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2025 UELAC Conference:
The conference has lots to do — see Conference 2025 details.

“Sailing to Sanctuary: Loyalists and their Evacuation Vessels”
By Stephen Davidson

It was the largest displacement of refugees in North American history, and yet it is a story that is largely unknown. Stephen Davidson’s presentation focuses on the evacuation ships that took Loyalists to sanctuary during and following the American Revolution. It’s an opportunity to discover the stories hidden in passenger lists, to appreciate the breadth of the loyalist diaspora, and to learn what resources are available for determining an ancestor’s evacuee experience. Romances, shipwrecks, measles, and revolution souvenirs are all part of what it meant to be a Loyalist seeking refuge in a time of war.

Hear Stephen on Friday July 11 at 9:15 in Saint John, NB.

Hope to see you there…

William Augustus Bowles: A Complicated Loyalist. Part One of Two
copyright Stephen Davidson UE
A Loyalist from Maryland, William Augustus Bowles did not suffer from a lack of titles. The United States’ commissioner of Indian Affairs called him “an American of low, mean extraction“. Loyalist biographer Lorenzo Sabine said he was a “bold and wicked man“. A court martial charged him with 20 counts of “conduct unbecoming of an officer“. A Creek First Nations chief called him a “liar and a thief“.
To some he was the “father of the state of Muskogee” – an Indigenous nation. His lone biographer, Benjamin Baynton, called him, “Beloved Warrior“. Spain considered him a pirate. Loyalist historian Maya Jasanoff notes that Bowles was the only American loyalist to be exiled in southeastern Asia. Thomas Jefferson referred to him as an “incendiary and imposter”. Bowles called himself “commander in chief of the Creek Nation” and later, “king of the Seminoles, Creeks, Cherokees, Chickasaws, and Choctaws“.
William Bowles was also a bit of a globetrotter – though not always a willing one. Born in Maryland in 1765, by the time he died in Havana, Cuba in 1805, he had been to West and East Florida, Jamaica, the Bahamas, New York City, Halifax, Quebec City and London, as well as Madrid, Spain, Manila, Philippines, and Freetown, Sierra Leone.
Piecing together the life of this Loyalist is not an easy task. His 1791 memoir – dictated to a fellow veteran who believed everything Bowles told him—does not always agree with what historians have later uncovered in documents of the era.
Born in Maryland to “respectable parents“, on November 2, 1763, William Augustus Bowles’ life changed forever when he ran away from home as a teenager and joined the British forces at Philadelphia. At the age of 14, he was made an ensign in the Maryland Loyalists, and accompanied his provincial regiment to Jamaica before being posted to Fort George near Pensacola, the capital of British West Florida. Smallpox subsequently “carried off a great many” of the Maryland Loyalists, but Bowles was spared.
In 1779, Bowles received permission to make the 7-mile journey to Pensacola. According to his memoir, he was late returning to Fort George due to the failure of a boat to pick him up and his commander dismissed him on a charge of neglect of duty. This would be the turning point in the 16 year-old Loyalist’s life.
His biographer says Bowles threw “his regimental coat, in contempt of his oppressors, in the sea“. Alone in a strange land, the teenager met a group of men from the Creek Indigenous Nation who had come to Pensacola to receive their annual gifts from the British government. “Delighted with the novelty of the situation“, he joined the Creek delegation and went to live with them.
With the approach of winter, Boyles returned to Pensacola, and for a time lived with a baker who wanted the teenager to work with him as an assistant. Instead — having developed a taste for life with the Creek — Bowles returned to the Native settlement and lived there for the next two years. He married a daughter of a Creek chief – the first of two wives he would eventually wed. Bowles story might have ended there as a former soldier living among Natives. But Great Britain went to war with Spain. Just north of the Gulf of Mexico from Cuba, the twin British colonies of West and East Florida – possessions of Spain until 1763—were ripe for invasion. The American Revolution and threats to British territories in the West Indies had left the two colonies with few defenders.
In 1780, Creek warriors joined a detachment of British, German, and Loyalist soldiers in a raid on Mobile Village, a fortified Spanish town to the west of Pensacola. One of the Indigenous leaders was none other than William Bowles, returning to fight alongside his former regiment, the Maryland Loyalists. Still just a teenager, Bowles had become a leader among his wife’s people.
During the attack on the Spanish fort, Bowles distinguished himself by his bravery under fire. One of those impressed by his courage was Benjamin Baynton, a Loyalist from Philadelphia. It was the beginning of a friendship that — a decade later—would result in the publication of a memoir of Bowles’ life.
The attack on Mobile Village failed and the British retreated to Pensacola. Bowles and his warriors were still with the British forces when the Spanish lay siege to Fort George. Later known as the “Siege of Pensacola”, Spanish forces surrounded the garrison from March 12 to May 8, 1781.
The British might have lasted until troops from the southern colonies or the West Indies came to their rescue, but a Spanish shell that hit Fort George’s ammunition magazine. The resulting explosion killed more than 100 men and destroyed much of the fort’s defenses. The British surrendered on May 9th, putting both the fort and West Florida into the hands of Spain.
After a month as a prisoner of war in Havana, Bowles and Fort George’s defenders were put aboard a neutral vessel and sent to British military headquarters in New York City. Under the terms of their release, the members of the two loyalist regiments were not allowed to take up arms against the Patriots and their allies.
But Bowles’ greatest enemies in 1782 were not rebels, but some of the men alongside whom he had fought. Jealous of the nineteen year-old Loyalist – according to his memoir— British soldiers brought over 20 charges against Bowles at a court martial for conduct unbecoming to an officer. They claimed that he brought in scalps while fighting alongside Creek warriors during the Siege of Pensacola. In the end, the court martial acquitted Bowles of the charges thanks to the testimony of his comrades in the Maryland Loyalists.
Bowles was still defensive regarding these charges at the time he dictated his memoir. His biographer noted that “It must be remembered that, at the time now specified, Mr. Bowles was not only naked, like a savage, but was sighting side by side with his brother chiefs, who would have considered his withholding his hand from seizing this distinguished badge of a warrior’s bravery as a mark of {cowardice} and treated him accordingly.”
When the Maryland Loyalists were released from their parole in Newtown, Long Island, Bowles received permission from Sir Guy Carleton, the last commander-in-chief of Britain’s North American forces, to visit his father in Maryland and his Creek allies in East Florida. Since the peace talks were underway in Paris –and given that Carleton had ceased all offensive operations– the American Revolution was all but over. It should have been the concluding chapter in the adventures of William Bowles.
But during the decade that followed 1783, the young Loyalist would surface again, encountering Carleton, British authorities, and his Spanish enemies – becoming both an irritant to colonial authorities and an inspiration to his Indigenous friends.
The conclusion to Bowles’ remarkable career will be told in next week’s Loyalist Trails.
 To secure permission to reprint this article contact the author at stephendavids@gmail.com.

Colonial Militia on the Eve of War
by Michael Cecere 3 April 2025 at Journal of the American Revolution
As part of the British empire, none of the thirteen American colonies maintained a standing army of the sort Great Britain and the other European powers had. American colonists looked to their own militia and when necessary, the British army and navy, for their defense.
The French and Indian War of the 1750s and 1760s, however, prompted a number of colonies to raise provincial troops. Whereas militia service involved occasional musters, drills, and mobilizations for short stints of service, the new provincial troops were required to serve for a year or more. Col. George Washington of Virginia commanded such troops as did Col. Hugh Mercer of Pennsylvania, and because of the length of their enlistments their troops had more in common with British redcoats than they did with colonial militia. Unlike British regulars, however, these provincial troops knew that as soon as the conflict was over, their units would be disbanded.
When the long war concluded in Britain’s favor in 1763, the colonial provincial troops were indeed disbanded and, along with the militia in service, sent home. Over seven thousand British redcoats remained in North America under the auspices of protecting the colonists. The number fell to just over six thousand troops by 1773, distributed amongst thirteen battalions. The bulk of these troops guarded the valuable British sugar islands in the Caribbean, asserted British control of Canada, and manned forts on the frontier of the colonies as well as in Florida. Small contingents of British troops were also in Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, and New Jersey. The presence of these troops and particularly the cost of maintaining all of them, a cost that the British parliament expected the colonists to bear through new taxes that they imposed in the 1760s, alarmed colonial leaders. They argued that Parliament had no right to directly tax them for any reason and that British troops were not needed in the thirteen colonies because the colonial militia was more than adequate to defend the colonies now that France had been removed from Canada.
Such arguments were ignored by British leaders and the dispute over “Taxation Without Representation” simmered for a decade. Read more…

Book Review: The Traitor’s Homecoming: Benedict Arnold’s Raid on New London
Author: Matthew E. Reardon. (El Dorado Hills, CA: Savas Beatie, 2024.)
Review by Sam Short 31 March 2025 Journal of the American Revolution
As the title suggests, the work looks not so much at the life of Arnold and his decision to betray the American cause; rather it focuses on his military career in the later stages of the war, specifically documenting the battle of New London. As the title also indicates, this was homecoming for Arnold as he was a native of Norwich, Connecticut.
Reardon’s work is a military history, as he thoroughly covers the pre-battle preparations by the Connecticut militia and the series of decisions that lead to Arnold commanding British soldiers in an attack against his home.
It was under Commander-in-Chief Gen. Henry Clinton that Arnold was ordered to New London in 1781, sailing up from New York as part of General Clinton’s miscalculated plan to strike the Americans and create a diversion. He believed commander-in-chief for the Continental Army Gen. George Washington, accompanied by the French, was about to attack his position in New York. New London was chosen for its harbor where several American privateers were being kept. This was a decision made in error as the story goes that General Washington was moving south towards Yorktown, Virginia where Gen. Lord Charles Cornwallis and his army had been ordered by Clinton. Read more…

Hessian Soldiers Travelling to America: POW: Marching again – A Soldier’s Life. January 1782
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
  • May 1781: to Chesapeake Bay (Yorktown)
  • October 1781: to Williamsburg

1782: Continuation of the Noteworthy Occurences in Our North American Campaign, and Especially the Captivity in the Sixth Year. Or the Year of our Lord 1782. Page 122

In the Month of January 1782

30 January. This past night the Potomac froze over so solid that it is possible to cross riding and driving horses and wagons. The cold was so great, and still we had to make our night’s quarters under the open sky. Here the militia from Baltimore assumed custody over us to escort us out of the state of Maryland. Today we marched only four miles, to Sharpsburg, a small place first developed fifteen years ago which is mostly settled by Germans. The leading citizen there is also the spiritual leader. Here we were quartered in houses, and the inhabitants gave us food and drink, provided warm rooms, and showed us much love and kindness, which improved our spirits. Also, here for the first time, we received provisions from the province of Maryland; each man, a pound of bread and a pound of beef, with a little salt. From the Virginians one received very few provisions for our transport, having received no meat for thirteen days, but only Indian flour; and even then the Virginians owed us for about thirty days.

31 January. We marched from Sharpsburg early. We arrived at Middletown, a small but beautiful place of about twenty houses, thirteen miles from Sharpsburg and ten from Frederick. Here, before this place, stood two maypoles like at home in Germany, which were the first I saw in America. We marched another ten miles, from here to Frederick, making for today a march of twenty-three miles (of Maryland measure, of which one equals a half German hour). At sundown in the evening we arrived there and were completely tired and exhausted from the long march. We were led by our escort through the city, and about a half hour beyond, on the east, we were directed into a barracks. These barracks, similar to a barracks compound, are two stories high, built of stone, and have a regular roof.196 The King of England had had them built. The company received two floors, one upper and one lower, for quarters. Two barracks have been built here, and more than one hundred huts in which many English prisoners lay. It was very cold and drafty in our quarters. In the previous war French also were here in captivity. At present two Hessian regiments, Hereditary Prince and Bose, remain as prisoners in the poorhouse in the city, as well as some jaegers.
The city of Frederick lies in a beautiful, fertile, and pleasant region, partially in a valley; however, when it rains, it becomes muddy because the city is still not paved. It is heavily settled by Germans, of whom many are from Swabia. This city was first laid out sixteen years ago, but already has nearly two thousand inhabitants, has several good houses, and makes a show with several steeples. The streets of the city are laid out evenly, to the four corners of the world. A few houses are of wood, most of limestone and brick, both building materials that are baked and prepared here. The inhabitants carry on handcrafts and agriculture. There is no navigable water in the vicinity; therefore, this place has no important trade to brag about. The Monocacy, a small river four miles north of here, is too small; and the Potomac, eight miles south, is unnavigable in this region because of the nearby falls.
Baltimore and Georgetown, which both lie at a distance of fifty to sixty miles, supply this place with foreign necessities. Most of the inhabitants are Germans, and of all the various religions; from the English church, Presbyterian, Dutch Reformed, Lutherans, Catholics, and even a few other sects, each of which has its own building for religious services. There is also a Latin school and a fine-looking city hall.
In this month the weather began as nice and warm as in the most beautiful spring, but the middle and the end were as cold, with frequent snow, as the hardest winter. On the march here we were half frozen and so badly equipped that it was a shame to see us.
(to be continued)


“One Great People”: John Fenno’s Public Crusade for an American National Identity
by Shawn David McGhee 1 Apr 2025 Journal of the American Revolution
In New York City, at nine o’clock in the morning on Thursday, April 30, 1789, Americans of diverse Christian denominations filed into their churches in and around Broad Street. Once settled, their respective clergymen led them in prayer, asking for “the blessing of Heaven upon the new government.” These well-wishers also pleaded for divine “protection to the President” and “success and acceptance to his administration.” By noon, a procession of officers, grenadiers, infantry, artillerymen, committees from both the Senate and House, and “several gentlemen of distinction,” made its way to the executive mansion on Cherry Street to escort the president-elect to the Federal State House. Upon arriving at their destination, soldiers fell into formation as Gen. George Washington made his way into the building where both houses of Congress greeted him warmly. Finally, Washington progressed to the gallery of the Senate chamber facing Broad Street and, “in the presence of an immense concourse of citizens,” Chancellor Robert Livingston administered the first presidential oath of office. After Washington recited this solemn utterance, Livingston introduced the Virginian to the world as the president of the United States. Artillerymen immediately discharged thirteen cannons as the growing crowd cheered its approval. Washington, always dignified and mindful of the theatrical dimension of politics, bowed to the crowd before slipping back into the Senate chamber to make his maiden speech as commander in chief of the new federal republic.
This rich description comes from the pages of editor John Fenno’s Gazette of the United States. Couriers delivered this news to eager readers in multiple states, inviting citizens from all over the nation to witness the president’s inauguration and partake in the celebratory atmosphere that enveloped New York. Americans learned that supporters pleaded for providential assistance for the president and young government, drawing readers into a grand national drama and encouraging (inspiring even) their support. Fenno, a Boston transplant, attended the inauguration, recorded its sequence of events and reported the pomp and pageantry of the occasion within the busy pages of his newspaper. He had designed his gazette to proselytize the reading republic into supporting the Constitution and its administrations. A deep nationalist thinker and passionate supporter of the proposed new government, Fenno desired his paper to create the socio-political sinews that would attach Americans firmly to the emerging constitutional nation. In the process, he expected his public crusade to create a single, national identity for the federal republic while establishing him as public philosopher and director of political order. To accomplish this, John Fenno’s publication pushed three major objectives: It (1) promoted the wisdom and benefits of the federal Constitution, (2) supplicated private deference to national statesmen and legislation and (3) aimed to secure and strengthen the union in perpetuity. Taken together, Fenno hoped Americans from Massachusetts to Georgia would come to appreciate the stability and prosperity ushered in by the Constitution and respect unconditionally federal leaders and laws. He reasoned that, through his effort, disconnected citizens with local loyalties and little in common would amalgamate into a national people. Read more…

Advertised on 4 April 1775: ‘Restored to as good a state of health as ever he had in his life.’

What was advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago this week?

4 April 1775

“Restored to as good a state of health as ever he had in his life.”

The final page of the April 4, 1775, edition of the Pennsylvania Evening Post consisted entirely of advertisements (and the colophon running across both columns at the bottom of the page). The final notice filled about two-thirds of the column, making it longer than many of the news items that ran elsewhere in that issue. It took the form of an open letter in which Thomas Pynes described how he was formerly “afflicted with sore and distressing sickness, which occasioned pains and swellings in his legs, and turned to such bad ulcers that he could not move from his bed without the assistance of two people.” In that “miserable condition,” he “applied for relief” and consulted “several of the ablest physicians” in Philadelphia, but he did not experience any relief even after they provided “the best means they could.” Most of those doctors considered him “incurable.”
Pynes endured that condition for two years, “despair[ing] of ever obtaining relief.” He eventually learned of patients “under the care of Doctor George Weed” and felt renewed hope, yet when Weed “heard and understood how many able and skilful physicians and surgeons [Pynes] had been under without getting relief, he did not care to take him in hand.” Read more…

Patrick Henry: From the American Revolution to Saving the Nation
by John A. Ragosta, March 2025 at Ben Franklin’s World
During our investigation of Patrick Henry’s life and work, John reveals information about Patrick Henry’s early life and how he became involved with politics. What drove Patrick Henry to become a revolutionary and support the revolutionary cause. And, why George Washington believed that Patrick Henry was the one man who could save the United States during the political crisis of 1798/99.
John Ragosta is an award-winning historian and the former acting director of the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies and Monticello. Listen in…

The Beautiful Mrs Graham
by Sarah Murden 31` March 2025 All Things Georgian
I have long admired this portrait, one of Gainsborough’s masterpieces, but until now, haven’t explored her the sitter’s life in any detail, so today this is being rectified.
There were three siblings of similar age, they being Jane (1754-1790, Mary (1757-1792) and the youngest of these three, Louisa (1758-1843), the daughters of Charles, 9th Lord Cathcart and his wife, Jane, plus three sons – William, Charles and Archibald.
It was not long after the birth of their final, Catherine Charlotte who was born in 1770, that Lady Cathcart succumbed to consumption and died in the November of 1771, leaving Lord Cathcart with seven surviving children, to raise alone, but with the hope that their three elder daughters would care for Catherine and it was Mary who undertook this duty.
On 12 November 1771, about 4pm, Jane breathed her last and was buried in Grosvenor Chapel, Mayfair.
On 26 December 1774, at the fashionable church, St George, Hanover Square, Westminster, Jane and Mary’s names appeared in the marriage register, although the ceremony actually took place at their father’s London home in Grosvenor Place, London, by Special Licence.
Jane was married to John Murray, 4th Duke of Atholl and her younger sister, Mary was married to Thomas Graham, 1st Baron Lyndoch.
It wouldn’t be until 5 May 1776, and with some tears and misgivings, according to her letters, that Louisa married Viscount Stormont following his negotiations with her father and with Louisa simply being informed of the date of the marriage. Stormont was over 30 years her senior, which one can only imagine must have a daunting proposition for such a young girl, but she needn’t have worried as becomes clear when reading her letters. Read more…

The dam, the myth, the legend: 50 years of the beaver
By Brian Banks 4 March 2025 Canadian geographic
It started, ironically, with an American. In January 1975, New York State senator Bernard Smith, a noted environmental champion, introduced a bill to officially recognize a new state animal: the beaver.
Prompted by a local newspaper columnist asking if Canada had a more deserving claim, Sean O’Sullivan, a 23-year-old Conservative member of Parliament from Hamilton sprang into action. O’Sullivan, the youngest-ever MP when first elected in 1972, drafted a one-sentence private member’s bill — “An Act to provide for the recognition of the Beaver (Castor canadensis) as a symbol of the sovereignty of the Dominion of Canada” — that had its first reading in Parliament that same month.
On the bill’s second reading, O’Sullivan spoke about why Canada needed to adopt the beaver as a national symbol. “There must be more to life than just financial facts and figures,” he told the House of Commons. “There must be things to touch one’s soul and heart and emotions, if we are to be complete persons and a whole nation. That is the importance of symbols.” His fellow MPs and colleagues in the Senate agreed. On March 24, 1975, the National Symbol of Canada Act received royal assent.
This spring marks 50 years since the beaver reached this exalted status. Were O’Sullivan alive today, he’d surely be gratified by its persistent grip, literally and figuratively, on our collective soul and heart and emotions. Beaver imagery permeates every aspect of our culture: clothing, food, art, advertising, branding, entertainment. More than 1,000 places in Canada are named for the beaver. On the land, beavers continue to shape and reshape terrain, in ways that are both challenging and instructive. They may even have a role to play in helping the country move forward with some of the most important issues of the day: reconciliation, halting biodiversity loss and coping with a changing climate. Little wonder that in a poll done for Canada’s 150th birthday in 2017, the beaver was chosen as the “most Canadian” animal. Read more…

UELAC Loyalist Directory: New Contributions

Entries which have been added, or revised, this week.

Michael Mallery is providing information about Loyalists who served with the Prince of Wales American Volunteers.

  • Pvt. Jabez Adams settled at Salmon River NB
  • Cpl. John Anderson
  • Lieut. Michael Ambrose first appears on ship Marlin muster as part of the Expedition against Fairfield March 1, 1777, shown as Lieutenant. He came to Saint John on the ship Montague. He married to Ensign Robert Keating’s daughter. In 1784 he petitioned for land on Salmon River, New Brunswick.
  • Sgt. John Adams first appears on ship Marlin muster as part of the Expedition against Fairfield March 1, 1777. While serving with the British Legion he was made prisoner the 19th October, 1781. While he was a prisoner he was demoted from Sergeant to Private. He escaped from the rebels and came into New York on the 12th February, 1782. He then was promoted back to the rank of Sergeant.

Kevin Wisener who is primarily researching Loyalists who settled in PEI has contributed information about:

  • Lawrence Berry resettled at Lot 19, Prince County, PEI
  • Robert Barry/Berry was a Loyalist refugee who embarked at New York for Shelburne, Nova Scotia, at the close of the Revolution in 1783. He became one of Nova Scotia’s most eminent merchants, establishing branch houses in various parts of the province. His name is connected with the largest of the early commercial enterprises in Nova Scotia. Passenger number 423 on HMS Clinton, picking up 14 Nov 1783 East River, NY, delivered to Port Roseway NS 13 Dec 1783.

Events Upcoming

American Revolution Institute – Lecture—The Realities of Infantry in Combat During the American Revolution, 8 Apr 2025 @ 6:30

Historian Alex Burns, Ph.D., assistant professor of history at Franciscan University of Steubenville, places the common enlisted man during the American Revolution at center stage by discussing their experiences during the war. Drawing from his archival research on the American, British and Prussian armies, Dr. Burns shows how the infantryman throughout the eighteenth century played an important role by asserting tactical reforms from below and places the tactical experiences of the Continental Army in a European context. More and registration…

The Fort Plain Museum’s American Revolutionary War Conference 250, May 29-June 1, 2025

Speakers and Topics Include:
Pulitzer Prize Winner Rick Atkinson – The Fate of the Day: The War for America, Fort Ticonderoga to Charleston, 1777-1780
Bus Tour – We Stood Our Ground: Battles of Lexington & Concord, April 19, 1775 – Led by Alexander R. Cain – Thursday, May 29, 2025
Read more…

Branch News:

Newsletters from Branches of UELAC which have been submitted for posting are available to all UELAC Members in the Members Section, in Branch Newsletters:

  • The Spring 2025 issue of the PEI Branch Loyalist Beacon newsletter
  • The latest issue of the Kingston & District Branch Cataraqui Loyalist Town Crier newsletter
  • The latest issue of the Chilliwack Branch Link-Up newsletter

Saskatchewan Branch Website Update
The Saskatchewan Branch website has been moved and revised. Visit it at https://www.saskuelac.ca/

From the Social Media and Beyond

  • A Splendid view of the old Loyalist town of Guysboro, showing the main street.” (Source: Halifax Evening Mail, 14 June 1927, p. 19)
  • Looking at the story of John Chilton, a soldier in the Revolutionary War, we find he left a fascinating record. He was born in Westmoreland County, Virginia in 1739 but moved to Fauquier County by the 1770s establishing a plantation.
    He fought during the Revolution, first in a militia that he organized called the Culpeper District Battalion and later in the Continental Army as a captain in the Third Virginia Regiment.
    Chilton wrote ten letters to his family during this time, some of the most fascinating of which are to his brother and sister-in-law who were caring for his five children while he was in the Continental Army, his wife having died in 1775.
    Chilton never got to return home to his children. On September 11, 1777, he was wounded at the Battle of Brandywine and died on the field.
  • In days of yore, when armor was a necessity in combat, the throat was a particularly vulnerable target. A specialized piece of armor, called a gorget, was used to protect the space at the throat between the breast plate and the helmet.
    Though armor started to become obsolete with the advent of firearms, some pieces were retained. In particular, the gorget continued in use and served not only as protection, but also as a badge of distinction for officers.
    By the eighteenth century the piece became so small as to be purely decorative, but was commonly worn by most European officers, and occasionally by some American officers.
  • Food and Related : Twonsends

  • Event/Resource/Quote of the Day – Revolution 250
    • April 1, 1775, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress approved a grateful message to Johoiakin Mothksin and the Stockbridge Indian community. It authorized spending £23 to buy “blankets and some ribbons” to men who had enlisted in the minute company.
  • This week in History
  • Clothing and Related:
    • England. by Anna Maria Garthwaite (d.1763)
      Robe à l’anglaise, c. 1775
      Silk damask w/woven flower &fruit.
      Textile designer, Anna Maria, was the only known woman to have worked at Spitalfields, a silk weaving area of London.
    • England. Sunshine Robe à la française, c.1760.
      Imagine how sparkly this gown would be in candlelight!
      Silk plain weave with weft-float patterning and silk with metallic-thread supplementary-weft patterning, and metallic lace.
  • Miscellaneous

Editor’s Note: After three days in Transylvania (home of Dracula, a transformation of Vlad the Impaler) and too early on Friday 4 April we set out from the Hilton hotel in Bucharest Romania where the internet was unbelievably fast (equaling our fibre connection at home). The flights via Zurich were uneventful. A side benefit of the early start was a Toronto arrival in the noon hour where we were surprised at the empty immigration and customs halls – never before have we transited them so quickly. As always, good to be home. Wish we had been a few days earlier, as we could then have managed our Branch meeting which I would really liked to have been at.

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