250 and Counting

What can I tell you about George Bibb that Mike hasn’t already shared with you? (Also: wait—Mike has a research staff ? I don’ t have a research staff and this show was my idea! I think he’s getting his students to do his homework for him.) (For the record, that’s a joke. Mike and I each do our own research on these shows.) George Bibb was a generally wealthy guy, but in 18...

The Battle of White Plains was long, and it was complicated, and once things settled down, both armies needed a little time to regroup and figure out what happened. It was clear that, despite the relative gains for the British, the casualties were comparable (at worst) to those of the Americans. General Howe’s aim in not pursuing matters further was to await the arrival of reinforcements. Co...

The Battle of White Plains, like so many others we’ve described, was technically a victory for the British, but the overall cost and/or final result leaves everyone wondering whether the win was worth it. As we’ve noted repeatedly, the objective of all this activity in New York was for the British to take control of the Hudson Valley and the river all the way up to Canada, thus cutting...

John Paul Jones (Mike would have me note it’s not the guy from Led Zeppelin) led a relatively short life, but it was certainly eventful. Jones was born in Scotland and became a sailor at age 13, where he served on multiple merchantmen, including a few slave ships. Jones fled to the Virginia colony to avoid arrest after killing a mutinous subordinate and joined the Continental Navy in 1775. L...

While Benjamin Franklin departed for France on this day, actually having Franklin in France wouldn’t happen until early December. Remember, he was traveling by ship and it took a few weeks to cross the Atlantic Ocean. What’s more, as Mike mentions, it would take him over a year to secure the support that we needed. In fact, I cheated a little on the artwork, which depicts Franklin pres...

King George III offered up some naval incentives throughout 1776. Seamen who enlisted would get bonuses depending on their level of experience, but the Royal Navy wasn’t above impressing sailors into service, either. However, it’s also worth noting that King George also put some disincentives out there as well. For instance, in November of 1776 he forbade British mariners and seafaring...

White Plains today is the county seat of Westchester County, the county that directly abuts New York City to the north and connects it to the mainland. But back when the Dutch started settling in the area, starting at the south end of Manhattan, the region was being used for farming by the Weckquaeskeck tribe of the Wappingers, and was called “Quarropas” by those people. (And I knew Mi...

Holding the show to two minutes exactly (because we also have a few radio listeners) sometimes makes it tough to tell the whole story of the rules behind en taille , or entail. Because, you see, en taille doesn’t just refer to land in Virginia; it refers to all property. And that includes slaves. And Jefferson, who was absolutely a slave owner (he inherited a little over 50 slaves when he wa...

Oddly enough, having an episode about the Battle of Mamaroneck is one of those times when it pays to have grown up in New York. I saw that note in our common research document, then I clocked the date and said to myself, “No way is Mike going to know how to pronounce that.” So I gave him a little coaching. We’ve done this before, with each of us having to coach the other on pronu...

Calling George Izard a “Nepo Baby” might be laying it on a little bit thick, but it’s pretty clear he came from some privileged people. His mother was Alice DeLancey. She was the niece of New York Governor James DeLancey and a descendant of Stephanus Van Cortlandt and Gertrude Schuyler. And if you’re paying attention as you move around New York, you’ll realize that th...

The Delaware Assembly was ahead of most other states in our fledgling nation, in part because they’d declared independence before anyone else. Back in June, as you may remember , Delaware declared its independence simultaneously from Britain and from Pennsylvania, of which it was considered a part. (This is why Pennsylvania is the only one of the thirteen colonies to be entirely landlocked,...

Before I get into the events of New Rochelle, I have to confess that I’m kind of hating today’s artwork, and it’s not even published yet. Well, if I have to look at it then so do you. They can’t all be gems. The Battle at Pell’s Point had the Continental Army putting up more resistance than any reasonable British general should expect, so General Howe knew that reinfo...

The Battle of Pell’s Point, also known as the Battle of Pelham, was an important battle of the Revolution that doesn’t get the attention that so many others get, largely because of the When and Where of the battle, and the fact that it wasn’t a huge win or loss for either side. What it did do, however, was provide some cover and distraction from the fact that Washington was still...

When Washington’s Council of War (with a single exception) determined that sticking around New York City was a bad idea, the next step was deciding which way to go, and how to go about it. To a certain extent, the decision was made for them, because the British had pretty well sewed up the Hudson River, which meant that getting across and into New Jersey stealthily would be problematic. The...

The Most Honourable Order of the Bath is a British order of chivalry that was first created by King George I in 1725. It’s typically bestowed by a monarch based on the advice of His/Her Majesty’s government. When General William Howe received his order, there was a single class called the Knight Companion. However, in 1815 this class was discontinued in favor of three separate classes...

By the time Charles Lee returned to duty, the Continental Army in New York was in a sad state of affairs. Many men had been injured or deserted. Supplies were low. Ammunition was low. Morale was low. And the British were up in the Bronx, gearing up for…something, who knows what. Lee had, of course, missed all the action in Brooklyn and Manhattan, so he brought a new perspective to the table....

Charles Lee was born in Great Britain and only came to British America in 1773, when he purchased an estate in western Virginia. It wasn’t his first time in America; he’d fought for the British in the French and Indian War and married the daughter of a Mohawk chief. Lee was injured in 1758 during an attack on Fort Ticonderoga. The following year he was part of the capture of Fort Niaga...

The Battle of Split Rock is really just a continuation of the Battle of Valcour, and a lot of it takes place in a location called Button Mould Bay (or Buttonmold Bay). So why is it called the Battle of Split Rock? That’s a fine question. On the western shore of Lake Champlain, just north of Button Mould Bay, is a formation called Split Rock Mountain. It rises sharply from the lake to an alti...

The Battle of Throgs Neck, or Throg’s Point, or a number of other names, was part of a move intended to trap Washington’s forces through flanking them from the north while Washington concentrated on the troops already in front of him on Manhattan Island. Washington did anticipate that this might happen, and sent American troops that way, but part of the problem that he had was that the...

The Battle of Valcour Island didn’t really take place on the island; rather it was in Valcour Bay, a strait between New York and Valcour Island, in Lake Champlain. After the failed invasion of Quebec the Continental forces retreated south to Fort Ticonderoga, at the south end of Lake Champlain. As they retreated they destroyed materiel they couldn’t use and left it behind in the relati...

The town created by Henry Shultz turned out to be as ephemeral as the man himself. Don’t go looking for Hamburg, South Carolina, because you’ll be sorely disappointed. At best what remains is a ghost town, unoccupied since 1929 after several floods came through. Perhaps the most notable one was in 1911, after which nearby cities built levees to protect themselves, but there wasn’...

It took a month to figure it out, but the British ship movement up the Hudson River was a sign that they’d finally decided how they were going to implement their plans. Rather than concentrating on New York City, which was going to be problematic because George Washington’s troops were pretty dug in over in Harlem Heights, Admiral Howe made the choice that ran closer to the original pl...

There are several names for the battle about to happen here, depending on how you view the geography; Battle of Throgs Neck, Battle of Throgs Point, Battle of Pells Point and believe it or not that isn’t even half of the total names given to this one conflict. After George Washington’s successful defense of Harlem Heights, which was a good place to be from a defensive standpoint, the C...

Before I tell you a little bit about the First Virginia General Assembly of 1776 (which I do have to differentiate with a date, so it’s not confused with the First Virginia General Assembly of 1619), I wanted to spend a moment on the show’s cover artwork. For some reason it was in putting today’s art together that I noticed the strong similarity between today’s artwork and...

We’ve talked so much about Silas Deane that I don’t have much new to share in this space, so I’ll tell you a little about his house. The house in today’s cover art was completed in 1769. It’s located in Wethersfield, Connecticut. The facade is asymmetrical because there was a porch at one time. Deane designed the house specifically to impress people and to project an...