We asked our contributors for their favorite spooky stories from the 1765-1805 era. Here are the responses: Robert S. Davis Colonel John Dooly of Georgia was assassinated, killed, or murdered in his home while a prisoner of war on parole. That event has spurred numerous legends and stories. Was he killed in retaliation for Elijah […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer tells the suspenseful tale of the “Wizard Clip” a famous ghost story of the colonial western frontier. New episodes of Dispatches are available for free every Saturday evening (Eastern United States Time) on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, Amazon Music, and the JAR Dispatches web site. Dispatches can now be easily accessed […]
In April 1775, Isaac Bissell was a crucial link between the Patriots of Massachusetts and the government of neighboring Connecticut. His actions contributed to alerting many communities along the Atlantic coast about the outbreak of war in Lexington. Nevertheless, through a chain of circumstances, Isaac Bissell’s name has been overwritten in history books.[1] This story […]
With a group of forty cavalrymen, Maj. Samuel McColloch rode to the aid of Fort Henry, near Wheeling, Virginia. It was September 1, 1777, and the fort was under attack by roughly 300 Native Americans: members of the Wyandot, Mingo, Shawnee, and Delaware tribes. Outnumbered, the fort’s commanding officer had called for more militiamen. McColloch […]
Let’s admit it. Most of us have used or have heard the word “frog” as a derogatory term to refer to the French. But why? We don’t really know the origin of the use of the term in that context, but we do know that it dates back to the colonial period or even earlier. […]
Fabulous: adj. 1) wonderful; 2) existing only in fable. Emily Geiger is celebrated in numerous books and articles, memorialized on monuments, and portrayed in videos.[1] Her fame rests on the story that as a teenager she volunteered to carry a message from Gen. Nathanael Greene to Gen. Thomas Sumter in South Carolina when no man would […]
In 1876 Currier and Ives issued a lithograph titled The Escape of John Champe: In the endeavour to carry out Washington’s plan to capture Arnold and to save the life of the traitors victim the Gallant Major Andre, 1780.[1] It showed a mounted Continental dragoon looking over his left shoulder as he outraced another Continental […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews museum professional and JAR contributor Victor J. DiSanto on his research into the men who captured British spy John André after his rendezvous with Benedict Arnold. New episodes of Dispatches are available for free every Saturday evening (Eastern United States Time) on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, Amazon Music, and […]
For more than 200 years, people have debated the character and motives of the three men who captured Major John André on September 23, 1780, frequently misidentifying them as Skinners. The military service of David Williams, John Paulding, and Isaac Van Wart as well as the records of five of their comrades during the American […]
The scene is one of the most famous in the annals of the American Revolutionary War. The commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, Gen. George Washington, confronts his second-in-command, Charles Lee, in the midst of a retreat by Continental Army forces during the Battle of Monmouth Court House on June 28, 1778. Washington arrives at the […]
Jemima Howe (1724–1805), a pioneer woman of the early Vermont frontier wilderness, survived a 1755 abduction along with her seven children ranging from six months to eleven years old, three years of captivity in French-Canada, and three husbands, the first two killed by Abenaki.[1] The early American literary genre of Indian captivity narratives presented the […]
Many early histories of the War of Regulation, which culminated in the May 16, 1771 Battle of Alamance, paint a picture of a Regulator named James Few as a man of either a simple or unstable mind who was unjustly executed. Upon deeper examination, many of the claims made in these histories have inconsistencies and […]
We asked our contributors: Which personality of the American Revolution or the founding era (other than Benedict Arnold) is remembered for the wrong reasons, and why? Jason Yonce Silas Deane, like his friend Benedict Arnold, contributed so much to the patriot cause only to fall from grace. His infamous letter to Robert Morris could have […]
George Washington’s Long Island Spy Ring: A History and Tour Guide by Bill Bleyer (Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2021) Whoever gets their hands on Bill Bleyer’s latest book on Long Island history, George Washington’s Long Island Spy Ring: A History and Tour Guide, will be in for a treat. Bleyer, a former writer for […]
Past and Prologue: Politics and Memory in the American Revolution by Michael D. Hattem (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2021) In his new book, Past and Prologue: Politics and Memory in the American Revolution, Michael Hattem provocatively attempts to answer an age-old vexing question for the American Revolutionary Era. In the first half of […]
Editors Note: We first published this article on this date two years ago, but because it is such a good piece and we have so many new readers, we thought it would be appropriate, like any great holiday tradition, to share this inspiring article again this year. When the two columns of the Continental Army […]
“Don’t fire till you see the whites of their eyes!” is one of the most famous quotations to come out of the Revolutionary War. According to hallowed American tradition, the provincial commander at the Battle of Bunker Hill bellowed those words to his soldiers, warning them to preserve their gunpowder until their muskets could do the […]
The history of the American Revolution is rife with heroic tales and amazing myths of patriotic American heroes that offer inspiring and entertaining stories. Sadly however, many of these stories have little basis in fact or documentation to support their occurrence. Some are completely fabricated while others are the result of misreported or misunderstood accounts. […]
It is often a tradition among soldiers and sailors to give monikers to their commanders. American military history resounds with names like Gen.Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, Gen.Lewis “Chesty” Puller, Gen. Andrew “Old Hickory” Jackson, and so on. One such sobriquet, “Mad Anthony” for Gen. Anthony Wayne, has stuck on and off in the American consciousness for […]
On this week’s Dispatches host Brady Crytzer interviews William Manthorpe, a former naval intelligence officer, government senior executive, and professor who specializes on the naval history of Delaware, on unraveling the legend of who burned the Cape Henlopen Lighthouse during the American Revolution. Thousands of readers like you enjoy the articles published by the Journal of […]
In 1774, as tensions between colonials and Native Americans living along the upper Ohio River grew, settlers either fled east of the mountains or forted up. During the summer, Maj. Angus McDonald of the Virginia militia marched over the Appalachians to Wheeling on the Ohio River and joined the locals like Ebenezer Zane, the town’s founder, […]
Those who write “local history” without documenting or citing their sources may as well be writing historical fiction. There may be some truth in what they write, but it is hard to sort out fact from fiction in local and family stories. Even experienced historians who ordinarily provide citations to primary sources—documents, letters and first […]
Thomas Jefferson and Julia Child. Not two people you’d expect to be linked in history. But yet, indeed they are—as two gourmets who loved fine French cuisine. Frequently today in books, magazines, and online articles, Thomas Jefferson is “credited” with “introducing” such French foods as crème brûlée to the American appetite, as well as . […]
In the May 30, 2016 issue of this Journal, Todd W. Braisted introduced us to General Enoch Poor of New Hampshire, his death, and burial. The story is here continued. On September 9, 1780, Lt.-Col. Henry Dearborn of the 3rd New Hampshire Regiment recorded that “this evining ye Honbe. Brigadeer Genl. Poor departed this life […]
When we picture the Declaration of Independence, most of us immediately think of the document handwritten on parchment and signed at the bottom by fifty-six members of the Second Continental Congress. Few individuals from the first two generations of Americans shared that view, however. The vast majority of those citizens never saw the Congress’s document, […]
The Boston Tea Party famously saw the destruction of the almost 300 chests worth of tea, tossed into the harbor by “Indians” on December 16, 1773. Initial reports described “the total destruction of the Teas aboard the Ships Dartmouth, William, & Eleanor and the Beaver”—the four ships bringing the East India Company’s tea to Boston in […]
There are many myths associated with the American Revolution, and at JAR we do our best to set the record straight on as many as we can. There are, however, stories for which there is simply no evidence either way: we cannot say they’re false, but we also have no evidence that they’re true. With […]
The best-known scene of Col. Henry Knox’s train of artillery in the winter of 1775-1776 is Tom Lovell’s painting The Noble Train of Artillery. It shows a caravan of ox-drawn artillery that the Continental Army moved from the recently conquered Fort Ticonderoga in upstate New York (pictured near the top left of the painting) through […]
When George Washington died in 1799, partisan infighting and international crises threatened the survival of the American experiment. Many Americans believed in Washington’s unique ability to unite the country, and his death exacerbated national uncertainties. Enter Mason Locke Weems, whose contributions to Washington mythmaking dwarf those of any individual then or since. As national yearning […]
