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Originally published in the Journal of the American Revolution on January 30, 2024 Major Peter L’Enfant is most well-known for his 1791 “wholly new” plan for the Federal City that would become Washington, DC. Fewer are aware of his previous experience during the Revolutionary War where he served as an aide-de-camp, engineer, and sometimes as an artist and light infantry officer. This military service, coupled with his fine arts education and post-war career as an architect we

Originally published in the Journal of the American Revolution on December 28, 2023 Over the past few years, three demographic studies of North Carolina and Georgia Revolutionary War pension applicants have been completed (North Carolina militia, North Carolina Line, Georgia). A similar study of South Carolina soldiers who served in the Continental Line, state troops, and militia provides compiled demographic data of those who served in that state, and also affords an opportu

From the Journal of the American Revolution published on June 1, 2023. General Charles, 1st Marquess, Cornwallis remains one of the most recognizable British figures of the American Revolution. Over the past two centuries, he has come to be invariably known as one of the “men who lost America.” This appellation has greatly overshadowed his less heralded service in Parliament, India, Europe, and Ireland. In Parliament, during the 1760s, Cornwallis was one of several lords oppo

Originally published in the Journal of the American Revolution on February 22, 2022 To complement my two studies of the North Carolina Continental Line and militia/state troops, I’ve researched the demographics of the Georgia Continental Line and militia using Federal pension applications.[1] The colony of Georgia at the beginning of the Revolutionary War consisted only of a series of counties along the Savannah River running from the Atlantic coast northwest to the frontier

Originally published in the Journal of the American Revolution on December 22, 2021. Many North Carolina soldiers served in both the North Carolina militia/state troops and one of the state’s Continental regiments. To complement my study of the demographics of the militia and state troops, this article presents a detailed look at North Carolina Continental soldiers who served only in the North Carolina Continental Line. The North Carolina Continental Line came into official e

Originally publishing in the Journal of the American Revolution on October 1, 2020. After nearly a quarter of a millennium, what do we really know about the militia and state troops that served during the Revolutionary War? Historians and researchers over the past century have dedicated entire volumes to addressing this question with numerous publications of militia rosters. While this research has proven invaluable, what does it really tell us about the men and their units b

Originally published in the Journal of the American Revolution on July 28, 2021 Colonel Samuel Bryan is thought to be the highest-ranking Loyalist officer to remain in the United States after the Revolutionary War. Despite being a high-ranking British officer in command of hundreds of men, little is known about him and the militia unit he commanded. With the arrival of British regulars in the Carolinas in 1780, Bryan came out of hiding and fled to British lines where he was p

Originally published in the Journal of the American Revolution on November 12, 2019. In late June 1780 a messenger arrived in Charleston, South Carolina, with intelligence for Lt. Gen. Charles, Earl Cornwallis. The messenger, Capt. John La Boularderie De Treville, was a South Carolina Continental artillery officer and prisoner of war on parole. He was also a British spy. On at least four occasions, from June 1780 to January 1781, De Treville was sent into North Carolina to ga

Originally published in the Summer 2021 issue of the Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research ( Vol. 99, No. 397) On 6 August 1780, Lieutenant-General Charles Cornwallis, in a letter to the commander-in-chief of British forces in America, General Sir Henry Clinton, wrote that ‘it may be doubted by some whether the invasion of North Carolina may be a prudent measure, but I am convinced it is a necessary one’.1 Cornwallis, who had been left in charge of British Regul

Originally published in the Journal of the American Revolution on December 16, 2025. On March 7, 1778, one of the deadliest naval battles of the Revolutionary War occurred off the coast of Barbados between the British ship Yarmouth and an American squadron led by the Continental frigate Randolph. The five-ship American contingent which sailed from Charlestown, South Carolina, led by Capt. Nicholas Biddle, was the largest joint Continental and state navy operation from that pl