Meeting Notes: May 27, 2026

The May meeting of the American Revolution Round Table of Richmond was held on May 27, 2026, in the Heilman Dining Center, at the University of Richmond.

 

The evening’s presentation by speaker John R. Maass centered on John’s latest book about the Battle of Spencer’s Ordinary, which occurred on June 26, 1781, and the Battle of Green Spring which occurred on July 6, 1781. Both engagements were direct preludes to the final major land engagement of the American Revolutionary War, the Battle at Yorktown.

 

John is an education specialist at the National Museum of the United States Army. He received a BA in history from Washington and Lee University, and a Ph.D. from the Ohio State University in early U.S. history and military history. His most recent books are From Trenton to Yorktown: Turning Points of the Revolutionary War published by Osprey Publishing and The Battles of Spencer's Ordinary and Green Spring, 1781 published by Westholme Publishing. The books are available on Amazon.

 

Henry Clinton, the British Commander-in-Chief in America from 1778 to 1782, had given British Army Lieutenant-General Charles Cornwallis instructions to, first and foremost, preserve the gains made by taking Charleston, and only then engage in offensive moves. After pacifying both South and North Carolina, Clinton expected Cornwallis, as the lead commander of the British "Southern strategy," to move into Virginia, subdue American resistance, and cutoff the sources of supplies being provided to American troops by their French allies.

 

Nathanael Greene was appointed commander in chief of the Continental Army in the South in December 1780. He was tasked with luring Cornwallis away from his coastal bases. His strategy was to engage the British in small skirmish guerrilla warfare and, if possible, get Cornwallis to divide his forces.

 

Daniel Morgan took command of a corps aiming at slowing Cornwallis’ advance to the north. Morgan gradually moved northward hoping to draw Cornwallis’ following troops closer. On January 17, 1781, Morgan turned his troops to confront the British troops at Cowpens, South Carolina and were victorious over the force under British Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton, Commandant of the British Legion of cavalry and light troops.

 

Outraged by the loss at Cowpens, Cornwallis and Tarleton began to chase Nathaniel Greene and Daniel Morgan’s troops to free hundreds of British prisoners and to keep them from reuniting in what became known as the “Race to the Dan” River in Virginia.  Cornwallis failed to reach the American forces in time, and his failure ultimately led to a battle between Cornwallis and Greene at Guildford Court House on March 15, 1781.Guilford Courthouse is considered a victory for the British because Greene’s forces eventually retreated from the battlefield, but Greene’s army inflicted such heavy casualties (estimated to be 25%) on Cornwallis’ troops that Greene won a strategic victory with casualties estimated to be 30%. As a result, Cornwallis was no longer in a position to pursue Greene further north and he withdrew toward Wilmington, North Carolina to rest and resupply his army.

 

Lord Charles Cornwallis came to the decision to abandon the Carolinas and make an unauthorized move into Virginia. He decided to carry the war north into Virginia’s Lower Peninsula: to destroy the American’s logistics support, that was centered around Richmond, Petersburg (Blandford), and Prince George County Court House; and, move his resupply point to Virginia’s Tidewater region on April 25.

 

Washington had ordered the Marquis de Lafayette to re-form his force to go south to Virginia to link up with troops commanded by Major General Steuben, to keep an eye on Cornwallis’ movements. Lafayette reached Richmond with a Continental Army detachment of about 1,200 troops on April 29, 1781. The combined force was to try and trap British forces commanded by Benedict Arnold, with French ships preventing his escape by sea. This became known as the Yorktown Campaign.

 

Cornwallis reached Petersburg on May 20, coming from Wilmington, North Carolina, bringing the British force up to 5,300 men.

 

Lafayette shadowed Cornwallis as he moved his army of redcoats and Hessians toward Williamsburg from central Virginia. Lafayette avoided fighting a battle against Cornwallis far superior force. After being reinforced in early June, he followed the redcoats more closely, looking for long awaited opportunities to strike.

 

In June 1781, Cornwallis received orders from London to proceed to the Chesapeake Bay and to oversee construction of a port that would establish a military base of operations in the region.

 

On June 11 and 15, apparently in reaction to the Franco-American threat to New York City, Clinton requested Cornwallis to fortify either Yorktown or Williamsburg and establish a base of operations there, while sending any troops he could spare back to New York. Cornwallis received these letters at Williamsburg on June 26. He and an engineer had inspected Yorktown, which he initially found to be defensively inadequate, until he learned that French ships were unloaded supplies to the Americans in exchange for tobacco as payment. At that time, Yorktown was the number one tobacco port in the colonies. He wrote a letter to Clinton indicating that he would move troops to Portsmouth in order to send them north with transports available there.

 

 

The Battle of Spencer's Ordinary took place on June 26, 1781 when light detachments from both armies clashed near a tavern at a road intersection not far from Williamsburg. British Lieutenant Colonel John Graves Simcoe and his Loyalist regiment of Queen's Rangers with Hessian Jägers were returning from a raid to destroy boats and forage for supplies on the Chickahominy River. Simcoe was convoying seized cattle and decided to rest before joining Cornwallis’ main army. An advance guard under Captain William McPherson of Pennsylvania Continentals caught up with advance companies of Simcoe's force near Spencer's Ordinary. In the ensuing action, Simcoe's cavalry charged McPherson's formation, breaking it up. Simcoe ordered Jägers and light infantry into the woods on the right to flank the arriving enemy column. When the advance guard under Colonel Richard Butler arrived, Simcoe ordered an infantry charge. Butler's men scattered into the nearby woods. A cavalry charge was ordered by Simcoe and a field cannon was fired. Butler's men were forced back believing a larger British force was arriving. Both sides, concerned that the other might be reinforced by its main army, eventually broke off the battle. Reported losses of wounded, killed and captured varied considerably.

 

The location of the battle is now within the grounds of James City County's Freedom Park in Williamsburg.

 

 

The Battle of Green Spring took place near the Green Spring Plantation in James City County, Virginia, on July 6, 1781. American Brigadier General "Mad" Anthony Wayne, leading the advance forces of the Marquis de Lafayette, was ambushed near the plantation by Cornwallis’ army in the last major land battle of the Virginia campaign prior to the Siege of Yorktown.

 

British forces were considerably hampered by the delay in communications between Clinton and Cornwallis and their lack of clarity. On July 4, Cornwallis began moving his army toward the Jamestown ferry, to cross the James River and march to Portsmouth. Lafayette's scouts observed the motion, and Lafayette thought the British force would be vulnerable during the crossing. Lafayette advanced his army to the Green Spring Plantation, and, based on intelligence that only the British rear guard was left at the crossing, he sent General Anthony Wayne forward to attack the rear guard on July 6. They skirmished all afternoon with the British. But Cornwallis had laid a clever trap. Sending only his baggage and some troops to guard it, he sent "deserters" to falsely inform Lafayette of the situation while concealing his main force near the crossing point.

 

American reinforcements arrived in the late afternoon. Only a portion of these reinforcements were sent to join Wayne. Lafayette rode to the river where a tongue of land enabled him to see the true strength of the British force. Wayne's troops advanced towards the trap's trigger, an abandoned British cannon, that Cornwallis had left in the road. Wayne’s seizure of the gun was the signal for the British counterattack, which began with a barrage of canister and grape shot, and was followed by an infantry charge. The sudden appearance of the British army stunned Wayne's command. Lafayette was not able to reach Wayne in time to recall him. The British line overlapped both flanks of the Americans. Wayne was concerned that a retreat would turn into a disorderly rout. He reformed his line, ordered his artillery to fire a blast of grape shot, and then had the line charge the numerically overwhelming British with bayonets fixed.

 

Wayne's audacious bayonet charge worked; it successfully halted the British advance long enough for Lafayette's covering force to approach. Lafayette rode forward to assist in managing the American retreat, which began to crumble after Cornwallis personally led a counter-charge. Wayne's men, against heavy numbers, made a brave fight. General Wayne’s troops managed to escape the trap, but with significant casualties and the loss of two field pieces.

 

With darkness falling upon the field, and in spite of Tarleton's urgings, Cornwallis declined to pursue the fleeing Americans. Instead, he resumed his movement to Portsmouth, still looking for an appropriate base of operations.

 

After Cornwallis reached Portsmouth, new orders arrived from Clinton that countermanded the previous ones which, in the most direct terms, ordered him to establish a fortified deep-water port, using as much of his army as he thought necessary. Nevertheless, having inspected Portsmouth and finding it even less favorable than Yorktown, Cornwallis wrote to Clinton informing him that he would fortify Yorktown.

 

Lafayette had blockaded the land routes out of Yorktown while the French fleet prevented the arrival of British relief fleets into the York River setting the scene for the Battle at Yorktown.

 

Communications between the British Commander-in-Chief and his lead commander can be read at Clinton's and Cornwallis' correspondence during the Campaign in North America 1781.

 

 

Fred Sorrell

Secretary

Next Meeting: July 15, 2026

Susan Brynne Long will present “The Disagreeable Situation: American Prisoner Management during the Revolutionary War.”

Byrnne is currently Instructor of History at the University of Nebraska in Omaha.  Graduating from Georgetown University with Bachelor of Arts Degree in 2019, Brynne earned her PhD. in American Studies from the University of Delaware in 2024. From 2024 to 2025 she was the Charles Young Postdoctoral Fellow at the United States Army Center of Military History, where she is under contract in book manuscript preparation for a book entitled The Frontier War, 1775-1783.

This will be a regular, in-person meeting, beginning with dinner at 5:30 in the Heilman Dining Center at the University of Richmond.  The meeting begins at 6:30. 

Revolutionary War Naval Breakthrough, John Millar

[A fine article authored by our member, John Millar, concerning Benedict Arnold, Virginia, and the Continental Navy. Enjoy!]

   Benedict Arnold established the fresh-water Continental Navy on Lake Champlain at the end of April 1775, only ten days after the events at Concord and Lexington. Most of the various states established their own navies, Rhode Island being the first on 12 June 1775. The salt-water Continental Navy was founded as a result of Rhode Island’s intercession with Congress on 13 October 1775. Virginia, arguably the wealthiest of all the original states, established her own navy close to Christmas 1775.

   Virginia may have been the wealthiest state, but most of that value was in real estate, which was very difficult to tax. As a result, the vessels of the Virginia Navy at first were small – schooners about 50 feet long on deck with only swivel-guns. Finally, in 1780, Governor Thomas Jefferson was able to finance the construction of a naval force that looked quite formidable, at least on paper. Four frigates of 20 to 24 carriage guns (essentially, the same size as the British frigate Rose that had plagued Rhode Island 1774-6, or the ancient Fowey that had served as the British flagship in Virginia at that same time). These four Virginia frigates each measured about 100 to 105 feet long on deck, 30 feet in breadth, and needed about 13 feet of water to float. Each could set about 30,000 square feet of sail with 10 square sails plus 10 fore-and-aft sails. These four ships sported classical Greek names (as one might expect from Jefferson): Thetis, Poseidon, Nereus, and Artemis, of which only Thetis was able to get under sail.

   The four frigates were backed up by 18-gun corvettes, about 90 feet long on deck, Apollo and American Fabius, to which was added the corvette Cormorant captured from the British. Still less expensive were five 16-gun corvettes, about 75 feet long on deck, Renown, Tartar, Tempest, Gloucester, and Morningstar.  A few additional smaller ships, rigged as 14-gun brigs, were added to the mix. Tidewater Virginia is riven by a number of substantial rivers on which these ships could be constructed in part-time shipyards: the James, the Chickahominy, the York, the Rappahannock, and the Potomac.

   Jefferson had been able to come by enough money to construct and fit out these warships, but crewing them was a different matter. Each of the frigates was expected to have a crew of 150 men, and the corvettes appropriately smaller numbers, but Jefferson was unable to recruit more than 150 men in total to be spread between all the ships, by the time that General Benedict Arnold arrived in Virginia in January 1781 with almost 2000 British troops. Arnold, who carefully picked Portsmouth as his base, across the Elizabeth River from Norfolk (which the Patriots had burned to the ground on New Year’s Eve 1775-6 so that the British would not be able to use it as a base), had been issued clear orders. He was not to bother any peaceable Virginians, but if he encountered warlike supplies, he was to destroy them, and then he was to capture the Virginia House of Burgesses without harming anyone (the idea being that the captured legislators could then be talked into signing a generous peace treaty with the British). The House of Burgesses was meeting in a tobacco warehouse in the tiny village of Richmond when Arnold made two unsuccessful attempts to capture the legislators there in January and May 1781, and he made a third almost successful attempt in June with the help of 300 cavalry under Colonel Banastre Tarleton, after the House of Burgesses had hurriedly moved 60 miles west to Charlottesville.

   Of course, Arnold could not ignore all the newly-constructed Virginia warships. Some of the ships (including three of the frigates) had not yet been launched at their shipyard on the Chickahominy River, so Arnold made quick work of burning them in place. Most of the rest of the ships, with their greatly under-strength crews, were drawn up at anchor across the James River with their guns loaded and run out. Arnold sent detachments of troops with field-guns to the bluffs at each end of the line of ships, and they systematically destroyed or captured almost the entire fleet.

   In Richmond, Arnold destroyed a wealth of naval stores, including some freshly-harvested hemp for making cordage, and there is anecdotal evidence of resulting wild hemp plants growing out of cracks in the sidewalks of the Shockoe Bottom district of Richmond well into the twentieth century!

   The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City owns a folk-art painting of a frigate the size of Thetis, #63-201-3, which used to be called The Plantation. According to Met Curator Ashley Williams, their staff believes the painting to have been executed in the 1820s. However, evidence in the ship herself suggests strongly that it was painted early in the 1780s. First, the ship lacks a ‘dolphin-striker’ below the bowsprit, invented in 1792, and almost all images of ships after 1792 contain that spar. Second, the stars-and-stripes ensign is flown from an [outrageously tall] ensign staff, whereas from the mid-1780s on, the ensign was flown from the gaff. Third, the color of the ship’s hull is mostly buff or yellow-ocher, as it would have been in the 1780s, not mostly black as it would have been in the 1820s.

   Is it possible to identify the ship depicted? Assuming a date from the early 1780s, it may be possible. First of all, the ensign flown by the ship is the Stars-and-Stripes, a flag that was limited by law to ships of the Continental Navy or the various state navies. Privateers and merchant ships were required to use a flag of thirteen red and white stripes, with no stars, although some ship owners and captains may have been indifferent to or unaware of those rules. At this stage of its life, The Continental Navy lacked the money to acquire such ships, so this ship is not in the Continental Navy. Of the state navies, those in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and South Carolina had ships of this size, but the painting shows the frigate under way close to shore. Virginia, with its powerful rivers, was the only state where a ship could sail that close to a river bank.

   Ms. Williams remarked that the substantial building behind the frigate looks Germanic, and that may indeed be a clue to the identity of the painting. German-born and educated Revolutionary War scholar Dr Robert A Selig came across a remarkable document in Germany. It was the journal account in German of the career of Private Georg Daniel Flohr (1756-1826) in the Royal Deux-Ponts or Zweibrucken German-speaking French regiment that was brought to America in 1780 by General Donatien de Vimeur, Comte de Rochambeau. Flohr illustrated his journal with folk-art paintings, many of them showing towns that he visited, including Boston, Providence, Newport, Philadelphia, Annapolis, Yorktown, and Williamsburg. Dr Selig published many of Flohr’s illustrations in the October 1994 issue of American Heritage Magazine (vol. 45, #6). Flohr made notes about the buildings shown in each town, so that he generally got the sizes and numbers of windows correct, but he waited until he had returned to Europe before finishing the paintings. Of course, the only buildings that he could see in the German section of France were German buildings, so his paintings of American towns were populated with Germanic buildings, even if they had the correct numbers of windows.

   Many commentators over the years have remarked that the Met’s painting represents Turkey Island Plantation House, which had been built in the late 1760s for the prestigious Randolph family on the east bank of the James River a short distance upriver from the well-known Shirley Plantation. Turkey Island had been destroyed in the American Civil War in the 1860s, but it is described in insurance documents and travel diaries. Its foundations have also been investigated, and, allowing for the folk artist’s exuberance, the painting matches the foundation. The house was crowned, we are told, by a particularly large cupola that was popularly known as ‘the bird-cage,’ and in fact the painting shows the cupola as looking like a giant period bird cage.

   Flohr was based at Williamsburg for about a year, so it would have been simple for him to have sailed up the James River and seen Turkey Island Plantation House. The frigate Thetis, however, is another matter, because she was no longer in the James River after Arnold’s raid on the ships. The only thing I can think of is that some local artist painted the ship while she was sailing in the James, and donated his little work to Flohr when he saw Flohr making such detailed notes about the buildings and vegetation of Virginia; Flohr then painted his copy of the portrait of the ship into the painting of the plantation house.

   As for Flohr, he returned home to his German-speaking district of France when his regiment was no longer needed (and you can imagine that he was not permitted to serve even another day after he arrived home, because the French government was found to be insolvent). The insolvency led to the King’s arrest and imprisonment. Flohr was in Paris and witnessed the guillotining of Louis XVI on 21 January 1793. The incident turned his stomach, so he packed his bags and moved back to Virginia. There, he managed to be ordained as a German-Lutheran pastor. He was assigned to St John’s Lutheran Church, Wytheville, Virginia, where many of the parishioners were German-speaking, and where he spent the rest of his life.

   Thomas Jefferson wanted the world to know that he had written the national Declaration of Independence and the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, and that he had founded the University of Virginia in 1819, and those three things are the only achievements inscribed on his gravestone. His having served as Governor of Virginia, Ambassador to France, Secretary of State, President of the United States, and purchaser of Louisiana were not mentioned. If this paper’s supposition about the ship in the Met’s painting being the frigate Thetis is true, this is the only surviving period image of any ship of the Virginia Navy in the entire Revolution, those ships being, in spite of their sad fate, yet another feather in Jefferson’s cap. While several period images have survived of ships in the Continental Navy, very few images survive of ships of state navies (New Hampshire, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina, and now Virginia, are all that come to mind). A handful of period images of privateers are also known.

Meeting Notes: March 18, 2026

The March meeting, of the American Revolution Round Table of Richmond, was held on March 18, 2026, in the Heilman Dining Center, at the University of Richmond.

The evening’s presentation “The Illinois Campaign, Kaskaskia, Cahokia, Vincennes 1778-1779” was made by Glenn F. Williams. Glenn is a retired Army officer who recently retired from federal civilian service as a Senior Historian at the U.S. Army Center of Military History, Fort McNair, DC. 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. Beyond his publications for Center for Military History, he is the author of several books, including Year of the Hangman: George Washington’s Campaign Against the Iroquois (Westholme 2005), recipient of the Thomas J. Fleming Award for the Outstanding Revolutionary War Book of 2005, and named one of “The 100 Best American Revolution Books of All Time” by the Journal of the American Revolution in the spring 2017 issue. For his book, Dunmore’s War: The Last Conflict of America’s Colonial Era (Westholme 2017), Glenn was recognized for contributions to the study of 18th Century American military history with the Shelby Cullom Davis Award of the Ohio Society of Colonial Wars and the Judge Robert K. Woltz Award of the French and Indian War Foundation. He holds a Ph.D. in History from the University of Maryland, College Park.

The British were initiating the southern strategy to regain control of the rebellious Southern Colonies by appealing to the relatively strong Loyalist sentiment there. George Germain, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, wrote to General Sir Henry Clinton that capturing the Southern Colonies was "considered by the King as an object of great importance in the scale of the war." Germain's instructions to Clinton, framed as recommendations, were that he should abandon Philadelphia and then embark upon operations to recover Georgia and the Carolinas. At the beginning of winter 1778-1779, Washington was at the Middlebrook Cantonment for the winter and Knox was at Pluckemin Continental Artillery Cantonment Site. British occupied Fort Detroit which served as a staging area for attacks on frontier settlements by British regulars, Butler's Rangers and Britain's Indigenous allies

Shortly after the Revolutionary War began, Kentucky County, Virginia (which then encompassed the entire Commonwealth of Kentucky, bounded on the west by the Ohio River) was being organized as part of Virginia, with George Rogers Clark as head of its local militia. Clark’s mission was to secure the forts in Virginia and Kentucky County, Virginia; secure Illinois County, Virginia; and, attack Fort Detroit.

Clark asked Virginia Governor Patrick Henry for permission to lead a secret expedition to capture the nearest British posts located in the Illinois country. This area had been ceded to the British as a consequence of the French defeat in the French and Indian War and became part of the British Province of Quebec. George Rogers Clark led, in what is named, the Illinois Campaign against the British. Illinois Country east of the Mississippi River along with what was then much of Ohio Country became part of Illinois County, Virginia, when claimed by right of conquest. Virginia Governor Patrick Henry commissioned Clark, a lieutenant colonel, and authorized him to raise troops for an expedition to seize the British outposts of Kaskaskia and Cahokia on the Mississippi River.  The Illinois Campaign began in July 1778, when Clark and about 175 men crossed the Ohio River at Fort Massac and marched to Kaskaskia (on the western side of the Mississippi River) taking it on the night of July 4. Cahokia was taken two days later (near Saint Louis), and Vincennes (on the Wabash River 180 miles east of Kaskaskia) was occupied by the end of the month and was renamed Fort Sackville. Several other villages and forts in British territory were subsequently captured without firing a shot, because most of the French-speaking and American Indian inhabitants were unwilling to take up arms on behalf of the British.

To counter Clark's advance, Henry Hamilton, Lieutenant Governor of the Province of Quebec, set out from Detroit on October 7 with 125 militia and 60 Lakes' Nation warriors. They were later joined by a 34-man detachment from the 8th Regiment. Hamilton surprised Fort Sackville's small garrison and retook Vincennes on December 17. He decided to winter at Vincennes with the British regulars, while most of the militia, volunteers, and Lakes' Nations warriors returned to Detroit.

In February 1779, Clark’s force set out on an unusual winter expedition in frigid and wet conditions on an eighteen-day trek from Kaskaskia. Clark returned to the Vincennes settlement (in the Illinois Country). Clark’s force retook the town, forced Hamilton's unconditional surrender of Fort Sackville, and captured Hamilton in the process. The winter expedition was Clark's most significant military achievement as it secured the western frontier from attacks and served as a temporary deterrent to British and native incursions into Kentucky, and the U.S. acquiring the Northwest Territory that included Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota (an area nearly as large as the original 13 states).

Hamilton was taken to Williamsburg, Virginia, was falsely accused of paying for scalps and was treated as a criminal rather than a prisoner of war. The Virginia Council, headed by Thomas Jefferson, ordered Hamilton placed in irons and confined to the Williamsburg jail until October, 1780, when he was paroled and was exchanged in the spring of 1781.

 

 

Routes to Vincennes by Henry Hamilton and George Rogers Clark

NPS Image

Following Clark's victory, the Virginia General Assembly gave official status to the region northwest of the Ohio River and named it Illinois County. Illinois County, Virginia, was formed in 1778 to govern Virginia's claims to present-day Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin and eastern Minnesota. Illinois County was abolished 5 January 1782 and the territory ceded by Virginia to the Congress of the Confederation in March 1784. Three years later, Congress passed the Northwest Ordinance, creating the Northwest Territory.

George Rogers Clark was subsequently promoted to brigadier general in command of all the militia in the Kentucky and Illinois counties. His older brother William Clark, was co-leader of the Lewis and Clark Expedition that explored the Louisiana Purchase with Meriwether Lewis and who was subsequently made brigadier general of the Louisiana militia.

--Fred Sorrell, Secretary

Next Meeting: May 27, 2026

"The Battles of Spencer's Ordinary and Green Spring, 1781," John Maass

John is an educational staff member of the new National Museum of the U.S. Army at Fort Belvoir, VA, who received his B.A. degree in History from Washington & Lee University. Receiving his PhD in Early American History at Ohio State University, John is the author of several books and numerous articles on early US military history, including North Carolina and the French and Indian War: The Spreading Flames of War; Defending a New Nation, 1783-1811; The Road to Yorktown: Jefferson, Lafayette and the British Invasion of Virginia; George Washington's Virginia; and The Battle of Guilford Courthouse: A Most Desperate Engagement. John's latest book is "From Trenton to Yorktown: Turning Points of the Revolutionary War." He also served as an officer in the US Army Reserve.

This will be a regular, in-person meeting, beginning with dinner at 5:30 in the Heilman Dining Center at the University of Richmond.  The meeting begins at 6:30. 

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.