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Mary Serjeant: A Loyalist Refugee in England, Part Three of Three
copyright Stephen Davidson UE
In 1789, Mary Serjeant celebrated her 53rd birthday. Like many other Loyalist widows she could look back on a very tumultuous life. The Patriots of Cambridge, Massachusetts had forced her family to flee to the British lines for safety as the American Revolution grew in fervor. Her husband, an Anglican minister, fell victim to a “paralytic disorder”, and so the Serjeants and their three young children left the land and people that Mary had known all her life to find sanctuary in England. Within two years, her teenage son died of measles; her husband died just 3 months later.
To provide support for herself and her two daughters, Mary petitioned for an allowance from Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts – the organization that had sent her late husband to North America as a missionary in 1759. She also received compensation from the British government for her wartime losses as a Loyalist’s widow. Mary also held out hope that she would one day be repaid the loans that she had made back in New England.
The challenge of the next decade would be to see to the proper education of her daughters (“for without it they never will be respected or taken the least notice of, it is all that is considered in this part of the World.”) and to find them well-suited men as husbands.
Perhaps equal to her financial needs was Mary’s desire for friends. In a letter to her sister in the United States, Mary lamented that after a decade in Bath she had “made very few acquaintances“.
Initially, she had been impressed by England’s most famous spa resort. “Bath is an Inland City a place of no Trade, but pleasure & dissipation, where all the Nobility resort, to drink the Waters and Game. It is impossible for me to describe the grandeur and Beauty of the Place. I can scarce go out without treading upon a Duke or a Duchess, and I had the Honour of sitting by the Duke of Cumberland in the pump Room … The King & the Royal Family’s persons, are as familiar to me, as any people in Boston. — We may be as good in this Place as in Any part of the World, as there is fourteen Churches.”
But in the end, the novelty of royal celebrities and impressive architecture could not compensate for the pleasure of human companionship. Her relatives were either far across the Atlantic or in Ireland, far from Bath.  The brother that Mary had in England had been helpful when she first arrived, but he could not support her.
Other family members became a source of disappointment and conflict. She described her sister’s son Ned as “a vile, wicked young man“.  Another brother had children “deserving of a better Mother as he is of a Wife.”  Writing of a nephew on her mother’s side of the family, Mary said, “He has behaved to me in a most shameful manner, abused me & said my misfortunes had driven me Mad.”
Mary found her English contemporaries to be “stiff, starch, imperious, haughty, suspicious, uncharitable, wretches, who ridicule & slander their best friends as soon as their back is turned.” (This was a not uncommon complaint of loyal Americans as they tried to enter British society). It is telling that Mary’s surviving letters fail to mention any British acquaintances, but are filled with references to friends from her younger days.
Mary looked to her daughters for support and companionship, but only Betsy was capable of helping her around the house. Mary, the oldest Serjeant daughter, was subject to fits. “She has them very frequently & very severe that her Nerves are agitated for a long time after, & it has incapacitated her so that she is not capable of affording me the least Assistance in respect to working or looking after the House which would take a great deal of trouble off my hands.”
Betsy assumed a number of responsibilities, including serving as her mother’s secretary, writing letters on her behalf.
In addition to all of these troubles, Mary had a 19 year-old niece known only as Eliza “thrown upon my hands to provide for as one of my own children“. Mary reported that “{I} have bound myself & heirs to Clothe Wash & find her Tea for 4 Years & in case of sickness to take her home or if I had not Room for her, as I let part of my house for Lodgings; to pay 5 Shillings a Week for a Room & find her a Nurse & Doctor; so you will think I have sufficient upon my hands“. (Her brother Arthur Browne had promised to send 15 pounds a year for Eliza’s support, but had sent nothing.) The best that Mary could do was to find a local dressmaker who took Eliza on as an apprentice.
The Loyalist widow never got over her homesickness for her family in New England and the simple pleasures of her childhood. “I often long for some of our Indian Meal and chestnuts, they have them here but they taste no better than Acorns. Indian Corn … is above my pocket, therefore I see & long but cannot taste, the same with Cranberries they are the size here of a pins head, & are extravagantly Dear.”
In one letter to her younger sister, Mary said I “wish I was with you all, to renew the happy Hours I have spent, but that is a blessing I must not expect to enjoy, as I am growing older every day, and you know this Life is but a span, and I am tired to death of rambling about the World. Besides, I have nothing to live on in that country. Should I leave this, I should lose my pension from Government, and perhaps what Mr. Serjeant left me … I could not think of coming to be a burden to you. There is another material thing: that of crossing the great Ocean again, it would cost me at least a hundred guineas.”
Mary Serjeant died of paralysis at age 72 in 1808. She never returned to the United States; she ended her days in Bath where she had first established a home for her invalid husband and three children. The fate of her two daughters is unknown.
While the Loyalist’s widow may have no descendants among us today, her letters reach across the centuries to provide a rare glimpse into the experiences of a refugee from the American Revolution who settled in England. For Mary, she found that the English were “so different in every respect that you would hardly suppose they were of the same species as the Americans.”

(A special thanks goes out to Megan Hayes who brought Mary Serjeant to my attention.)

To secure permission to reprint this article contact the author at stephendavids@gmail.com.

The Marquis de Lafayette in Delaware
by Kim Burdick 26 March 2024 Jouirnal of the American Revolution
The last surviving major general of the American Revolution was French aristocrat Marie Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert Du Motier, the marquis de Lafayette. Invited by President James Monroe to help usher in America’s fiftieth anniversary, Lafayette came, accompanied by his son, Georges Washington de Lafayette, and Secretary Auguste Levasseur. In 1824 and 1825, these men visited each of the then twenty-four American states. Two hundred years later, between August 2024 and September 2025, a Lafayette reenactor will visit these places in the exact order in which the Marquis had then been celebrated.
The marquis de Lafayette was born to an ancient noble family in the Auvergne region of central France in 1757. Before he was two years old, his father, then serving as a French army colonel of grenadiers, was killed in Germany in one of the biggest battles of the Seven Years War. On April 3 and 24, 1770, his mother and grandfather died, soon followed by the death of an uncle. Twelve-year-old Gilbert de Lafayette was now the richest orphan in France.
Despite these happenings, young Gilbert followed family tradition and received military training. On April 9, 1771, he was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Musketeers of the Guard. While a student at l’Académie de Versailles he married Adrienne de Noailles. Her father ensured Lafayette was promoted to the position of captain in the Noailles Dragoons Regiment. Read

more…

The Physical Challenges of Major General Nathanael Greene
by Salina B. Baker 21 March 2-24 Journal of the Americfan Revolution
The American Revolution provides heroes like almost no other event in American history. In a society where most of us live in comfort, with good medical care and remedies for what ails us, we recognize the sacrifices the people of the eighteenth century made for the cause of American liberty and, eventually, to build a new nation. In newspapers, public pamphlets and private letters, they proclaimed their passion for a movement rarely achieved in their time—the idea of a republic free from the bonds of monarchial rule and their mother country, Britain.
As self-educated Rhode Island Gen. Nathanael Greene wrote to his wife, Caty, in June 1775, “I am determined to defend my rights, and maintain my freedom, or sell my life in the attempt.”[1] At some time in his life he developed a limp and asthma. At twenty-eight, he was afflicted with a smallpox scar on his right eyeball that was often infected, a result of his 1770 inoculation. Before the war, Greene wrote to his friend, Sammy Ward, Jr., that he “was raised a Quaker, and amongst the most superstitious sort.”[2]
Despite the seeming austerity of his childhood, legend holds it that a teenage Nathanael and his older brother, Jacob, jumped from their bedroom window to attend neighborhood dances with the knowledge that their father would horsewhip them if they were caught. Was jumping from a window the cause of Nathanael’s limp? Was it congenital? Or was it from working the trip hammer in the Greene family iron forge that he managed and operated in Coventry, Rhode Island? There is no documented evidence of the cause of the limp. But one can imagine him working in the iron forge, the smoke exacerbating his asthma and irritating his right eye. Read

more…

Norfolk to Nova Scotia: Judith Jackson’s Crooked Road to Freedom
By Adam McNeil 15 March 2024  Colonial Williamsburg
As she boarded the Danger, a ship bound for Nova Scotia in November 1783, a fifty-three-year-old Black Loyalist woman paused to answer questions. A group of British and U.S. commissioners waited to question her, along with the other Black refugees boarding those ships.

Her name? Judith Jackson.
When did she escape slavery? 1779.
What was the name of her former enslaver? John Clain of Norfolk, Virginia.
What military department had she served? The Royal Artillery.

The commissioners drafted Jackson’s response into a ledger known as The Book of Negroes, a voluminous document with the names and individual biographies of three thousand Black Loyalists who sought freedom behind British lines during the Revolutionary War. Judith Jackson’s entry is one of many in The Book of Negroes, but unlike some other Black Loyalists recorded there, we can trace many of the events that brought her name into the ledger. Her story of resistance and sacrifice illuminates the harrowing path that many Black Loyalists faced in seeking freedom during the American Revolution.
Judith Jackson and her six-year-old child escaped their Norfolk enslaver in mid-May 1779. When Virginia’s last royal governor, Lord Dunmore, offered freedom to Black Virginians in late 1775, Norfolk had been in turmoil. Jackson and her child did not flee in the war’s opening moments. But four years later, when a British force raided Tidewater Virginia in May 1779, she took advantage of the opportunity and escaped.
Before the war, enslaved women usually fled in larger groups, and accounted for less than fifteen percent of all runaways. Wartime raids provided Black women like Jackson the chance to escape their plantations and reach nearby British lines. As a result, the proportion of women running away from slavery doubled during the Revolutionary War. Jackson used the chaos created by the wartime raid to find refuge behind British lines along with over five hundred other Black loyalist refugee women, men, and children. British forces benefited from these escapes. They used Jackson and other Black Loyalist refugees to support the daily operations of British forces throughout the war.  Read

more…

Book Review: Novels, Needleworks, and Empire: Material Entanglements in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World
Author: Chloe Wigston Smith (Yale University Press)
Review by Nichole Louise 25 March 2-024 Journal of the Ameroican Revolution
Novels, Needleworks, and Empire: Material Entanglements in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World by Chloe Wigston Smith details how processes and objects of the domestic life were inherently intertwined with colonialism. Smith argues that while white women were able to gather education and form bonds through their domestic works, the creations of Black and Indigenous women makers existing with the colonial framework were either stripped of their individuality (unless they were creating something outside of the European colonial world), or were lost to time altogether.
Smith breaks down several novels, needleworks, samplers, and other domestic objects both practical and aesthetic to analyze how these creations fit into the eighteenth-century colonial world on both sides of the Atlantic. Ultimately, Smith highlights the European settler “value of material objects to colonization and religious conversion,” (page 136) as well as “fabric worlds [being] marvels of skill and education, exemplif[ing] the complex material forms that enmesh[ed] the work of craft with the agendas of colonialism.”  Read

more…

A Sampling of Samplers
Katherine Egner Gruber, Special Exhibition Curator, Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation
Most of us don’t use a needle and thread on a daily basis these days. However, in the 17th-19th centuries, young girls learned needle working soon after learning the alphabet – often before they even started to write.
Being accomplished in the art of the needle was a basic life necessity at a time when everything was made by hand. Samplers demonstrated a young girl’s skill and ability to enter the domestic sphere of early womanhood, proving her skills and status to potential suitors.
One

of the historic samplers in JYF’s collection was stitched by nine-year-old Mildred Ragsdale. Detailing the alphabet, her name and birthday, it illustrates that children often learned from their mothers, passing down this knowledge themselves later on.
Other samplers in our collection showcase religious psalm verses, like that belonging to Lydia Clap, or lessons on morality and virtue, as with Elizabeth D. McIntosh’s.
Find out more about historic samplers and the women who made them. Read

more..

Advertised on 28 March 1774: “The Sign of the SUN and BREECHES.”
What was advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago today?

“The Sign of the SUN and BREECHES.”

Cornelius Ryan, “LEATHER DRESSER and BREECHES MAKER,” pursued his trade at “the Sign of the SUN and BREECHES, IN THE BROADWAY” in New York.  Residents and visitors to the busy port likely glimpsed his sign as they traversed the streets of the city.  Readers of the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury almost certainly noticed the woodcut that adorned the advertisements he ran in that newspaper.  It included the same elements as the sign that marked his location, a sun above a pair of breeches. The sun had a face that stared directly at readers as well as eight rays enclosed within a corona.  In addition, the initials “CR,” for Cornelius Ryan, appeared between the legs of the breeches.  The woodcut may or may not have replicated Ryan’s sign; at the very least, it strengthened the association that the leather dresser and breeches maker wanted consumers to have with his business and visual representations of it.
To achieve that, Ryan invested in commissioning a woodcut stylized for his exclusive use.  Most entrepreneurs did not go to such lengths when they advertised in colonial newspapers. Read more…

How a curator at the Museum of the American Revolution solved a nearly 250-year-old art mystery
by Rosa Cartagena, 26 March 2024 The Philadelphia Inquirer
An eyewitness depiction of the Continental Army passing through Philadelphia hung in a New York apartment for decades. Now, it’s part of the Museum of the American Revolution’s collection.
Art collector Judith Hernstadt knew that she was looking at something special. It was the mid-1970s and she was buying a batch of sketches from a New York antiques dealer. One charming 18th-century drawing caught her eye. It was a rare depiction of women with a mysterious inscription partially torn off: “An exact representation of a waggon belonging to the north carolina brigade of continental troops which passed thro Philadelphia august done by…”
The illustrator was unknown, but the dealer said the work came from a home in Cherry Hill that once belonged to a doctor who treated artists during the Revolutionary War. It turned out that the sketch contained enormous historical significance as one of maybe a dozen eyewitness depictions of the Continental Army that still exists; even rarer was its portrayal of women camp followers, the lesser-known group that joined their enlisted husbands or fathers on the road and helped with cooking and cleaning.
For some 40 years, it hung in Hernstadt’s bedroom on the Upper East Side. Though many curators visited and found other treasures  in her collection, that specific sketch did not resonate much until Matthew Skic came by last August —  his jaw dropped the moment he laid eyes on it. Read

more…

18th century umbrellas
By Sarah Murden 25 March 2024 All Things Georgian
As we are approaching April which is synonymous with showers, I thought I would take a fairly visual but humorous glimpse into the use of umbrellas in the Georgian era.
Umbrellas were not invented in Britain, but became popular in the late 18th century, with many initially being imported from India. An umbrella or parasol was used during the Georgian era by ladies to protect themselves from the rain but mainly to protect against the rays of the sun, but heaven forbid a gentlemen should even consider the use of such an items was definitely not the ‘done thing.’
In the 1750’s a gentleman by the name of Jonas Hanway appears to have been first person to use an umbrella to protect himself from the rain, and for which he was mocked mercilessly. Read

more…

UELAC Loyalist Directory: New Contributions
    Entries which have been added, or revised, this week, with thanks:

  • to Kevin Wisener who contributed information about Pvt.John Ramsay Jr

    who was a Disbanded soldier; not a UE Loyalist. John Jr was son of John Ramsay Sr, an original settler of Malpeque, Prince County, Prince Edward Island. John Jr. enlisted in 1775 in the Royal Highland Emigrant Regiment on the Island of Saint John and also served in the Loyal American Regiment. He settled after the war at Prince Town, Prince County, PEI

  • to Donna Sutherland who contributed information about NicholasJones Sr.

    from New Jersey and New York. After serving in the war, he resettled in Digby then Clements, Annapolis County, Nova Scotia. On December 15, 1788, Nicholas married Catherine Ditmars (1770-1854) in Annapolis, Nova Scotia. She was the daughter of Douwe Ditmars Jr. (1750-1831), also a United Empire Loyalist, and his wife Catherine Snedeker (1748-1833).

  • to Lynton “Bill” Stewart who contributed information about WilliamGallop

    from Boston, Suffolk, Massachusetts Bay, a ship’s captain who served as mate aboard HMS Greyhound 6 months (and as a Privateer?). He resettled at St. Andrews, NB.

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

Loyalist Gazette: Spring 2023 Issue Now Available to All
The digital copy of the Spring 2023 issue of the Loyalist Gazette is now available publicly from uelac.ca – following our policy of the Gazette being available to members for almost a year following publication.
Inside, you will find great content including articles such as

  • 95th Anniversary of the founding of the Victoria Branch UELAC
  • Re-enacting with the King’s Royal Yorkers
  • A HISTORY OF THE COLOURS OF THE Recreated King’s Royal Yorkers
  • A visit to Fort La Presentation
  • Canadian Regiment of Fencible Infantry A Brief History

Enjoy.
Bill Russell UE, Chair of the Communications Committee

In the News.

Grave concern for future of Bayview Cemetery Port Rowan ON after discovery of Indigenous artifacts
By J.P. Antonacci, 26 March 2024 Yahoo News
The accidental discovery of Indigenous artifacts on the grounds of Bayview Cemetery in Port Rowan could make future burials so expensive the cemetery would have to close.
Archeologists and First Nations monitors involved in habitat restoration along the Long Point Causeway noticed evidence of historical Indigenous settlement “lying in plain view” as they cut through the cemetery on Front Road to get to a nearby wetland, said David Drobitch, Norfolk’s supervisor of cemeteries, in a recent report to council.
Bayview, a United Empire Loyalist burial ground, dates to “roughly 1875,” Drobitch said. Read

more…

Events Upcoming

Col. John Butler Branch: “One Acadian Family’s Survival” Sat. April 6 @11:45 at Betty’s

    Saturday, April 6, 2024.  Elaine Gill, UE.  The Great Deportation of 1755:  the Story of One Acadian Family’s Survival.  Our own member Elaine Gill will relate one family’s story from a dark chapter of Canadian history, the expulsion of the Acadians from Nova Scotia in the 1750s.
The Colonel John Butler (Niagara) Branch meets at Betty’s Restaurant, Chippawa, at 11:45 for a lunch meeting.  Cost of the lunch is $30 for UELAC members and $35 for guests.  Cash only.  No credit cards.  If you plan to attend, please let us know in advance so that the restaurant can prepare.
Contact:  283corvette@gmail.com

Gov. Simcoe Branch Potluck Luncheon, Loyalist Stories, Auction Sat. April 6 @11:30 St. David’s Church

Enjoy getting together with others who have an interest in Canadian history
Learn more about some Loyalists who lived in it, and their descendants from Loyalist stories.
Eat well from the variety of good food at this potluck luncheon.
Acquire an item or three from an eclectic display of donated items in the auction
Win: A raffle and a door prize.
Visit Gov. Simcoe Branch meetings for details and registration

The Revolutionary War Conference 250 in the Mohawk Valley – June 14-16, 2024

Johnstown, NY
Bus Tour – “1774: The Rising Tide”  Friday 14 June. (only a few seats remaining)
In 1774, the politics of the Revolution had arrived in the Mohawk Valley with a vengeance. At the eastern end of the Mohawk another violent Liberty Pole riot was having a detrimental effect on the local citizens of Schenectady. Meanwhile further west along the Mohawk River, in Johnstown, events took a turn when Sir William Johnson passed away in July, thus starting a new chapter in political unrest.

Speakers include:

  • Shirley L. Green – Revolutionary Blacks: Discovering the Frank Brothers, Freeborn Men of Color, Soldiers of Independence
  • Shawn David McGhee – No Longer Subjects of the British King: The Political Transformation of Royal Subjects to Republican Citizens, 1774-1776

The Bus Tour will include several stops in both Schenectady and Johnstown, such as the Schenectady Stockade, Johnson Hall and more. Details and Registration.

From the Social Media and Beyond

  • Townsends
  • This week in History
    • 24 March 1765 London. The Quartering Act passed in the House of Commons. Forced American colonists to provide housing to occupying forces sent to control them. It specified the places & conditions in which  soldiers were to find room & board in America. Image
    • 29 Mar 1765 Richmond, VA. Patrick Henry denounces British tax policy & introduces the Virginia Resolves to the House of Burgesses. The key resolve affirms the colonial legislatures, not parliament have the right to tax Americans. Image
    • 25 Mar 1774 London.  British Parliament passed the Boston Port Act, closing the port  & demanding its residents pay for the nearly $1 million worth (in today’s money) of tea dumped into Boston Harbor during the Boston Tea Party of December 16, 1773. Image
    • 28 Mar 1774: London. The Journal of the House of Lords records this as the day the Boston Port Act was to “be committed to a committee of the whole House.” Image
    • 23 Mar 1775 Richmond, VA. Patrick Henry gave his famous, “Almighty God, I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death” speech to the Virginia Convention and then expounded on the need for military preparedness. Image
    • 25 Mar 1775 Richmond, VA. With Peyton Randolph presiding, the 2nd Virginia Convention, meeting at St. John’s Church, reacted to Patrick Henry’s speech and mandated each county raise a company of infantry and cavalry. Image
    • 27 Mar 1775 Thomas Jefferson was selected as a delegateto the 2nd Continental Congress

      , replacing Peyton Randolph. Other Virginia delegates are George Washington, Patrick Henry, Benjamin Harrison, Richard Henry Lee, & Edmund Pendleton. Image

    • 30 Mar 1775 London. King George III approves the New England Restraining Act, restricting the region to trade only with Britain & banning NE ships from the Atlantic fisheries. Image
    • 30 Mar 1775 Boston Gen Thomas Gage orders a brigade under Col Hugh Percy to make a show of force with a march to Cambridge & back. Militias set up a cannon at Watertown Bridge & tore up planks but offered no resistance. Image
    • 25 March 25 1776 Saint-Pierre, Canada. A battered American force under Benedict Arnold, recently defeated at the Battle of Quebec, attacked British headquarters Blais house & took the location. Image
    • 25 Mar 1776 Philadelphia, PA. To commemorate the British evacuation of Boston, the Continental Congress a gold medal to honor Gen George Washington. Image
    • 26 Mar 1776 Charleston, SC The General Assembly establishes a new government, replacing its colonial charter. John Rutledge is elected president, Henry Laurens as vice president & William Henry Drayton as chief justice. A key step towards independence. Image
    • 27 Mar 1776 Nantasket Roads, MA Last Royal navy ships depart the roads, 5 miles south of Boston & sail to Halifax, NS. A small flotilla of ships keeps a light blockade. Halifax would be the launching point for a naval invasion of NYC later that year. Image
    • 29 Mar 1776: “There is so much rascality, so much venality & corruption, so much avarice & ambition, such a rage for profit and commerce among all ranks and degrees of men even in America, that I sometimes doubt whether there is public virtue enough to support a republic.” – John Adams, 1776 Image
    • 29 Mar 1776, Gen George Washington appoints Maj Gen Israel Putnam commander of the troops in New York. In his new capacity, Putnam was expected to execute plans for the defense of New York City and its waterways. Putnam’s performance would prove uneven. Image
    • 23 Mar 1777 Peekskill, NY. Some 500 British troops sailed up the North (Hudson) & drove off the garrison of Fort Hill under Gen Alexander McDougal before occupying & burning the supply depot. Image
    • 24 Mar 1777 Peekskill, NY. After reinforcements led by NY Lt Col Marinus Willet, Gen McDougal ordered a bayonet charge, inflicting 15 killed & wounded redcoats. This drives off the British raiders who had occupied Fort Hill & burned the supply depot. Image
    • 26 Mar 1777 Lord Germain gives final instructions for the upcoming campaign to Gov Guy Carleton. Directing most forces in Canada to support Gen John Burgoyne‘s southward thrust to Albany & a smaller amount to Lt Col Barry St Leger‘s thrust from the west. Image
    • 26 Mar 1777 Philadelphia, PA. Continental Congress dismisses Commodore Esek Hopkins from the Continental Navy for disrespect and failure (refusal) to follow orders. Image
    • 27 Mar 1777 Narragansett Bay, RI The frigate Providence under Commodore Abraham Whipple slips past a gauntlet of 11 British ships but frigate Columbus under Capt Hoystead Hacker is driven ashore by a British squadron off Point Judith.  Image
    • 28 Mar 1778 York Meeting at the Court House, Continental Congress authorizes Polish General Kazimierz Pulaski to raise a cavalry legion.  Image
    • 30 Mar 1778 Congress stipulates that Gen Charles Lee & Ethan Allen be exchanged for British Gen Richard Prescott. It also stipulates that Loyalists in the British Army be treated as traitors. This cancels Gen Washington’s earlier agreement with Gen Howe.  Image.
    • 29 Mar 1779 Congress endorsed the “Regulations for the Order and Discipline of the Troops of the United States” by Baron Von Steuben.  “The Blue Book” had 8 engraved illustrations by Pierre Charles L’Enfant.  Became the drill manual for US Army until 1812. Image
    • 23 March 1780 Major Christopher Stuart‘s 100-strong detachment checks a 500-strong British and Hessian raid on Paramus and Hackensack, NJ. As the raiders fell back, they plundered homes along the way despite the small American force on their heels. Image
    • 24 Mar 1781 Beattie’s Mill, SC. Col Elijah Clarke & James McCall’s militia attacked & defeated a band of Loyalists led by Maj James Dunlap., killing 35 and capturing 40. Dunlap, a notorious partisan, is murdered after his capture. Image
    • 26 Mar 1781 Ramsey’s Mills, NC. Gen Nathanael Greene’s army resumes offensive operations against Lt ColFrancis Rawdon’s British forces

      in SC & GA. Greene’s plan is to roll up the numerous garrisons spread across both states, destroying them in detail. Image

    • 28 Mar 1781 Sampit Bridge SC Troops under the command of Gen. Francis (Swamp Fox) Marion skirmish and defeat troops commanded by British Lt. Col. John Tadwell-Watson. Image
    • 24 Mar 1782 Tom’s River, NY Royal Navy landing party storms the notorious privateering center. A desperate fight at the Blockhouse results in the capture of Capt Joshua Huddy, who is hanged by Loyalists. This raised a diplomatic furor & stalled peace talks Image
    • 27 Mar 1794, Congress authorized the construction of 6 ships to form a US Navy after Washington warned, “if we desire to secure peace…it must be known, that we are at all times ready for War.” Since then, the US Navy  has grown into the world’s greatest marine force. Image
  • Clothing and Related:
    • Among the exciting items featured in the upcoming exhibition “combing history flax and linen in NH” are these indigolinen stays

      on special loan from @kensingtonhxsociety They may have been worn in NH by Sarah Green (1746-1804), c1760s-1780s.

    • The DissneyHub exhibit on fashion from 1550-2015 focused on how silhouettes have changed throughout history to amplify, reduce, elongate, profile, or reveal certain body parts. It is a unique and informative way of looking at things. For example, here we have a 1760 court gown,
    • Thursday spotlight. Stomacher, a decorative panel of fabric, usually triangular, worn to fill the space between the front edges of an open gown. This beautifully preserved example is British, ca 1720
    • The great outdoors is too swamp like & cold today so how about a bit of beautiful introspection with this fly braid trimmed sleeve? The colour palette feels contemporary but it dates to the 1770s, a muted shade entwined in golden filigree to cheer up a gloomy Thursday
    • I went to Disseny Hub Barcelona and saw their exhibition on the history of silhouettes and fashion from 1550-2015! More on it to come but here is just a taster with a 1735-40gown from Valencian fabric of silk cannele, damask and ribbons
  • Miscellaneous
    • Lace as fine as a spider’s web.
      This lace shawl, crafted from the wool of Shetland sheep, exemplifies the artistry of Shetland lace knitting.
      Traditionally, such shawls were passed through a wedding ring to show off their delicacy and flexibility.
      Knitted with fine steel needles, known as ‘pins,’ the open patterns which imitated fine lace were invented by Shetland knitters and named after local features, such as ‘Ears o’ Grain’, ‘Fir Cone’ and ‘Print o’ the Wave’.
      Hand-knittedone-ply wool shawl

      , made by Amy Johnston, Baltasound, Shetland, 1935

 

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