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Nathan Hubbill: A Connecticut Yankee Loyalist – Part Two of Four
copyright Stephen Davidson UE
Having created a name for himself as a captain within the Associated Loyalists, Nathan Hubbill would continue to appear in the documents of the era as a commander of the Armed Boat Company throughout 1783. In the May 5th edition of Rivington’s Gazette, Hubbill was noted as being one of the eight men led by Captain Bonnel of the King’s Militia Volunteers who captured the Patriot general, Gold Selleck Silliman, in his home four days earlier.
Despite its brief coverage in the loyalist newspaper of New York, this capture has been fleshed out by later historians thanks, in large part, to the fact that General Silliman’s wife Mary kept a diary during the revolution. The historian Bernard Heinz notes that Hubbill and his small party rowed away from Long Island’s Fort Franklin in a whaleboat to make their attack on the Silliman home.
According to Cathryn Prince, Hubbill and his fellow Loyalists broke down the door of the Silliman home around midnight, capturing both Silliman and his son William. Rick Long adds the fact that a member of Hubbill’s party was a carpenter who had once worked on the Patriot general’s home and “knew it well”. Marguerite Allis reports that the Patriot general had time to throw a blanket over a nearby basket that held the chalices and tankards used at Fairfield’s Congregational Church to prevent the Loyalists from taking them. Silliman surrendered quickly to protect his 31 year-old wife (who was six months pregnant) and his younger children. Mary was said to have hidden her husband’s personal papers and the family silver under her nightdress.
Silliman was eventually incarcerated in a New York farmhouse for the next seven months as he waited to be exchanged for a loyalist prisoner of war. He finally returned home by the British so that they could free a prisoner of the Patriot’s – Chief Justice Thomas Jones. A seemingly insignificant incident in a much larger and more violent war, the story of Mary Silliman and her husband’s capture by loyalist soldiers was made into a television movie in 1993 –Mary Silliman’s War.
Nathan Hubbill’s name would appear in another document of the era two months later. In April of 1783, the first fleet of evacuation vessels carried loyalist refugees to safety in Nova Scotia.
The so-called Summer Fleet began to assemble in New York City’s harbor in May. William and Sarah Frost were two Connecticut refugees sailing on the Two Sisters. Like Hubbill, William had led raids on his own colony — in this case, his hometown of Stamford, Connecticut. He is best remembered for a Sunday morning raid on a church to the east of Stamford that saw his men capture 48 Patriots and take them across Long Island Sound to Fort Franklin. It is noteworthy that William Frost brought a whaleboat with him on his evacuation vessel – a tangible memento of his days as a loyalist raider.
It seems that Frost knew Nathan Hubbill – perhaps through their shared time at Fort Franklin or through their experiences as whaleboat raiders. The diary of William’s wife Sarah for May 28, 1783 not only notes that their ship had anchored off of the “lower end of the City of New York“, but also reveals that she went ashore in a whaleboat to visit three acquaintances. In the last home she “met Major Hubble there, who formerly commanded the Loyalists at Lloyd’s Neck.”
At some point in the same month, Hubbill was instrumental in preventing a Black Loyalist father and his two daughters from being separated from one another by a slave master. In July of 1779, Toney Bartram, a young father in his 20s, escaped from his master as 2,000 British soldiers marched through Fairfield, Connecticut. Along with his two small daughters, Flora and Nancy, Toney sailed across Long Island Sound to Fort Franklin, eventually relocating to New York City.
In the spring of 1783, a man named Henry Rogers kidnapped Nancy Bartram with plans to sell her back to her Patriot enslaver. Making the most of his rights as a newly emancipated man, Toney made a formal petition to the British military to have his daughter released. It could easily have been a case of two men arguing over their rights to have Nancy, but Toney won his case thanks to the testimony of a Connecticut Loyalist who knew the circumstances of Toney’s escape to freedom. Nathan Hubbill spoke on behalf of Toney and his daughter, resulting in the British authorities returning Nancy to her father.
By June of 1783, Nathan Hubbill was just two months short of his 28th birthday. Although the young officer had official duties with regard to the evacuation of Loyalists from New York City, he now had time to socialize with people his own age – especially young ladies. The journal of Stephen Jarvis, another Connecticut Loyalist, reveals that Hubbill was part of an outing that consisted of a “party of friends” from New York City and Stamford, Connecticut.
The group of unnamed “ladies and gentlemen” went out into Long Island Sound in a whaleboat rowed by an unspecified crew. Perhaps Hubbill “borrowed” both the men and the craft from his Armed Boat Company. The party included Stephen Jarvis’ cousin William Jarvis who would later go on to become the first Secretary of Upper Canada under John Graves Simcoe. Both Stephen and William were 27 at the time.
After spending the day on “one of the islands” near Stamford, the young people decided to have the crew row their whaleboat to the coastal town and stay the night. Despite being Loyalists (and arriving in what had once been a vehicle of war), the June picnickers did not think that they would be “molested” by the townsfolk. However, in the morning, a mob had collected outside the place where they had stayed. According to Jarvis’ journal, the mob “fell upon our boat’s crew, beat them unmercifully, and threatened us also, and particularly Mr. William Jarvis…was a native of that place.”
Stephen Jarvis persuaded the crowd to let them go peacefully, but when the Stamford mob discovered that he was a cousin of the hated William, they pursued the loyalists. The women in Hubbill’s part were “much alarmed, and one of them in fits“, so the men had to carry some of the women “sometimes in mud and water up to our knees“.
The Loyalists put the ladies on “a dry piece of ground” and prepared to fight their angry predators. When the mob saw that the men were armed and ready to fight, they retreated. It had been a close call. Stephen Jarvis later wrote, “We gained our boat, and after being out all night, reached New York the next morning at sunrise, but we took care not to let this be known at Headquarters.”
Given his treatment at the hands of his fellow colonists, could Nathan Hubbill seriously consider returning to Connecticut once the revolution had officially come to an end? That question will be answered in next week’s Loyalist Trails.
To secure permission to reprint this article contact the author at stephendavids@gmail.com.

The Exile of Thomas Hutchinson, Royal Governor of the Colony of Massachusetts
by James M. Smith 10 October 2024 Journal of the American Revolution
Most stories have a chief villain. The story of the American Revolution is no different. One man stands out amongst all the rest in the minds of Massachusetts revolutionary leaders. James Otis, Samuel Adams, and especially John Adams accused Thomas Hutchinson as being the architect of all the oppressive laws that were being passed by the British parliament with respect to the American colonies.
Thomas Hutchinson was no English lord, sent from Britain to govern an American colony. He was born and raised in Massachusetts, graduated from Harvard College and lived in Massachusetts his whole life. His family could trace its roots back to the earliest days of the Massachusetts Bay colony in the 1630s.
One of his ancestors, Anne Hutchinson came to Massachusetts from England with her husband. She was an outspoken woman who told people that Puritan ministers did not have the only say in interpreting the gospels, that the Holy Spirit could guide each individual. Massachusetts, at that time, was a theocracy. The authorities banished her from Massachusetts, not to return, upon pain of death. It caused Thomas Hutchinson to “despise the fanaticism of the Puritans . . . laced as it was with those fine-spun doctrinal subtleties that led men to torture each other in passionate self-righteousness.
The rest of the Hutchinson clan remained in Massachusetts and with each generation they became increasingly wealthy as merchants. The head of the families became influential in the colony, filing positions of judgeships and militia officers. Thomas Hutchinson decided that he did not want that kind of life and chose instead to go into public service, in other words, politics. When he told his father this, he replied, “Depend upon it, if you serve your country faithfully you will be reproached and reviled for doing it.” Little did he know just how true this statement was to become. Read more…

Loyalist Quarterly Newsletter Sept 2024, by Paul J. Bunnell UE
Published since 2004, the September 2024 issue is now available. Twenty-four pages, it features:

  • UELAC Conference 2024
  • Timeline of the Revolution: Lead-in To War: 1763 to 1774
  • Loyalists – Washington Library: Center for Digital History – Digital Encyclopedia – Loyalists
  • Library and Archives Canada
  • Loyalist Kingston
  • Virginia Revolutionary War Service Records
  • South Carolina – British Loyalists During the American Revolution
  • Support Loyalist Trails
  • Casualties of the American Revolution

Vol. 21 Part 3 September 2024 Quarterly Issue “In Publication since 2004”
Editor: Paul J. Bunnell, UE, Author, Koasek Abenaki Chief; BunnellLoyalist@aol.com; 978-337-9085, 49 Pleasant St., #106, Alstead, NH 03602
The Only U.S. Newsletter Devoted to The study of The American Loyalists
Subscription Rate: $22 U.S. $24 Can. $5 each copy — (March, June, September, December issues)

Podcast: The Great New York Fire of 1776
By Benjamin Carp, Oct 2024 at Ben Franklin’s World
Benjamin L. Carp is the Daniel M. Lyons Chair of History at Brooklyn College. During our investigation of the Battle for New York and the Great New York Fire of 1776, Ben reveals why the British and American armies wanted to hold New York City during the American War for Independence; How and why the British and American militaries used fire as an instrument of war; And details about the Great New York Fire of 1776 and what the evidence has to say about how it broke out. Listen in…

Germans (Hessians) in the American Revolution
Germans played an important role in the American Revolution.Jefferson mentioned George III “… transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny… ” in the Declaration of Independence.
The British hired approximately 30,000 “Hessians” from the German state of Hesse-Cassel (although other German states sent soldiers too). Hesse-Cassel’s prince rented his army to foreign powers as a major export to pay for public projects while keeping taxes low.
In foreign wars Hessian soldiers also benefited from looting and plundering, making them unpopular with many Americans. About 3000 Hessians decided to make America their home after the American Revolution, living side by side with their former enemies in spite of any hostility.

Hessian Soldiers Travelling to America: New York – A Soldier’s Life June 1781
From a Hessian Diary of the American Revolution.
This excerpt from the diary of Johan Conrad Dohla (170 pages).

Major Moves during Johan’s deployment:

  • March 1777: Depart Germany
  • 3 June 1777: Arrive New York, then Amboy NJ
  • November 1777: To Philadelphia
  • June 1778: to Long Island
  • July 1778: To Newport RI
  • October 1779: to New York

June, 1781: At New York (page 96)

Continuation of Occurences in North America During the Fifth Year, 1781

IN THE MONTH OF JUNE [1781]
2 June. At night Grenadier Kalb II, of Molitor’s Company, deserted from his post on picket.
3 June. In the morning we held church parade at New Portsmouth and listened to a sermon.
4 June. It was the birthday of the King of England. At one o’clock in the afternoon the cannon, on the ships in Chesapeake River and in the land batteries, were fired three times.
6 June. I went on field and camp watch.
14 June. I went on watch at Norfolk.
16 June. I went on duty at Picket Number Two as lance corporal. Today Quartermaster Sergeant Salzmann, of Eyb’s Company, died in the regimental hospital at Norfolk.
20 June. I went on camp watch. Because the heat, during this month, has been so extraordinary that many people became melancholy, or all of a sudden died, the local commander, Lieutenant General Leslie, ordered that henceforth no soldier should go about with his head uncovered, need not remove his hat or cap to any officer, was not to completely undress at night, nor lie on the bare ground, but was to remain covered in the tent to prevent illness, because it was always cooler and the dew made things very wet. Between eleven and twelve o’clock noon, there was almost no shadow to be seen, or one of less than a half yard, because Virginia lay close to the meridian.
25 June. During the afternoon I went on command to Green-bridge, which lies twelve miles to the right of Portsmouth and is a good defensive position with eight cannon, four 12-pounders and four 6-pounders. It has a guardhouse and a good, secure powder magazine.
Our command consisted of one captain, two subalterns, one sergeant, four corporals, and one hundred privates, and sixteen English cannoneers, who are stationed here permanently. The force is relieved every eighth day. Greenbridge, this fort, lies on a plain surrounded by forests and swamps. It has a wide and deep communications trench and a good abatis.
26 June. I went on watch at Greenbridge. Today a command of three hundred men, English, Hessians, and some of our regiment, under the command of Brigadier Flywalks of the Green Scots, attacked and captured the enemy defenses at Black Swamp, about thirty miles from Greenbridge. During the capture none of our troops were killed, because the rebels, numbering about six hundred men of the Virginia militia, under the command of General Kreeckely, fled without firing a shot and abandoned the position, in which there were four iron 6-pound cannon as well as a small amount of ammunition and provisions. A troop of English light horse chased them more than two miles and brought back twenty-one men as captives, including a captain and an ensign. The position was destroyed immediately. The four cannon were spiked and destroyed, because a shortage of horses and the bad roads prevented them from being taken away, and then the Black Swamp was again left. On the return march about fifty head of cattle were confiscated from the few houses. The region near Black Swamp and Camps Landing is magnificent and fertile. Much cotton and nutmeg grows here, as well as cinnamon bark and cloves.

Flowers of the Sea: Marine Specimens at the Anti-Slavery Bazaar
Charline Jao 10 Oct 2024, at CommonPlace
When looking closer at the presence of marine specimens at American anti-slavery fairs, it becomes clear that these objects were more than items of natural curiosity.
There is a gruesome and literal connection between the beauty of the ocean’s depths and the violence of the Middle Passage; the ocean is both an ecosystem and a mass grave. When Christina Sharpe in In the Wake writes about residence time—the “amount of time it takes for a substance to enter the ocean and then leave the ocean” —she recounts a conversation with Anne Gardulski:

[Because] nutrients cycle through the ocean . . . the atoms of those people who were thrown overboard are out there in the ocean even today. They were eaten, organisms processed them, and those organisms were in turn eaten and processed, and the cycle continues. Around 90 to 95 percent of the tissues of things that are eaten in the water column get recycled.

What do we make, then, of the popularity of marine specimens (which were once part of this cycle) resurfacing in the nineteenth century at anti-slavery fairs? What can we learn about abolition, natural science, and racial ecologies by studying the anti-slavery interests in harvesting, curating, and exchanging the ocean’s plants and organisms?
Advertisements and articles in periodicals show us that marine specimens were highly sought after at American anti-slavery fairs. Issues of the abolitionist newspaper The Liberator tell us that the Boston Anti-Slavery Bazaar in Faneuil Hall had a “Botanical series of British Alga, Mosses and lichens in books and mahogany eases” in 1847… Read more…

Advertised on 11 October 1774: “LOST at the Fire on Wednesday Night last”
What was advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago today?
October 11

“LOST at the Fire on Wednesday Night last … the following Pieces of Merchandise.”

The October 11, 1774, edition of the Essex Gazette included coverage of a fire in Salem on October 6. The conflagration destroyed the homes of several families as well as the shops and stores of more than a dozen merchants and shopkeepers. In addition, the fire consumed a meeting house and the customs house. Samuel Hall and Ebenezer Hall, the printers of the Essex Gazette, lost their printing office. Just below the article about the fire, they inserted a notice alerting the public that they had relocated. The Halls also reported that “Great Quantities of Goods, House Furniture and Papers of Value were lost, stole and destroyed in the Confusion and Destruction occasioned by the Fire; but it is impossible to obtain Accounts from the several Sufferers, sufficiently accurate to publish at this Time.”
That did not prevent others from publishing more information about the fire, either as letters to editors or by taking out advertisements that supplemented the coverage provided by the Halls. Read more…

A Special Halloween Episode of Dispatches! The Wizard Clip: A Frontier Ghost Story (Podcast)
by Editors 9 October 2024, Dispatches: The Podcast of the Journal of the American Revolution
This week is our very special Halloween edition of Dispatches. In 1794, a Virginia farmer was haunted by a spiritual entity, and he called about a Russian prince-turned-priest to save him.
Photo: This half moon crescent and clippers plaque is repeated on several structures around the historic community of Middleway, West Virginia. Listen in…

President Washington and the Beginnings of American Law
by Jude M. Pfister 7 Oct 2024 Journal of the American Revolution
The summer meeting of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787 was an event as momentous as the eight years it took for the colonies/states to achieve independence. The failure of the Articles of Confederation, and the dismal outcome (and attendance) of the Annapolis Convention in 1786, made it clear to all concerned that a different approach was needed if peace was to be secured. From 1783 and the signing of the Treaty of Paris to 1787 and the beginning of the Constitutional Convention the states had floundered in their attempt at developing and maintaining a functioning government. The legal deficiencies of operating a national government proved too significant for the young nation to overcome. The states were functioning as separate legal districts in the absence of a national law. The Continental/Confederation Congress was little more than a voluntary association of usually like-minded individuals.
The story of the hot and humid summer of 1787 is well known. During the debates large states battled small states; slave interests battled non-slave interests; federal power battled state power; the Constitutional Convention was a discourse on how a government and a society could and should function. After five long months of debate and endless compromise, the new Constitution, the new law for a new nation, was completed. We are not inclined to look at the Constitution as law, but of course it is. It is a system of law predicated on a written constitution—a novelty in the eighteenth-century world and indeed throughout much of recorded history. The new government would consist of three branches (executive, judicial, and legislative) and be a republic with limited suffrage, and it permitted enslavement of Africans or those of African descent. To ensure the application of the Constitution and future law created under it, Article III created a supreme court and other inferior courts as Congress saw fit to create.
This mandate in the new Constitution was not lost on the first president, George Washington. Read more…

Drawing the Line – Canada-USA Eastern Border
By Francis Carroll — 26 September 2024 at Canada’s History
Through foul weather, rugged terrain, and diplomatic disputes, four boundary commissions forged the eastern border between Canada and the United States.
Dr. John Jeremiah Bigsby arrived on May 7, 1821, in Waterloo, “a sleepy little cluster of houses at the head of the river Niagara, and on the Canadian side of Lake Erie.” He found the entrance to the lake blocked by a massive ice jam some sixty kilometres long, impeding him, and the other members of his survey party, from embarking on their summer’s work.
“We were told that, by the help of a strong south-west wind, all that immense body of ice would crack and rend, and come tumbling down the river Niagara in ragged fragments,” Bigsby wrote in his memoir, The Shoe and Canoe, or Pictures of Travel in the Canadas. “And so it fell out; but we waited in a wretched pot-house for six days.”
Bigsby, an English physician and an avid traveller, was one of hundreds of people who served between 1816 and 1827 on the boundary commissions that were tasked with settling the border between the United States and the colonies of British North America.
“I need not say that the field service of this Commission was rendered arduous by the heats, severe labour, by the provisions being salt, by annoying insects, heavy rains, and by the unhealthiness of some of the districts under examination,” Bigsby wrote, noting that some surveyors abandoned the task, “subdued by toil and exposure.”
Read about establishing four sections of the border between The Islands in Passamaquoddy Bay and Lake of the woods.

The Hatter and the Harpist
By Sarah Murden 7 October, 2024 in All Things Georgian
It never fails to surprise me how one voyage of exploration leads to another completely unexpected destination, and this is such a case.
My initial interest was in a gentleman by the name of John Louis Calemard, simply because his name has appeared before that of John Daviniere (husband of Dido Elizabeth Belle), in the will of their employer, the MP, John Craufurd who died in 1814.
According to Craufurd’s will, Daviniere was employed as his valet (although Daviniere’s son claimed his father was Craufurd’s steward, probably just a mere difference in terminology, or possibly, his son was trying to upgrade his father’s occupation) and a John Louis Calemard who was employed in some other capacity, but I suspect as he appears to have been an educated gentleman, that he was possibly Craufurd’s butler and that clearly Craufurd thought a good deal of Calemard, his wife and daughter. I hoped to find proof of Calemard’s position, but so far, no luck , but instead I disappeared down a proverbial rabbit hole with this family.
Initially, there appeared little of note about Calemard. He was born around 1765, which would have made him about the same sort of age as Daviniere. He married Angelique Pierret Duding, by banns, at the fashionable, St George Hanover Square in 1786, with Daviniere also marrying at the same church some seven years later, although Daviniere married by the most discreet option of licence.
Like Daviniere, Calemard was also most likely French, and it was certainly the fashion of the day for the elite to employ French staff, much to the annoyance of some potential, British employees, who had plenty to say, Read more…

Loyalist Certificates Issued
The publicly available list of certificates issued since 2012 is now updated to end of September 30, 2024.
When a certificate is added there, it is also recorded in the record for the Loyalist Ancestor in the Loyalist Directory.

UELAC Loyalist Directory: New Contributions

Entries which have been added, or revised, this week, with thanks:

  • To Kevin Wisener for for additional information about:
    • Capt. James Curgenven, born in the UK was settled in New Haven, Connecticut before the war. He served in Second Company Loyal American Association 1775, Hierlihy’s Corps 1777-1782, Royal Nova Scotia Volunteers 1782-1783. Un 1784 he received a 900 acre Loyalist Land Grant in Bay of St. Lewis, Sydney County, Nova Scotia. Then a land grant at Antigonish, Nova Scotia and another land grant in Prince Edward Island where he still retained property in 1813. He returned to England by 1788 where he made his Memorial of Losses. He died 15 June 1824 in Merther, Cornwall, England.

If you are willing to submit some information, send a note to loyalist.trails@uelac.org All help is appreciated. …doug

Loyalist Gazette: Fall 2024 and Fall 2023 Updates
The Loyalist Gazette Editorial Team is excited for the soon to be published 2024 UELAC Fall Loyalist Gazette, coming in November.
The Fall 2023 issue of the Loyalist Gazette is now in public domain, available to all to read. The Guest Editor was Stephen Davidson UE. The theme was the Maritime Loyalists. Articles included:

  • A Nova Scotia Story: Loyalist History and a 1930s Road Trip Through Nova Scotia
  • The Loyalist Collection at UNB Libraries
  • The Hardships and contributions of Loyalist Women in New Brunswick
  • Benjamin Franklin’s Nova Scotia Land by…
  • The Diligent River Monument
  • High Treason Trials: Death sentences and pardons in Delaware.
  • Loyalist Battle of Bennett’s Island Finally receives historical recognition

The past issues of the Loyalist Gazette which are available to all can be seen here.

Events Upcoming

Bicentennial Branch: Loyalist Cemetery Walk in Kingsville, ON, Sat 19 Oct. @1:00 to 4:00 p.m.

Hear the remarkable stories of seven of the town’s founders who arrived in the 1790s as Loyalist refugees. Interpreters in period costume will describe the courage and resilience that defined the characters of: Philip Fuchs (Fox), Jacob Iler, Simon Girty, Leonard Kratz, Peter Malott, Johannes Weigele (Wigle), and Andrew Ulch, whose descendants are buried in the Pearl St. Cemetery.
Location: Pearl St. Cemetery, Kingsville, ON (Pearl St. W. / Greenhill Lane, 1 block south of Main St. W.)
This is a free event. If you are related to any of these families, please drop by to hear about your Loyalist ancestor(s), or to share old family photos and family lore.
Heather Crewe, Chair, Education and Outreach, Bicentennial Branch, UELAC

Toronto Branch: Loyalists – Early Settlers of Ontario, Sun. 20 Oct @2:00

We will be resuming our Speaker Series with an in-person meeting on Sunday, October 20th at 2:00 pm at our office at 60 Scollard Street, Suite 300, in the Bloor and Yonge area.
Our speaker will be Jo-Ann Tuskin, a member of Governor Simcoe Branch. Jo-Ann will talk about United Empire Loyalists – Early Settlers of Ontario, and their migration and settlement with a particular emphasis on her research into her own family’s journey and women Loyalists.
Jo-Ann’s talk will be followed by tea and treats and a chance to socialize.
Questions to torontouel@gmail.com

New Brunswick Branch: “DeLancey’s Brigade and the provincial forces in the American Revolution” by Steve Fowler Wed 23 Oct 2:00 AT

In the mid 1770s tens of thousands of colonists resisted the rising rebellion, instead casting their lot with the King, to take up arms and fight alongside the British troops and their allies.
Steve Fowler will discuss the formation and function of provincial or Loyalist regiments with a focus on one of the largest and best known, Brigadier General Oliver DeLancey’s Brigade. DeLancey’s was raised in New York in 1776 and saw action both in the New York area and in the southern campaign. Explore the evolution of the unit, it’s leadership, noteworthy actions in the war, and it’s eventual disbanding and settlement in what is now New Brunswick.
A Saint John native, Fowler has spent more than 30 years as an historical reenactor, exploring and recreating the life of a soldier in DeLancey’s
Zoom https:// us06web.zoom.us/j/82834277627?pwd=cjcwNg9pYDvLsngGgoZYjQsS7hnYmF.1
Meeting ID: 828 3427 7627 Passcode: 436219

American Revolutionary Institute: A Promised Land: Jewish Patriots, the American Revolution, and the Birth of Religious Freedom Wed 23 Oct 6:30

Jews played a critical role both in winning the American Revolution—fighting for the patriot cause from Bunker Hill to Yorktown—and in defining the republic that was created from it. As the most visible non-Christian religion, Judaism was central to the debate over religious freedom in America at a critical juncture. Except for Philadelphia, every city with a synagogue fell to the British during the war. Jewish patriots throughout the colonies flocked to Philadelphia, where they re-founded the local synagogue as a distinctively American organization. Speaker Adam Jortner is the Goodwin-Philpott Eminent Professor of Religion in the Department of History at Auburn University. He specializes in the history of religion in the American Revolution and the early nation. He is the author of a book by the same name. More and registration…

From the Social Media and Beyond

  • Townsends, and “anything food”

    • Harvest! A Time Of Plenty: Pear Tart (10 min)
      Harvest is a time of celebration! Folks would reap the harvest of three seasons of hard work and have parties, thank the heavens, and prepare for winter. This pear tart is the perfect sort of dish they would make this time of year.
  • This week in History
    • 7 Oct 1763 London King George III signs Proclamation of 1763 forbidding colonial settlements west of Appalachians. Done to placate the native tribes – the measure stirred colonial resentment against the restriction. image
    • 9 Oct 1769 Anson Co, NC. The Regulators in Anson County sign a petition on taxes & fees. Action is part of the controversial Regulator Movement – resistance to central control of the colony. Regulators would cross Gov William Tryon & battle authorities. image
    • 5 Oct 1774 Boston. MA Gov Thomas Gage dissolves the Mass. General Court, but the assembly reconstitutes itself as the Provincial Congress of Salem with John Hancock as president of the extralegal body. image
    • 10 Oct 1774 Battle of Point Pleasant was fought during Lord Dunmore’s War, one of a series of colonial wars against Chief Cornstalk’s Shawnee. 33 Shawnee killed. Virginians 60 killed & 96 wounded but Shawnee retreated over the Ohio R. image
    • 5 Oct 1775 Gen Washington informs Congress the Surgeon General of the Continental Army Dr. Benjamin Church was a spy. “I have now a painful tho’ a Necessary Duty to perform respecting Doctor Church, Director General of the Hospital.” image
    • 7 Oct 1775 British Adm Samuel Graves authorizes the Royal Navy to launch punitive raids along the New England coast to suppress privateering. image
    • 10 Oct 1775 Following Bunker Hill losses & containment of the British in Boston, London goes in a different direction. Gen William Howe replaces Gen Gage as Commander in Chief of the British Army in America. Upon his return to England, Gage retired. image
    • 11 Oct 1776 Battle of Valcour Island fought over 2 days, the British fleet under Sir Guy Carleton defeats 15 American gunboats led heroically by Benedict Arnold. This delaying action gave the patriot ground forces a chance to prepare a defense of New York. image
    • 6 Oct 1777 British capture Ft Montgomery & Ft Clinton in NY. After fierce defense, the forts were overrun. Close to 300 Americans killed, injured, or captured. British lost 200. The tenacious defense delayed British efforts to aid Gen Burgoyne at Saratoga. image
    • 7 October 1777, Bemis Height, New York. With his Army reduced to some 5,000 men and his supplies dwindling, British General John Burgoyne decides on one last roll of the dice before winter sets in. He launches a large reconnaissance force under General Simon Fraser to strike the American left flank. Three columns, 1,500 in all, begin their probe and start to come under heavy fire from Colonel Dan Morgan’s riflemen, who were joined by Major Henry Dearborn’s light infantry as they pressed the British. On the British left, Enoch Poor’s brigade pushed back against a feeble British thrust. The center went equally bad for Burgoyne as General Ebenezer Learned’s men advanced. The Americans were pushing the British flanks back with methodical volleys that took a heavy toll. Caught in the open, the British take many casualties, particularly officers. A sniper, likely Sergeant Tim Murphy, takes a bead on Fraser, who is trying gallantly to rally his men. He tumbles from his horse, mortally wounded. However, the American advance was slowing when General Benedict Arnold galloped to the front, inspiring the Americans whose second wind carried them into the prepared works. Burgoyne’s Army lost more than 600 men killed, wounded, or captured. Fraser died of his wounds. Burgoyne was often at risk in the close-in fighting. The Americans lost only 150 casualties. The next day, Burgoyne ordered a retreat north. This battle is also the finale of my fourth novel in the Yankee Doodle Spies series, The North Spy., which is on sale at Amazon and other fine booksellers. image
    • 8 Oct 1777 In the face of British Gen Henry Clinton’s advance, American forces withdraw up the North (Hudson) River and join forces with those of Gen Israel Putnam at New Windsor, NY. image
    • 8 Oct 1777 American forces withdraw up Hudson R as British Gen Henry Clinton’s forces seize Constitution Isle, across from West Point, NY. Clinton sends a Loyalist with a secret message to Gen Burgoyne, essentially saying he is on his own. image
    • 9 Oct 1777 Saratoga, NY British Gen John Burgoyne withdraws his army, now reduced to some 5,800, through rough terrain and pelting rain to occupy the heights near the village. image
    • 12 Oct 1777 Gen Thomas Conway begins his secret writing campaign criticizing Gen Washington’s leadership of the Continental Army. He writes to Gen Horatio Gates, suggesting Gates should be in Washington’s stead. image
    • 5 Oct 1778 Mincock Island, NJ. Capt. Patrick Ferguson leads 250 men on a raid, surprising & bayonetting Polish Count Kazimierz Pulaski’s cavalry in camp… Over 25 are wounded or captured before help arrives. image
    • 6 Oct 1778, Chestnut Neck, NJ. A fleet of 9 British ships, with 400 Regulars & Provincials, attack the trading port & privateer base in Little Egg Harbor, seizing & burning supplies & destroying some buildings & retreating before a relief force arrived. image
    • 6-8 Oct 1778 While Chief Joseph Brant is away, Lt Col William Butler’s PA Continentals destroy the Iroquois settlement at Unadilla, NY, and then withdraw. image
    • 7 Oct 1778 Detroit, NW Territory British Lt Col Henry Hamilton departs with 225 regulars, French militia & Indian allies in an attempt to retake Ft Vincennes after learning Col George Rogers Clark has withdrawn most of the garrison. image
    • 8 Oct 1778 Otsego Co. NY Continental brigade under Col William Butler made a retaliatory attack on Chief Joseph Brant’s home village of Unadilla. The month previous Brant and Loyalist raiders had attacked and burned the town of German Flats. image
    • 8 Oct 1779 Savanah, GA. Allied siege progresses but French Adm D’Estaing demands they storm the British lines. Gen Benjamin Lincoln draws up attack plans, but a deserter tips off British commander Augustin Prevost, who deploys his men accordingly. image
    • 11 Oct 1779 Near Savannah, GA. The father of the American cavalry,” Polish hero & Gen Casimir Pulaski, died as a result of wounds incurred in battle, on board the American brig “Wasp,” which was lying in the harbor. image
    • 4 Oct 1780 While moving his army through North Carolina, British Gen Charles Cornwallis directs Maj Patrick Ferguson’s Loyalist brigade toward King’s Mountain, SC, to screen his flank while he advances on Charlotte. image
    • 5 Oct 1780 Philadelphia, PA Continental Congress approves principles behind the League of Armed Neutrality – a political alliance pushed by Russian Czarina Catherine the Great that essentially leaves Britain isolated. image
    • 6 Oct 1780 Henry Laurens is arrested on suspicion of high treason. For nearly 15 months, former President of Continental Congress imprisoned in the Tower of London, and gravely ill. He would eventually be traded for Lord Cornwallis on December 31, 1781. image
    • 7 Oct 1780 King’s Mountain, NC. Over Mountain militia decisively defeated Loyalists, who suffer 290 KIA (incl their commander Maj Patrick Ferguson), 163 WIA, & 668 POW. Turning point in the south. image
    • 9 October 1781, George Washington’s troops began bombarding Cornwallis’ encircled troops at the Battle of #Yorktown. Cornwallis eventually surrendered ten days later, on October 19. image
  • Clothing and Related:

    • Both fabric and trim have been beautifully coordinated to create a gorgeous gown here, the fabric woven in the 1780s and the garment itself constructed in the 1790s, a remodel perhaps, to accommodate changing taste. Especially love the ice blue additions @V_and_A
    • Painter Jean-Antoine Watteau was baptised On This Day in 1684. The box pleats which are a feature of the robe à la française are sometimes called Watteau pleats after the artist. This c. 1750 liseré satin and grey and green silk example is from the Palais Galliera
    • Off to Kensington Palace for “Untold Lives: A Palace at Work,” an exhibition devoted to the servants (and, yes, enslaved people) who worked in the palace throughout its history. Some fascinating portraits and garments, including a circa 1790s apron worn by Queen Charlotte’s maid.
  • Miscellaneous

 

Published by the UELAC
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