Timothy Bedel Papers and Andrew Park Pamphlet Finding Aid

The Swain Report, Number 18



The Timothy Bedel Papers and Andrew Park Pamphlet

by David Swain

Introduction


In the wilds of the Canadian woods, near the St. Laurence River, the fledgling American Continental army, having taken possession of Montreal and seeking to subdue Quebec, sustained a small but psychologically painful defeat in May 1776. The Cedars was a Continental military outpost between Montreal and Quebec. When a small British force surprised its defenders, the officer in charge surrendered his force of over 400 men. Timothy Bedel, commander of the post’s force, was absent at the time but was court-martialed anyway. Andrew Parke was a lieutenant in the British contingent that “conquered” the post.

This report summarizes two related microfilm collections in the David Library. One is the Timothy Bedel Papers, which include little about The Cedars disaster itself but much on other aspects of Bedel’s extraordinary life, as well as the lives of certain of his correspondents. The second is a political pamphlet published in 1777, written partly by Andrew Parke, that provides information and perspective on both The Cedars encounter leading to the American surrender and the subsequent exchange of prisoners.

William Greene Papers Finding Aid

The Swain Report, Number 17


The William Greene Papers 

by David Swain

Introduction 

William Greene (1743-1826) was a member of the large and prominent Greene family of Rhode Island—and only a distant relative to General Nathanael Greene (1742-1786) of Revolutionary War fame. Still, William’s father was named Nathaniel Greene (1707-1768), and William signed his name “William Greene, son of Nathaniel.”

He had reason to do so because both he and another almost contemporaneous Colonel William Greene (1764-1829) were both merchants in East Greenwich, RI. This other William served during the Revolutionary War as commander of the Kentish Guards, an independent company of volunteer militia in East Greenwich. From the sparse information available, it appears that Colonel William did not see direct action during the Revolution, nor did his military career cross paths with that of General Nathanael—or that of yet another Greene, Colonel Christopher Greene (1737-1781), who did play an active military role with the First Rhode Island Regiment.

The original papers of all four of these Greenes reside at the Rhode Island Historical Society library. The David Library has microfilmed copies of three of these—the papers of Nathanael Greene, Christopher Greene, and the William Greene who did not serve in the military at all, whose papers are the subject of this report.

The James Grant of Ballindalloch Papers Finding Aid

The Swain Report, Number 16

Library Volunteer and Research Assistant David Swain spent most of August and September carefully sifting through the James Grant Papers, creating one of the most detailed finding aids to date for this important series of documents. James Grant was one of the foremost British professional soldiers of the second half of the eighteenth century, having served in America during the French and Indian War and again during the Revolution. His papers contain a wealth of material for a variety of research interests, ranging from the institutional operations of the British Army to civil government during the era of the Imperial Crisis, when Grant was governor of Florida. David's report is attached below in .pdf format due to its size. Please contact me if you have any problems accessing the document, and our thanks, as always, to David for his essential and invaluable work in improving access to our collections.

Will Tatum


James Grant of Ballindalloch Papers

by David Swain


Introduction

James Grant was born into relative wealth and high class in the family’s Ballindalloch Castle in Banffshire, Scotland in 1720. He died there 86 years later in 1806. Grant never married and had no children. After both his brother Alexander and Alexander’s son William (James’ nephew) had died by 1770, James became laird of the family castle. Grant always remained a Scotsman and a Britisher. Although he spent considerable time in North America and in the West Indies, as a part of a long, illustrious military career, he never contemplated becoming an American resident or, God forbid, citizen.

The microfilmed James Grant of Ballindalloch papers contain selected items from the Grant Family Papers still owned by members of the family. The selected documents, which pertain to Grant’s life in America, and which are contained on 49 reels, were microfilmed in 2001, with only four sets made, one kept at Ballindalloch Castle, one at the National Archives of Scotland, one in the US Library of Congress, and one held by a private foundation. Recently, the David Library negotiated successfully to purchase a fifth set of the microfilmed Grant’s papers pertaining to America. Researchers are indebted indeed to Grant’s habit of corresponding extensively over many years, and to the care he and his descendents took to retain, preserve, and organize the voluminous papers of Grant’s career and personal life.

The Grant Papers Finding Aid in PDF format


Have something you want to share, such as a question, research find, or a personal story about the Library? Email Will Tatum at tatum@dlar.org

The Merits of Muster Rolls

Veteran British Army Researcher and Library Patron Don Hagist writes in with a commentary on muster rolls, a class of document that features significantly in the Library's collections. Muster rolls for British, Loyalist, Congressional, and German units may be found in both our microfilm and printed collections by searching our catalog at www.dlar.org, or reviewing the list of microfilms on the same site.


Will Tatum


The Merits of Muster Rolls

by Don Hagist

Literature on the campaigns of the American Revolution is replete with data on the strengths of the armies involved, expressed in terms of hundreds or thousands of men. Missing from these numbers is the realization that they represent individuals, each with a name, personality and set of circumstances that put him in the army at the time of interest. While we will probably never know the full story of all of them, it is actually not difficult to learn the names of most of them - and the names are the gateway to finding additional information.

For soldiers in the British army, the names of each man in each regiment were recorded twice a year on documents called muster rolls. These rolls were prepared with the ultimate goal of reconciling money. They record the names of the men in each company of each regiment for each half-year period and include the dates of any changes that affected the man's status as a paid soldier during that period: the date he joined the company, changes in rank, and the date that he left the company due to transfer, discharge, desertion or death. Copies of the rolls were sent to the War Office in London, and survive today in the British National Archives.

The David Library has acquired copies of the rolls of several regiments, and possesses the single largest collection of British muster rolls in the United States. These rolls are a rich resource on the British army that has only just begun to be tapped by researchers. Besides the obvious value to genealogists and historians trying to trace the service of individuals, the muster rolls reveal a great deal about the internal workings of British regiments and give valuable insight on their operational capability.

A straightforward example is an event that preceded the war itself, the Boston Massacre in March 1770. Because the British soldiers involved were put on trial, we know their names. Were these men new recruits with little military experience or seasoned soldiers who could be expected to keep their cool under pressure? The muster rolls allow us to trace their individual careers before the event and answer these questions. They also allow us to follow their subsequent service to see what effect their trial might have had on their military careers.

On a larger scale, we can study the juxtaposition of events such as the expedition to Lexington and Concord in April 1775, and the Battle of Bunker Hill two months later. Many of the same British companies, the light infantry and grenadiers, took heavy casualties in each of these actions. Could the casualties from the April action have influenced the performance of the British forces in the second action? Were men transferred within the regiment after 19 April to bring the light infantry and grenadier companies up to strength, resulting in a companies of men who had not worked together for very long? Or were the companies that went into action at Bunker Hill under-strength? Muster rolls provide answers to these questions.

During the course of the war, attrition caused losses in strength, losses that were restored by transferring experienced soldiers and recruiting new ones. How many British soldiers were discharged from a regiment each year? How many died, and how many deserted? How frequently did new recruits arrive, and how were they distributed within the regiment? How many experienced men were transferred in from other regiments? When corps such as the 23rd and 33rd Regiments of Foot charged Continental troops who heavily outnumbered them at the battle of Guilford Courthouse in 1781, what portion of them were veterans of other campaigns and what portion were new soldiers? How long had those new soldiers been in America? What was the real rate of desertion from a British regiment, and were deserters more likely to be new recruits or long-serving soldiers? Muster rolls provide answers to these questions.

Muster rolls can be challenging to use because of the time required to assimilate the information that they contain. The resultant information, however, is extraordinarily useful in providing texture to the otherwise-hollow numbers often used to characterize the army. The collection of British army muster rolls at the David Library is a remarkable resource for making new contributions to our understanding of the regular soldiers who formed the backbone of the British army during the eight-year conflict in America.



Have something you want to share, such as a question, research find, or a personal story about the Library? Email Will Tatum at tatum@dlar.org

William Jackson Papers; Samuel Benjamin Papers; Joseph Bellamy Papers; George Panton Papers Finding Aid

The Swain Report, Number 15



William Jackson Papers; Samuel Benjamin Papers;
Joseph Bellamy Papers; George Panton Papers


by David Swain



Introductory Information and Comparative Observations

This report includes information on four relatively small microfilmed manuscript collections recently acquired by the David Library from the Yale University Library. They are diverse entries into the big book of Revolutionary War era history, although they share a few interesting commonalities. Two served in the military, but the other two did not (although one of these did briefly—on the British side). Two were clergymen who spent much of their adult lives preaching the Gospel (although one was Congregational and passively chose the American side in the revolutionary conflict, while the other was Anglican and actively chose the British side).

-- The first collection (Jackson) tells of a patriot military staff officer and later civilian civil servant who was in the right place at the right time to meet and correspond with important people in high places—and to serve as secretary for the Constitutional Convention.

-- The second (Benjamin) tells of a military line soldier who served in the Continental Army from beginning to end of the Revolutionary War.

-- The third (Bellamy) tells of a Congregational minister active in the Great Awakening movement, who was a friend and colleague of Jonathan Edwards, and who was never actively involved in secular public affairs.

-- The fourth (Panton) tells of an Anglican priest who was organizationally active in the Anglican Church in America, vocally and actively a loyalist who lived out the war in New York, and in a small way involved in the British/loyalist military effort, only to move after the war to Nova Scotia and later “home” to Scotland.

Joseph Palmer Papers Finding Aid

The Swain Report, Number 14



Joseph Palmer Papers

by David Swain


Biographical information and context of the Papers

Joseph Palmer (1716-1788) seems to have held a number of prominent public positions (or at least to have been directly involved in public affairs) during the Revolutionary War period at the town level (Braintree), county level (Suffolk), and “province” level (Massachusetts Bay). Evidently he was an attorney because “Esq.” usually follows his name on addresses. He also served as Colonel and then Brigadier General of the Suffolk County Regiment of the Massachusetts Militia. He seems to have been entrusted, during his public service, with the drafting of a number of public documents. At least this is the impression gained from perusing his papers, as microfilmed by the Massachusetts Historical Society. The papers also include some correspondence (notably from Benjamin Lincoln and Thomas Legate concerning military matters).

This collection of microfilmed manuscript documents may be of most interest to those seeking information on how logistics of the Revolutionary War were planned and carried out, especially from a state and local militia perspective. While the documents have no collective continuity, they offer multiple snapshots during a short and crucial period of American Revolutionary history during which high-level citizen-militia officers were trying to deal with the myriad details of how to recruit, equip, supply, train, and move a citizen army.

These documents of Brigadier Joseph Palmer present a startling contract with the diaries of common soldier Ebenezer Wild, also of Braintree, MA (whose papers are reviewed in another report), who marched and marched as a Massachusetts Bay militia man in the Continental Army from 1775 to 1781. Palmer’s view was distinctly top-down, while Wild’s was decidedly bottom-up, and they played very different roles in the same war.

Henry Knox Papers II Finding Aid

The Swain Report, Number 13


Henry Knox papers II

by David Swain


Introductory Information

The Henry Knox Papers II are only a part of the papers of Henry Knox housed at the Massachusetts Historical Society:

-- The Henry Knox Papers owned by the New England Historic Genealogical Society and deposited in the Massachusetts Historical Society consist of a 55 reel microfilm collection, of which the David Library owns a complete copy.

-- The Henry Knox Papers III consist of a yet unfilmed manuscript collection held only by the Massachusetts Historical Society.

-- The Henry Knox Papers II, with whose contents we are concerned here, are partially microfilmed, and the David Library owns a microfilm copy of all the items that have been microfilmed. These include two reels of recent acquisitions containing the Diary (part of the Revolutionary War papers) and the Waste Book and Letterbook (part of the Bookseller papers), plus three reels of orderly books (part of the Revolutionary War papers), previously acquired and catalogued by the David Library in a separate microfilm collection titled Revolutionary War Orderly Books.
The entire Papers II collection is organized as follows:
                   I. Personal papers, 1736-1803

                   II. Professional papers, 1771-1823
                                A. Revolutionary War papers, 1775-1781
                                B. United States War Office papers, 1786-1790
                                C. Bookseller papers, 1771-1823