March 2023

Greetings! Our next meeting is to be a hybrid meeting on Wednesday, March 8. We will be meeting in person at the Mount Vernon Inn at 6 p.m. (social hour) and 6:30 p.m. (dinner). For those who want to attend remotely, the Zoom meeting will start at 7 p.m. or so. Please let me know by responding to me if you would like to attend the meeting in-person (which we much prefer) or by Zoom.

If you can attend in-person, please fill out the attachment, indicate if you want meat or salmon for dinner, and mail it soon to Richard Rankin at the address indicated, with a check included, or email it to him and pay at the door (at brandywinecreek@aol.com).
If you can only attend by Zoom, I will email you a Zoom link to the meeting the day of the meeting. Feel free to share this email with a friend who or family member whom you think may be interested.

Our next speaker will be Eugene A. Procknow, a member of our ARRT. He will be speaking on his book, William Hunter, Finding Free Speech: The Son of a British Soldier Who Became an Early American (Oxford Southern, 2022). In June 1798, President John Adams signed the now infamous Alien & Sedition Acts to suppress political dissent. Facing imminent personal risks, a gutsy Kentucky newspaper editor ran the first editorial denouncing the law's attempt to stifle the freedom of the press. Almost immediately, government lawyers recommended his arrest and prosecution. That editor was William Hunter, amazingly, the son of a British soldier. During the American Revolution, he accompanied his father on a campaign to fight the American Rebels. Witnessing first-hand the terrors of combat and twice experiencing capture, Hunter wrote the only surviving account written by a child of a British soldier during the American Revolution. Previously unknown, the journal is one of the most important document discoveries in recent years. Remarkably immigrating to an enemy country, Hunter started the second newspaper west of the Alleghenies in Pennsylvania. Moving to Kentucky's capital, Hunter spoke his mind as a newspaper editor, took entrepreneurial risks, and helped start educational and civic institutions. Later, Hunter became an elected Kentucky representative, a staunch Andrew Jackson supporter, and moved to Washington, DC, to root out fraud and waste in Jackson’s administration. Beyond the well-known founders, William Hunter represents a previously underappreciated community leader who made essential contributions to developing democratic and civic institutions in Early America.

Gene Procknow’s passion for the American War of Independence emanates from living among Revolutionary War sites in Boston, New Jersey, and Vermont. His research includes interpreting “the politics of command” among the Continental Army major generals, and in Ethan Allen and the creation of Vermont. He is the author of two books—in addition to the William Hunter book, there is The Mad River Gazetteer, which traces the naming of prominent Vermont place names after Revolutionary War patriots. Additionally, Gene has been a regular contributor to the Journal of the American Revolution since its founding in 2013. Procknow’s website, www.geneprocknow.com, researching the American Revolution, aids students and researchers. Gene holds a Masters in American History from Norwich University. He is married with two historian sons and lives in Washington, DC.

To read Gene’s book before the meeting, you can go here: Amazon.com: William Hunter - Finding Free Speech: A British Soldier’s Son Who Became an Early American: 9781620065730: Procknow, Eugene A: Books

Here are some other DC events:

Bob Thompson, who lives in our area and has attended some of our Zoom meetings, has written a very good book called Revolutionary Roads, Searching for the War that Made America Independent . . . and All the Places It could have Gone Terribly Wrong. This book is in the tradition of Tony Horwitz, a travel log to battlefields of the American Revolution. Over the past seven years, Bob Thompson put 20,000 miles on the family car, hung out with dozens of fascinating history obsessives, logged thousands of hours of research, deconstructed countless myths, and wrote what is, in the words of one of his early readers, “a superb book and a flat-out joy to read.” He often is taken on tours by experts of the battlefield he is visiting and I found these parts to be very enlightening. Bob will be appearing at Politics and Prose bookstore on Monday, February 20 at 7 pm. He will be interviewed about the book with his friend and former Washington Post colleague Glenn Frankel. Details are here: Bob Thompson — Revolutionary Roads: Searching for the War That Made America Independent...and All the Places It Could Have Gone Terribly Wrong - with Glenn Frankel — at Conn Ave | Politics and Prose Bookstore (politics-prose.com)

Historic Annapolis (MD) is hosting Glenn Williams. His presentation is titled, “The Real First President of the United States.” From their web site: “The presentation explains and answers the question on whether Maryland’s own John Hanson, as the first president of the United Stated under the Articles of Confederation, should or should not be considered the nation’s “first president” rather than George Washington. In addition, it will also present the argument why the federal holiday observed on the third Monday in February is not and should not be called “Presidents Day.” Note: You Have To Register In Advance To Be Able To View This. It costs $15 to participate. To Register, go to: https://6324.blackbaudhosting.com/6324/tickets?tab=2&txobjid=4ee3f11a-b0df-45d6-9b49-49bb3ccb480c

This is also a reminder that the schedule for the 10th Annual Conference of the America Revolution has been released. The Conference is from Friday, March 17 to Sunday, March 19, 2023, to be held at Williamsburg.

G. Lengel—Head of Faculty – Chief Historian, National Medal of Honor Museum

Maj. Gen. Jason Bohm, USMC – “George Washington’s Marines: The Origin of the Corps and the American Revolution”

John “Jack” Buchanan – “Picked Men, Well Mounted’: The Battle of Musgrove’s Mill, 1780”

Benjamin Carp – “’Many Circumstances Lead to Conjecture That Mr. Washington Was Privy to This Villainous Act’: George Washington and the Great New York City Fire of 1776”

Kaitlin Fergeson—Emerging Scholar – “Thompson’s Black Dragoons – A Study in Loyalist Cavalry in the American Revolution”

Kylie Hulbert – “America’s Revolutionary War Privateers: The Untold War at Sea”

Cole Jones – “Captives of Liberty: British, German and Loyalist Prisoners of War and the Politics of Vengeance”

Mark Lender – “Fighting for the Key to the Continent: Fort Ticonderoga, 1777”

Margaret Sankey – “Oh the Things They Said: The Yorke Family’s Opinions of British Generals”

Eric Schnitzer – “In Memoriam: Rediscovering the Stories of Americans Who Died in the Battles of Saratoga”

David O. Stewart – “The Real Miracle at Valley Forge: George Washington’s Political Mastery.

To register for the conference, click on this link: 10th Annual Conference of the American Revolution – March 17-19, 2023 (americashistoryllc.com)

Best,

Christian McBurney

Author of Dark Voyage: An American Privateer's War on Britain's African Slave Trade: McBurney, Christian M.: 9781594163821: Amazon.com: Books