Meeting Notes: January 21, 2026

The January 21, 2026, meeting was a Zoom meeting. Members of the University of Richmond’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute also participated. Over 150 participants logged in for Woody’s talk.

The evening’s presentation was made by Woody Holton, Ph.D. who is the McCausland Professor of History at the University of South Carolina and author of Abigail Adams [New York: Free Press, 2009], a biography of the wife of John Adams. John was a key figure in the formation of the United States and second president of the United States from 1797 to 1801. The book was awarded the Bancroft Prize which is one of the most prestigious awards in the field of American history writing.

Abigail and John's marriage is well documented through their correspondence and Abigail’s letters to others. Woody’s presentation centered on Abigail’s life as a strong-willed person responsible for family and farm. John’s legal career was on hold while he attended to the interests of independence which required him to be absent from his home for long periods and at great distances.

Abigail helped financially support her family in the context of the times:

--By necessity Abigail became the family’s financial manager.

--By will she became the closest political advisor to John. She took an active role in politics and policy. Some referred to her as "Mrs. President". At times Abigail planted favorable stories about her husband in the press.

·    --Abigail was a risk taker. John was not.

·    --Abigail became creative in her money management. At the time of her passing, she had become involved in profitable investments which she managed while at home and while traveling with John to France and England.

·    --Abigail was a supporter of the revolution by financially enabling John’s political travels.

·    --Abilgail was a smuggler. When Abigail learned of friends in Europe who were returning to America, she would ask them to purchase goods, pack them as their own goods, and pay them for their troubles, extracting a few of the items for her family’s needs.

·     --She became a merchant buying household necessities and luxury items from British manufacturers, using bills of exchange, and selling the goods to local shopkeepers eliminating British middlemen. While the importation was illegal, she learned if one shipment in three escaped seizure the venture was profitable.

·    --Abigail was creative. John advised Abigail to invest in farmland. However, Abigail decided to ignore her husband's advice and instead invested in U.S. government bonds, which brought her far greater returns. Her investments in severely depreciated debt instruments issued to finance the Revolutionary War were well redeemed after Alexander Hamilton's First Report on the Public Credit [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Report_on_the_Public_Credit] endorsed full federal payment at face value to holders of both Continental and state government securities. Was this an example of insider trading considering John’s role in the ultimate repayment arrangement? Estimates say Abigail was able to realize rates of return of over 20%.

·    --Abigail was a land speculator. Because coverture laws [https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Coverture] prohibited married women from owning or managing property, she had a trusted friend make land purchases in John’s name and using four straw men to secure parcels for each of her four children. She recognized that land at a greater distance from their Massachusetts home presented a better investment opportunity than ones close by which John preferred to buy. She purchased five 330-acre parcels in Vermont going against John’s instructions. When John learned of her purchase he objected but did not stop it.

·    --Abigail was a progressive person. Abigail owned no property so her will was not a legal document, but she wrote one anyway and John respected it and followed her wishes. His compliance with the provisions of his wife’s will transformed it into a legally valid document. In recognizing that current laws were not favorable towards females, she bequeathed the bulk of her estate to her granddaughters, nieces, daughters-in-law and female servants, in order to enable them to make the same claim on property.

·    --Abigail persistently advocated for gender equality.

Abigail died in 1818, predeceasing John by eight years. Abigail's financial acumen provided for the Adams family's wealth through the end of John's life, and he died debt free due to the will of his wife Abigail.

Fred Sorrell

Secretary

 

Next Meeting: March 18, 2026

 George Rogers Clark and the Illinois Campaign of 1778-1779 

We welcome back Dr. Glenn Williams, a retired Senior Historian at the U.S. Army Center of Military History, Fort McNair, DC, where his previous positions included Historian of the National Museum of the U.S. Army Project and Historian of the Army Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Commemoration. He has also served as Historian of the American Battlefield Protection Program of the National Park Service, Curator/ Historian of the USS Constellation Museum, and Assistant Curator of the Baltimore Civil War Museum - President Street Station. Glenn, who received his PhD in History from the University of Maryland, College Park, is the author of several books, including Year of the Hangman: George Washington's Campaign Against the Iroquois and Dunmore's War: The Last Conflict of America's Colonial Era and the essay "Let It Begin Here" (the Battles of Lexington and Concord) in Ten Critical Campaigns of the American Revolution. He is also one of the featured speakers for the Washington-Rochambeau Revolutionary Route Trail Association.

The regular March meeting is in-person, beginning with dinner at 5:30 in the Heilman Dining Center.   The meeting begins at 6:30. 

2025 Harry M. Ward Book Prize Winner

John Dickinson finally has a comprehensive and readable biography, thanks to Dr. Jane E. Calvert. Her book, Penman of the Founding: A Biography of John Dickinson, was selected by the ARRT of Richmond’s Book Prize Committee for the 2025 Harry M. Ward Book Prize. Her research and in-depth knowledge of Dickinson explains why it’s not a paradox that the author of the influential Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania could abstain from voting for independence, how a man with many Quaker beliefs could endorse military action, or how Dickinson and John Adams shared many convictions but became adversaries. Most significantly, the book documents the overlooked influence of Dickinson’s writings and actions upon all aspects of the revolution and America’s transformation from colonies to nation.

Meeting Notes: November 19, 2025

The November meeting of the American Revolution Round Table of Richmond was held on November 19, 2025, in the Gottwald Science Center, at the University of Richmond.

The evening’s presentation was made by Elizabeth Reese, author of Marquis de Lafayette Returns: A Tour of America's National Capital Region published by The History Press (imprint of Arcadia Publishing) in 2024.

Elizabeth is the Senior Manager of Public Programs and Interpretation at Woodlawn plantation and Pope-Leighey House and is completing her Master of Arts in American History from Gettysburg College. She has worked at Hamilton Grange National Memorial and the United States Capitol. She serves as the co-chair for the American Friends of Lafayette Bicentennial Committee for Washington, D.C. Her work has been published in “TIME,” the “Journal of the American Revolution,” the “New York Times,” and can be seen on C-SPAN.

Her presentation was entitled “The Marquis de Lafayette Returns: The Farwell Tour of 1824-1825.” In her presentation, Elizabeth traced Lafayette’s farewell route throughout the United States, highlighting the locations and people the famous General held in high regard.

The Marquis de Lafayette’s “return to America” refers to his celebrated 1824–1825 farewell tour of the United States, when he came back as an elderly hero to visit the nation he had helped win independence. During this thirteen‑month visit, he traveled thousands of miles through nearly every state, drawing huge crowds and being honored as “the Nation’s Guest.”

At age 19, Lafayette defied French orders and family wishes, bought his own ship, and sailed to America in 1777 to volunteer for the Continental Army. Congress made him a major general despite his youth. He quickly bonded with George Washington. As Washington had no biological children, and Lafayette had lost his own father in battle as a child, these circumstances led into a relationship as between a child and parent. Lafayette openly referred to Washington as a father figure and later named his son George Washington Lafayette.

Washington used Lafayette as both a field commander and trusted aide, beginning with his wounding and steady leadership at the Battle of Brandywine in September 1777. After the war he returned to France, where he was deeply involved in the French Revolution and later political struggles, enduring imprisonment, and periods of exile.

Lafayette played a crucial military and diplomatic role in the American Revolution, serving both as a combat commander in the Continental Army and as a vital link to French political and military support. His efforts on the battlefield and in European courts helped secure the French aid that was essential to eventual American victory. Lafayette took part in several major campaigns, including Brandywine, the winter at Valley Forge, Barren Hill, and Monmouth, gaining a reputation for courage and resilience. Between tours of duty, Lafayette returned to France in 1779 and worked with figures like Benjamin Franklin to press King Louis XVI’s ministers for troops, ships, and money for the American cause. His lobbying helped bring the major French expeditionary force under Rochambeau and a powerful fleet, turning the war into a true Franco‑American alliance that shifted the balance against Britain. By 1781, he commanded Continental forces in Virginia, where he shadowed and harassed Lord Cornwallis’s army, helping contain the British until Washington and allied forces could converge on Yorktown. ​ In the Yorktown campaign, Lafayette’s troops helped pin Cornwallis on the Yorktown peninsula and held key ground until Washington and Rochambeau completed the encirclement. The combined Franco‑American siege led to Cornwallis’s surrender in October 1781, and the decisive blow that effectively ended large‑scale fighting and secured American independence.

​In 1824, President James Monroe and Congress invited Lafayette to visit the United States on the eve of the 50th anniversary of the Revolution, seeing him as the last major general of the Continental Army still alive. He sailed from France in July 1824 and landed near New York City in mid‑August to salutes, parades, and immense public enthusiasm. ​ Lafayette’s tour lasted from August 1824 to September 1825 and covered roughly 6,000 miles across 24 states. He traveled by stagecoach, horseback, steamboat, and canal boat, visiting major cities such as New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Charleston, New Orleans, and the young capital of Washington, D.C. ​ Lafayette made a point of visiting Mount Vernon and Washington’s tomb, turning these stops into powerful patriotic rituals. He visited the Mount Vernon estate several times during the tour, paying respects at Washington’s tomb. Walking the grounds as the celebrated “Nation’s Guest,” Lafayette helped transform Mount Vernon into a national shrine to Washington’s memory.

Everywhere he went Lafayette was greeted with processions, military salutes, and reviews, dinners, balls, speeches, having his portrait painted, and monuments created. Towns, streets, and counties were named or renamed for him. Americans saw him as a living link to George Washington and the Revolution, and his presence helped revive patriotic feelings and interest in preserving Revolutionary sites and memories. ​ While visiting Boston, Lafayette laid the cornerstone of the Bunker Hill Monument. He met with surviving Founders, such as John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, reinforcing his status as a symbol of shared Franco‑American ideals of liberty. In September 1825, he departed from the United States aboard the frigate Brandywine, leaving behind a landscape dotted with places bearing his name and a powerful memory of national gratitude.

Lafayette embraced Enlightenment ideas of liberty and later pushed both antislavery measures and broader human‑rights principles, seeing the American struggle as part of a wider fight for freedom. Because he combined military service in America with revolutionary leadership in France, later generations celebrated him as the “Hero of Two Worlds” and a symbol of Franco‑American friendship.

He died on May 20, 1834. He is buried in Picpus Cemetery in Paris, under soil taken from Bunker Hill, in Charlestown, Boston for his grave.

--Fred Sorrell

Next Meeting: January 21, 2026 (ZOOM Meeting)

 

Woody Holton, "Abigail Adams"

Woody is currently the Peter and Bonnie McCausland Professor of History at the University of South Carolina. After receiving his B.A. in English from the University of Virginia and his PhD in History from Duke University, Woody was an Assistant Professor then full Professor of History at the University of Richmond. He is the author of numerous books about the American Revolution period, including Abigail Adams; Black Americans in the Revolutionary Era: A Brief History with documents; Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution; and Forced Founders: Indians, debtors, Slaves, and the Making of the American Revolution in Virginia. Woody's most recent book, Liberty Is Sweet: The Hidden History of the American Revolution, has become a nationwide best-seller.

*** NOTE: THIS IS A ZOOM MEETING ONLY... BEGINS AT 6:30 p.m. ***

The Revolution's First Battle Outside the Northeast was in Virginia

Art Ritter shared the following link from the "Cardinal News." An interesting story that I'm sure not many are familiar with.

The revolution's first battle outside Northeast was in Virginia. It started with a dispute over a runaway slave. - Cardinal News

Chesterfield County Revolutionary War 250 Commemorative Brick Project

Chesterfield Historical Society is sponsoring a 250 Commemorative project to honor the brave men and boys who trained at the Chesterfield Camp in the bitter cold winter of 1780-81.  These Patriots were from multiple counties throughout the State of Virginia and other states.

Attached is information on the Chesterfield County, Virginia Revolutionary War 250 Commemorative Brick Project honoring the Patriots and a list of soldiers who trained at the Chesterfield Camp.

Click here to see the brochure

Click here to see a listing of soldiers who trained at the Chesterfield Camp

Click here for additional information on the proposed site