The odds are good that you haven’t been able to visit some of your favorite Revolutionary War sites during the Covid-19 pandemic. Many of these locations rely on foot traffic for their annual income and may be struggling to stay afloat amidst various state lockdowns and a smaller number of visitors. (We left out many national, state, and local parks, which sometimes have access to government funds. But, they often have partnerships with non-profit foundations that provide vital support for their activities.) So, we decided to start a list of museums and parks that you can help out now and visit as circumstances allow. No doubt it will grow. The list does not constitute a solicitation or endorsement, but many of our historians visited some of these museums in the past and found them really helpful to our own work. (You may need to copy and paste some links.) If you search our “weekender” posts, there are even more sites to support and visit when you can.
Tag: West Virginia
McColloch’s Leap
“By no means comparable with the feats of a similar character” and “performed an act of daring” and “nay, desperate horsemanship” and “seldom been equaled by man or beast.” All these describe the amazing escape of Major Samuel McColloch in September 1777 during the attack on Fort Henry around where present-day Wheeling, West Virginia.
I first encountered this amazing, daring, and crazy eluding of capture when I took my own, well not as risky, but still a leap, moving to Wheeling to attend university there. Parents were 3,000 miles away in England and I was attempting to juggle basketball, studies, getting re-acclimated to life in the United States, and unknowingly, a left knee that was about to explode. Being a history major, this was one of the first accounts learned in a freshman year seminar class about local history to inspire the incoming students to explore the area outside of campus.
Fort Henry, built in 1774, was originally named Fort Fincastle, one of the titles of Lord Dunmore, the royal governor of Virginia. When the colonies revolted, the fortification was renamed in honor of Patrick Henry.
courtesy of West Virginia History OnView
https://wvhistoryonview.org/catalog/041457
Chief Cornstalk’s American Revolution (part two)
Modern Replica of Fort Randolph in Point Pleasant, WV (Wikimedia Commons)
At Fort Randolph, erected on the old Point Pleasant battlefield, Captain Matthew Arbuckle decided to take matters with the Shawnee into his own hands. He was already suspicious of the Shawnee in general, and Cornstalk in particular. In 1776, he reported that Cornstalk had traveled to Detroit and was “Treating with the English.”[i] Of course, this was William Wilson’s attempt to preserve the neutrality of tribes nearer Detroit by inviting them to a pace conference. Cornstalk had gone on the mission to lend weight to Wilson’s voice with those tribes. Arbuckle did not know that. Continue reading “Chief Cornstalk’s American Revolution (part two)”
Emerging Revolutionary War Era 