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The Daily Life Of Colonists During The Revolutionary War

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The Daily Life Of Colonists During The Revolutionary War

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This is a great book that does a generally good job at showing how colonists lived leading up to the war. It introduces students to that historic lifestyle.

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the daily life of colonists during the revolutionary war - history stories for children children's history books

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history - united states - colonial & revolutionary periods

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The Daily Life of Colonists During the Revolutionary War - History Stories for Children Children's History Books: Baby Professor: 9781541911123:

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Find The Daily Life of Colonists During the Revolutionary War - History Stories for Children Children's History Books - by Baby Professor ( 9781541911123 ) Paperback and more. Browse more book selections in History - United States - Colonial & Revolutionary Periods books at Books-A-Million's online book store

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Life of Camp Followers during the American Revolution 

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Life of Camp Followers during the American Revolution 

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Several pictures depicting the life of female camp followers

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This is just a great initial website giving some history to each of some of the more popular women of the Revolutionary War

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10 Amazing Women of the Revolutionary War

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10 Amazing Women of the Revolutionary War

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Here is a second list covering several of the less popularized women who played key roles.

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This is just simply a great overview of the roles they played through the war and why women during the Revolution were so pivotal.

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Women played critical roles in the American Revolution and subsequent War for Independence. Historian Cokie Roberts considers these women our Founding Mothers.

Women like Abigail Adams, the wife of Massachusetts Congressional Delegate John Adams, influenced politics as did Mercy Otis Warren. It was Abigail Adams who famously and voluminously corresponded with her husband while he was in Philadelphia, reminding him that in the new form of government that was being established he should "remember the ladies" or they too, would foment a revolution of their own. Warren, just as politically astute as Adams, was a prolific writer, not only recording her thoughts about the confluence of events swirling around Boston but also dabbling in playwriting. She was a fierce devotee to the patriot cause, writing in December 1774, four months before the war broke out at Lexington and Concord, "America stands armed with resolution and virtue, but she still recoils at the idea of drawing the sword against the nation from whence she derived her origin." In 1805 she published History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution.

Women often followed their husbands in the Continental Army. These women, known as camp followers, often tended to the domestic side of army organization, washing, cooking, mending clothes, and providing medical help when necessary. Sometimes they were flung into the vortex of battle. Such was the case of Mary Ludwig Hays, better known as Molly Pitcher, who earned fame at the Battle of Monmouth in 1778. Hays first brought soldiers water from a local well to quench their thirst on an extremely hot and humid day and then replaced her wounded husband at his artillery piece, firing at the oncoming British. In a similar vein, Margaret Corbin was severely wounded during the British assault on Fort Washington in November 1776 and left for dead alongside her husband, also an artilleryman, until she was attended by a physician. She lived, though her wounds left her permanently disabled. History recalls her as the first American female to receive a soldier's lifetime pension after the war.

Phillis Wheatley, an enslaved African American living in Boston, took up the pen and wrote poetry, becoming one of the first published female authors in America and the first African American woman to be published. Her 1773 collection Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral was popular on both sides of the Atlantic. Her poems focused on patriotism and human virtues. She even wrote a poem about George Washington, "To His Excellency, George Washington" in 1775, which she personally read to him at his Cambridge headquarters in 1776 while he was with the Continental Army in Massachusetts besieging the British. Her visit was the result of an invitation from Washington. Wheatley obtained her freedom upon the death of her master in 1778.

New York teenager Sybil Ludington, was the female equivalent of Paul Revere, though she rode twice as far as Revere and in a driving rainstorm in April, 1777. Her ride took her through Putnam and Dutchess Counties, New York where she roused local militia to fight a British force that had attacked nearby Danbury, Connecticut. The Daughters of the American Revolution erected a heroic equestrian statue to Ludington in Carmel, New York along the forty-mile route she traveled.

The story of one of the most famous revolutionary women, Betsy Ross, is likely just that - a story. Ross is often credited with sewing the first American flag, thirteen red and white stripes with thirteen stars in a field of blue in the corner. Subsequent research, however, shows that the story only surfaced around the Centennial, 1876, and was promoted by Ross's grandson William Canby. Given that Congress passed the Flag Act in June of 1777, nearly a year after Ross is purported to have made the flag, the story is likely apocryphal.

As wives of the common soldier often followed the Continental Army so, too, did the wives of general officers. General Henry Knox, the Continental Army's Artillery Commander married the vivacious and popular Bostonian Lucy Flucker, the daughter of Bostonian Loyalists. Once she and Henry were married, all ties between her and her family were cut. Henry and Lucy were devoted to one another and she would join him whenever she could while he was on campaign. She endured the bitter encampment at Valley Forge and became fast friends with the wife of General Nathanael Greene, the equally popular Kitty. George Washington's wife, Martha Custis, spent every winter with her husband wherever the army was camped. In fact, once George Washington left his beloved Mount Vernon estate in 1775 to attend the 2nd Continental Congress in Philadelphia, he did not return to his home until 1781, as the combined American and French Army maneuvered south from the city of New York to Yorktown, Virginia, where the war was eventually won. The wives of generals were as equally helpful in matters of caring and providing compassion to sick and wounded soldiers, as were the wives of the common soldiers.

Ordinary women also endured the horrors of the battlefield when those fights came to their doorstep. Sally Kellogg of Vermont and her family escaped the gods of War in 1776 when the War for Independence found its way into the northern reaches of upstate New York and Benedict Arnold's makeshift fleet and the British Navy clashed on Lake Champlain during the Battle of Valcour Island. As the Kellogg family made good its escape by water, Sally's family "fell in between Arnold's fleet and the British fleet," she later recalled. As the family rowed to safety at Fort Ticonderoga, the exchange of gunfire between ships could be seen and heard Sally recalled, "but happy for us the balls went over us. We heard them whis." Nevertheless, the war continued to follow the Kellogg family. A year later, after having relocated to Bennington, Vermont the Kelloggss were once more forced to be witnesses to carnage and once again upon recollection Sally claimed the results were, "a sight to behold. There was not a house [in Bennington's vicinity] but was stowed full of wounded.

Not unlike women eighty years later who disguised themselves as men to serve in the armies of the Civil War, women of the Revolutionary Era also itched to get into the fight, do their part for the cause, and be engaged in a historical moment. One of the best examples of a woman who disguised herself as a man to fight in the Continental Army was Deborah Sampson from Uxbridge, Massachusetts. Amazingly, she also has a paper trail concerning her combat service in the army, where she fought under the alias of Robert Shurtliff, the name of her deceased brother, in the light infantry company of the Fourth Massachusetts Regiment. She mustered into service in the spring of 1782 and saw action in Westchester County, New York just north of the City of New York where she was wounded in her thigh and forehead. Not wanting her identity to be revealed during medical care she permitted physicians to treat her head wound and then slipped out of the field hospital unnoticed, where she extracted one of the bullets from her thigh with a penknife and sewing needle. The other bullet was lodged too deep and her leg never fully healed. Her identity was finally revealed during the summer of 1783 when she contracted a fever while on duty in Philadelphia. The physician who treated her kept her secret and cared for her. After the Treaty of Paris, she was given an honorable discharge from the army by Henry Knox. Like other veterans of the Continental Army, she was continually petitioning the state and federal government for her service pension. She later married and had three children settling down in Sharon, Massachusetts. To help make ends meet she often gave public lectures about her wartime service. By the time she died in 1827, she was collecting minimal pensions for her service from Massachusetts and the federal government. In her memory a statue stands today outside the public library, in Sharon, honoring her Revolutionary War service and sacrifices.

Many women of all stripes and from all backgrounds recognized the value of the American cause and stepped up to serve the cause of the new nation as best they could.

Further Reading:

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Women played critical roles in the American Revolution and subsequent War for Independence. Historian Cokie Roberts considers these women our Founding...

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Causes of the Revolution: Early America (Primary Source Readers)

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Causes of the Revolution: Early America (Primary Source Readers)

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This is a great lead into the war itself. This book does a thorough job introducing students to the lead up and its more important causes and issues.

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First Edition of Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral

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First Edition of Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral

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Phillis Wheatley, an enslaved African American living in Boston, took up the pen and wrote poetry, becoming one of the first published female authors in America and the first African American woman to be published. Her 1773 collection Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral was popular on both sides of the Atlantic.  Her poems focused on patriotism and human virtues. She even wrote a poem about George Washington.

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UT Libraries has purchased first editions of two historically significant works-a book of poems by slave Phillis Wheatley and the autobiography of Black Hawk, a Sauk chief who waged war on the United States in 1832.

Wheatley's Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, published in 1773, was the first published book by an African-American woman. UT's copy of the book is particularly noteworthy because it contains a rare inscription by the poet herself.

Black Hawk's Life of Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak, or Black Hawk, published in 1833, was transcribed and translated into English from the testimony of the Sauk chief. It was one of the first Native American autobiographies published in the United States.

Both books have been added to the library's special collections. Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral was purchased from a private collector and Black Hawk's autobiography from an antiquarian book dealer.

"These rare editions are far more than prized artifacts to be placed on a shelf. They can help us understand our past," said Chris Caldwell, humanities services librarian at UT, who works closely with humanities scholars and understands the types of materials that inform their research. "Researchers can, for instance, assess an author's changing status by studying changes to printings of their works over time. Such studies are particularly important for these minority voices."

Wheatley was seven years old when she was captured by slavers in West Africa, transported to America, and sold at auction in Boston's slave market to John and Susanna Wheatley. John Wheatley gave her the name of the slave ship, the Phillis, aboard which she crossed the Atlantic. The Wheatley family began tutoring her in English, Latin, and the Bible, and the young slave quickly displayed a facility for learning.

The verses in Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral are filled with classical allusions. Many are elegies to the great men of her day. Wheatley was emancipated in 1773, but her life as a free woman was brief. She died in childbirth in 1784 at age thirty-one. Her work, a literary achievement by an enslaved African, influenced the discourse on slavery in America.

Chief Black Hawk's recounting of his life and the Sauk insurrection of 1832 influenced another debate, over the rights of America's indigenous peoples. White settlers began encroaching upon the Sauk nation's ancestral homelands in the early nineteenth century, challenging the Sauk's sovereign right to their land. The Sauk and other tribes living east of the Mississippi River were pushed west of the river.

The chief led a fight against approaching US armies, known as the Black Hawk War. Black Hawk's small band had several successes before a disastrous defeat at the Battle of Bad Axe. Black Hawk escaped capture at Bad Axe but later surrendered. He and other imprisoned leaders were held for a few months before being released. Black Hawk's autobiography, dictated to a government interpreter, was published in 1833. It became an instant best-seller, going through five printings within a year.

Katy Chiles, the UT English professor who brought Black Hawk's work to the libraries' attention, said she appreciates the cultural significance and research value of both first-edition books. Her research on early American literatures and print culture studies involves looking at early editions of rare texts and analyzing how each different publication presented itself to readers in different and important ways.

"Access to first editions is key to enabling this kind of analysis," said Chiles, who teaches African-American, Native American, and early American literature. Life of Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak, or Black Hawk is a crucially important book in understanding and appreciating what indigenous peoples have done with print."

Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral and Life of Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak or Black Hawk are now available to scholars of American history and literature in the UT Libraries' Special Collections. The acquisitions complement the UT Libraries' holdings of early American imprints.

Learn more about the works online.

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CONTACT:
Chris Caldwell, UT Libraries (865-974-0019, ccaldwe9@utk.edu)

Katy Chiles, UT Department of English (865-974-6945, kchiles1@utk.edu)

Lola Alapo (865-974-3993, lola.alapo@tennessee.edu)

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UT Libraries Acquires First-Edition Works of Phillis Wheatley and Black Hawk

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UT Libraries has purchased first editions of two historically significant works-a book of poems by slave Phillis Wheatley and the autobiography of Black Hawk, a Sauk chief who waged war on the United States in 1832. Wheatley's Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, published in 1773, was th

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Owned by the same family for the last 200 years, this was the first flag to bear the white stripes and taken into battle.

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Iconic American flag that was first to feature 13 white stripes and was marched into battle in Revolutionary War is expected to raise $3 million at auction

Forster Flag is earliest existing version that represents original states

Silk flag remained in same Massachusetts family from 1775 to 1975

Design has six strips of white fabric on one side and seven on the other

An iconic American flag that was marched into battle during the Revolutionary War in 1775 is to be auctioned in New York.

The Forster Flag, the earliest known surviving example to feature 13 white stripes representing the United Colonies, is expected to sell for more than $3 million.

The strips of white silk - six on one side and seven on the other - still stand out proudly against the red background they were sewn on to 239 years ago.

As well as being the oldest American flag, it is also one of only authentic colors surviving from the Revolutionary War.

Unfurling of the Stars and Stripes

It was carried into battle by the Manchester Company of the Essex County Militia, as they responded to an alarm for the first battle on April 19, 1775.

As they marched to battle, the men carried aloft the flag, which has seven white stripes on one side, and six on the other.

Although the the troops carrying the flag did not make it into battle that day, the color they carried has remained an iconic part of American history.

For 200 years it was owned by the family of its original owner Samuel Forster, before being bequeathed to the Flag Heritage Foundation in Massachusetts.

Proceeds from its sale, at Doyles in New York today, will be used to raise funds for the Whitney Smith Flag Research Collection at the University of Texas in Austin.

The flag remains unaltered from 1775 and, according to its auction catalog entry, is in 'a remarkable state of preservation'.

Some small stains and splits along the fold were noted, and the auction house said 'the flag is worn in predictable places' along the end and hoist.

John Huss, president of the Manchester Historical Museum, said he longed for the flag to return to its home territory.

'It's something we would love to have,' he told the Gloucester Times, adding that the museum planned to make a bid for it.

He added that the flags carried into battle were hugely important for soldiers, who would be able to use the flag to find their way back to the regiment.

The flag has long been an important part of American history and even appeared on a stamp collection in 2000 when the U.S. Postal Service commemorated the evolution of the Stars and Stripes.

The origins of the Forster Flag are unknown, but several experts have suggested that it once had a small British Union flag sewed into the top left corner.

It is believed the Union flag was later pulled off and replaced by the 13 stripes.

Some have even suggested that the flag had belonged to a British regiment and was captured on the first day of the American Revolution.

The flag was due to be auctioned on Wednesday morning but no details have yet been released about its final sale price or new owners.

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Oldest stars and stripes expected to sell for $3 million at auction

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Forster Flag is earliest existing version that represents original states Silk flag remained in same Massachusetts family from 1775 to 1975 Design has six strips of white fabric on one side and seven on the other An iconic American flag that was marched into battle during the Revolutionary War in 1775 is to be auctioned in New York.

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Here students and teachers can jointly and in class, take a virtual tour of her house.

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A history of the house at 239 Arch Street where Betsy Ross once lived and where she may have created the first U.S. flag