient and modern Vices.”

This compilation lists all individuals mentioned in the ads. If an individual is listed with more than one name, all the names appear in the index. While many of the Negroes and some Indians are listed as slaves, many are not, so they may have been paid servants. In compiling the present work, Mr. Boyle examined over a score of newspapers from New England to Maryland, including The Boston News-Letter, The Boston Post-Boy, The Boston Gazette, The Connecticut Courant, The Connecticut Gazette, The Massachusetts Spy, The New Hampshire Gazette, The Pennsylvania Gazette, The New York Gazette, and The Maryland Gazette.

Each ad in this collection conveys a number of details about the runaway and his/her master, including names and aliases of the runaway, physical description, personality quirks if any, location in New England (including the future states of Vermont and Maine), and where to contact the advertiser. In all, this book contains about 1,200 ads and names over 2,200 persons with connections to colonial New England.

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Free African Americans of Maryland and Delaware is a work that will intrigue genealogists and historians alike. First and foremost, Mr. Heinegg has assembled genealogical evidence on more than 400 Maryland and Delaware black families (naming nearly 10,000 individuals), with copious documentation from the federal censuses of 1790-1810 and colonial sources consulted at the Maryland Hall of Records, county archives, and other repositories. In fact, the author has examined all extant court records for Maryland and Delaware for the period under investigation. No work that we know of brings together so much information on colonial African Americans, except Mr. Heinegg’s three-volume series volume on Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. This second edition of Free African Americans of Maryland and Delaware from the Colonial Period to About 1810 is nearly 60% larger than the original.

The author offers documentation proving that most of these free black families descended from mixed-race children who were themselves the progeny of white women and African American slaves or free blacks. In all, Heinegg proves that these families descended from 264 white women who had had 374 mixed-race children. He has also identified another 112 white women who bore 127 mixed-race children for whom no direct evidence of offspring could be found. While some of these families would claim Native American ancestry, Mr. Heinegg offers evidence to show that they were instead the direct descendants of mixed-race children.

Colonial Maryland laws relating to marriages between offspring of African American and white partners carried severe penalties. For example, one 18th-century statute threatened a white mother with seven years of servitude and promised to bind her mixed-race offspring until the age of thirty-one. Mr. Heinegg shows that, despite these harsh laws, several hundred child-bearing relationships in Delaware and Maryland took place over the colonial period, as evidenced directly from the public record. Maryland families, in particular, which comprise the preponderance of those studied, also had closer relationships with the surrounding slave population than did their counterparts in Delaware, Virginia, or the Carolinas. Mr. Heinegg recounts the circumstances under which a number of these freedmen were able to become landowners. Some Maryland families, however, including a number from Somerset County, chose to migrate to Delaware or Virginia, where the opportunities for land ownership were greater. For example, the freeman John Johnson, of Somerset County, patented 400 acres in Rehoboth Bay, Sussex County, Delaware in 1677. Other Maryland families who settled in Kent County, Delaware, included Butcher, Fountain, Gibbs, Grinnage, Lacount, Norman, Parsons, Plummer, Poulson, Proctor, Roach, Saunders, and Toogood.

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For much of the period, religious liberty in Poland attracted immigrants who had been subject to persecution in their homelands. Many of the Scots who settled initially along the shores of the Baltic had arrived as soldiers of fortune recruited to fight for and against the armies of Poland, Russia, and Sweden. Choosing to remain in Poland, these veterans later settled on lands given for service rendered, or as itinerant cramers or pedlars. During the 17th century, there was hardly a locality in Poland that did not contain some Scots. By the 1640s it was reckoned that there were approximately 30,000 Scots resident in Poland–one of the greatest concentrations of Scots in continental Europe. By the middle of the 17th century, the appeal of Poland and the Baltic lands began to wane for Scottish emigrants, who were discouraged by the Cossack and other wars, and encouraged by opportunities to the west–initially in Ireland and later in America. To illustrate the nature of Scottish emigration, consider the following entry:

On 19 March 1631, James Nairn and Thomas Begg, merchants in Edinburgh, entered into a charter party with William Williamson, master of the Gift of God to take a cargo of coal from Leith to Konigsberg, Danzig, or other Baltic port, there to purchase lint, hards [ie coarse linen flax], pack goods, et cetera, and return to Leith. [NRS.AC7.4]

This volume marks the fourth in a series. It is based on numerous primary and second sources found in the British Isles and continental Europe, including the Aberdeen City Archives, the Dundee Shipping Lists, the Danish Archives (Copenhagen), and The Scottish Community in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, 1630-1750, by Michael Broun Ayre.

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Volume III contains articles of varying lengths about the following families (names in bold refer to 70 families newly added to 6^th edition): Moore, Mordick, Morgan, Morris, Morrison, Mosely, Moses, Moss, Mozingo, Muckelro, Mumford, Munday, Muns, Murphy, Murray, Murrow, Nash, Neal, Newman, Newsom, Newton, Nicholas, Nickens, Norman, Norris, Norton, Norwood, Nutts, Oats, Okey, Oliver, Otter, Overton, Owen, Oxendine, Page, Palmer, Parker, Parr, Parrot, Patrick, Patterson, Payne, Peacock, Peavy, Pendarvis, Pendergrass, Perkins, Peters, Pettiford, Phillips, Philipson,  Pickett, Pierce, Pinn, Pittman, Pitts, Plumly, Poe, Pompey, Pool, Portions, Portiss, Powell, Powers, Press, Price, Prichard, Proctor, Pryor, Pugh, Pursley, Rains, Ralls, Randall, Ranger, Rann, Ransom, Raper, Ratcliff, Rawlinson, Redcross, Redman, Reed, Reeves, Revell, Reynolds, Rich, Richardson, Rickman, Ridley, Riley, Roberts, Robins, Robinson, Rogers, Rollins, Rosario, Ross, Rouse, Rowe, Rowland, Rudd, Ruff, Russell, Sample, Sampson, Sanderlin, Santee, Saunders, Savoy, Sawyer, Scott, Seldon, Sexton, Shaw, Shepherd, Shoecraft, Shoemaker, Silver, Simbler, Simmons, Simms, Simon, Simpson, Sisco, Skipper, Slaxton, Smith, Smothers, Sneed, Snelling, Soleleather, Sorrell, Sparrow, Spelman, Spiller, Spriddle, Spriggs, Spruce, Spurlock, Stafford, Stephens, Stewart, Stringer, Sunket, Swan, Sweat, Sweetin, Symons, Syphax, Taborn, Talbot, Tann, Tate, Taylor, Teague, Teamer, Thomas, Thompson, Timber, Toney, Tootle, Toulson, Toyer, Travis, Tudor, Turner, Twopence, Tyler, Tyner, Tyre, Underwood, Valentine, Vaughan, Vena/Venie, Verty, Vickory, Viers, Walden, Walker, Wallace, Warburton, Warrick, Waters, Watkins, Watts, Weaver, Webb, Webster,Weeks, Welch, Wells, West, Wharton, Whistler, White, Whitehurst, Whitmore, Wiggins, Wilkins, Wilkinson, Williams, Wilson, Winborn, Winn, Winters, Womble, Wood, Wooten, Worrell, Worsham, Wright, and Young.

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