BEAUTY and the BEAST!

Was Peggy innocent or guilty?  Come to the Wednesday, May 22 meeting of the American Revolution Round Table of Richmond and learn about “Treacherous Beauty: Peggy Shippen, The Woman Behind Benedict Arnold’s Plot to Betray America” with Stephen Case.  Mr. Case, along with Mark Jacob, is the author of the recent book of the same title.  That title certainly gives you a hint.  

Please note that, due to the University of Richmond’s summer dining schedule, THIS MEETING WILL BEGIN AT 6 PM, with dinner from 5 – 6 PM.  This is the usual May schedule.  We meet in the Heilman Dining Center, #34 on the campus map.  Directions and a campus map are at http://www.richmond.edu/visit/maps/index.html.  Please bring a friend.



Carl Zellner, Bruce Venter, and I had a wonderful lunch last week with Rick and Agnes Wiggin from Lincoln, MA.  Rick is the author of Embattled Farmers.  He has been very involved in Massachusetts revolutionary history.  Here are details.

Embattled Farmers: 

Campaigns and Profiles of Revolutionary Soldiers from Lincoln, Massachusetts, 1775-1783 

By Richard C. Wiggin



They were ordinary farmers, laborers, merchants, tradesmen, slaves, and former slaves, the cross-section of a typical eighteenth-century New England farming community. But when faced with the loss of their cherished liberties and long-standing tradition of self-government, they were swept up in an epic struggle against long odds. These are the forgotten men who fought the American Revolution.

 Meticulously researched, Embattled Farmers traces the footsteps of 252 individual men—all connected with the Lincoln, Massachusetts, but with family and economic ties throughout New England—who served as Patriot soldiers. Through repeated enlistments, they served at Lexington and Concord, at the Siege of Boston, and during the campaigns to Ticonderoga, Canada, New York, Saratoga, the Hudson Valley, The Jerseys, Valley Forge, and Yorktown.

Embattled Farmers is the only known work that identifies and profiles all known Revolutionary soldiers from any given community in the nation. It examines the Revolutionary War from the ground up—from individual records, rather than aggregate data.  It brings to light many stories for the first time, enriching and humanizing our overall understanding of the Revolutionary War with specific details and biographical data.  

Robert  Gross, author of The Minutemen and Their World, writes “Thanks to Wiggin, the American Revolution in Massachusetts stands out as a triumph of popular mobilization and as a symbol of what citizens can accomplish in common when motivated by a willing spirit of self-sacrifice.”  Mel Bernstein, moderator of  the minute man ARRT, believes that Embattled Farmers may be  a prototype for future investigations of the Revolution as it played out in other communities throughout colonial America.  


We all recommend this new book to you, as does our Minute Man ARRT friend Mel Bernstein.  It’s available through the Lincoln Historical Society http://lincolnhistoricalsociety.org/Pages/Embattled%20Farmers%20flier.pdf, as well as Amazon http://www.amazon.com/Embattled-Farmers-Campaigns-Revolutionary-Massachusetts/dp/0944856101/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1368477425&sr=1-1&keywords=embattled+farmers


Under the category of self promotion (yes, probably shameless), here’s a June 22 New Jersey tour that I’ll be leading on The Cockpit of the American Revolution II http://cwea.net/programs/1306-cockpit-american-revolution-field-and-walking-tour-sites-north-and-central-new-jersey- 


Finally, this exciting news from Debby Padgett of the Jamestown – Yorktown Foundation

CORNERSTONE DEDICATED, LOGO ADOPTED
FOR AMERICAN REVOLUTION MUSEUM AT YORKTOWN

YORKTOWN, Va., May 10, 2013 – With a newly created logo on display, a cornerstone was dedicated today for the American Revolution Museum at Yorktown, which will replace the Yorktown Victory Center, a museum of the American Revolution operated by the state’s Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation.

University of Virginia Professor A. E. Dick Howard, Virginia Secretary of Education Laura W. Fornash, and Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation and York County leaders spoke before the unveiling of the 12- by 24-inch marble cornerstone for an 80,000-square-foot museum building that soon will begin to take shape.

“When we tell the story of the American Revolution, as it will be told in the new museum,” Professor Howard said in his address, “we’re also telling the story that resonates everywhere that people yearn for accountable government, the rule of the law, and the freedom of the human spirit.”

“School systems and museums have been long-standing partners in student education,” Secretary Fornash said.  “As new education models are tried and tested, and as reforms in our educational systems are implemented more broadly, the new American Revolution Museum at Yorktown will certainly be an example for what works in education.”

A logo for the new museum incorporating the name with patriotic imagery of a soaring eagle and stars, in red and blue on a white background, was adopted May 9 by the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation Board of Trustees and Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation, Inc., Board of Directors along with a new logo for Jamestown Settlement, a museum of 17th-century Virginia.  The new Yorktown museum logo will be used in early awareness initiatives.  Full implementation of both logos – designed by BCF, a Virginia Beach brand communications firm specializing in the travel industry – will begin in 2016, the year the transition from Yorktown Victory Center to American Revolution at Yorktown will be complete.     

The American Revolution Museum at Yorktown will chronicle the Revolution from the beginnings of colonial unrest to the early national period and consider its meaning and impact.  The project encompasses reorganization of the 22-acre site; a new building to house expanded exhibition galleries, classrooms and support functions; and expansion and relocation of the existing re-created Continental Army encampment and Revolution-period farm.  Total cost of planning and major components is estimated at $50 million.  Building and exhibit construction and renovations to the site are funded by the Commonwealth of Virginia.  Private donations will support elements of gallery and outdoor exhibits and educational resources.

While exhibits and parking availability will be impacted at various stages of construction, which started in 2012, the Yorktown Victory Center will continue in daily operation while the transition to American Revolution Museum at Yorktown is under way.

For more information, visit www.historyisfun.org.


I hope to see you at the next meeting.  Thanks.

Bill Welsch

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