Revival History

Henry Skaggs (January 8, 1724 – December 4, 1810. Occasional alternative spellings: "Skeggs" and "Scaggs") was an American Longhunter, explorer and pioneer, active primarily on the frontiers of Tennessee and Kentucky during the latter half of the 18th century. His career as an explorer began as early as 1761 as one of the so-called long hunters— men who undertook lengthy hunting expeditions into the Trans-Allegheny wilderness. In subsequent years, working as a land agent with Richard Henderson and Daniel Boone, he explored large parts of Middle Tennessee and Central Kentucky. Skaggs led a pursuit and failed attempt to apprehend America's first known serial killers, the Harpe Brothers in 1799. 𝐄𝐚𝐫𝐥𝐲 𝐥𝐢𝐟𝐞 Henry Skaggs was born on January 8, 1724, in the Province of Maryland, British Royal Colony, British North America, British Empire to James Skaggs, a Scots-Irish immigrant, and his wife Rachel. James Skaggs and his sons were noted hunters and fur traders...

Timothy Murphy (c. 1751 – c. 1818) was an American soldier who fought during the Revolutionary War. In the Saratoga campaign, Murphy is reputed to have shot and killed British Army officers Sir Francis Clerke and Simon Fraser. Murphy's life is the subject of a 1953 novel titled The Rifleman. 𝐄𝐚𝐫𝐥𝐲 𝐥𝐢𝐟𝐞 Relatively few details of Murphy's early life are known. He was born in the year 1751 near the Delaware Water Gap. His parents were Presbyterians from County Donegal, Ireland who moved to Shamokin Flats (now Sunbury, Pennsylvania) in 1759, when Murphy was eight years old. A few years later, Murphy became an apprentice to a Mr Van Campen and moved with the van Campen family to the Wyoming Valley, which was then the frontier. 𝐀𝐦𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐧 𝐑𝐞𝐯𝐨𝐥𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐫𝐲 𝐖𝐚𝐫 On June 29, 1775, shortly after the start of the American Revolutionary War, Timothy Murphy and his brother John enlisted in the Northumberland County Riflemen, specifically Captain John Lowdon's ...

To truly understand the United States of America is to place its storied, turbulent history in a proper perspective, and to understand how people experienced events as they unfolded. In the comprehensive 84-lecture course, History of the United States, 2nd Edition, three noted historians and lecturers present the nation's past through their areas of special interest. With their guidance, you’ll follow the factors that enabled the United States to become the largest, wealthiest, and most powerful democratic republic in history—an unforgettable story shaped by the Revolutionary War and Vietnam, Thomas Jefferson and William Jefferson Clinton, puritanism and feminism, Booker T. Washington and Martin Luther King Jr., Jamestown and Disneyland, Harpers Ferry and Henry Ford, oil wells and Orson Welles, and so much more. Try Wondrium with a special FREE TRIAL and discover new ways to think about—and appreciate—the United States!

John B. McClelland (1734–1782) was an officer in the American Revolutionary War . He was captured by American Indians during the Crawford Expedition and tortured to death at the Shawnee town of Wakatomika, which is currently located in Logan County, Ohio, about halfway between West Liberty, Ohio and Zanesfield, Ohio. 𝐄𝐚𝐫𝐥𝐲 𝐥𝐢𝐟𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐟𝐚𝐦𝐢𝐥𝐲 McClelland was born in Lancaster County, Province of Pennsylvania. Later he moved to Westmoreland County and taking up a tract of land in Franklin Township, lived in that part which fell within Fayette County, Pennsylvania on its organization in 1783. He married Martha Dale on November 12, 1759, and was either the founder or co-founder of McClellandtown, Fayette County, Pennsylvania. He was the father of John McClelland (1766-1849), who became an officer during the War of 1812. 𝐀𝐦𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐧 𝐑𝐞𝐯𝐨𝐥𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 In 1776, McClelland's Fort, an early army outpost, was built on a cliff near Royal Spring Park, Georgetown, Kentucky...

Margaret Cochran Corbin (November 12, 1751 – January 16, 1800) was a woman who fought in the American Revolutionary War. On November 16, 1776, her husband, John Corbin, was one of some 600 American soldiers defending Fort Washington in northern Manhattan from 4,000 attacking Hessian troops under British command. Margaret, too nervous to let her husband go into battle alone, decided she wanted to go with him. Since she was a nurse, she was allowed to accompany her husband as a nurse for injured soldiers. John Corbin was on the crew of one of two cannons the defenders deployed; when he fell in action, Margaret Corbin took his place and continued to work the cannon until she too was seriously wounded. It is said that Corbin was standing next to her husband when he fell during battle. Immediately, she took his post, and because she had watched her husband, a trained artilleryman, fire the cannon so much, she was able to fire, clean and aim the cannon with great ease and speed. This impres...

Moustache, sometimes abbreviated to Mous, (September 1799 – 11 March 1812) was a barbet who is reputed to have played a part in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. His story is recounted in many publications but may be partly fictionalised. Moustache is said to have been born in Falaise, Normandy, France, in 1799 and to have joined a grenadier regiment at Caen. He followed the regiment through the Italian Campaign of the Revolutionary Wars and is said to have alerted the regiment to a surprise night attack by Austrian forces. He is reported to have been present at the Battle of Marengo, during which he lost an ear, and with a cuirassier regiment at the Battle of Austerlitz. At Austerlitz Moustache was responsible for the discovery of an Austrian spy, and the recovery of the regiment's standard from the Austrians. As a result of wounds taken at Austerlitz Moustache had a leg amputated and was reportedly rewarded with a medal by Marshal Jean Lannes. He is later said to hav...

Cathay Williams (September 1844 – 1893) was an American soldier . African American woman, she enlisted in the United States Army under the pseudonym William Cathay. Williams became the first female & African American to enlist and the only documented woman to serve in the U.S. Army while posing as a man during the Indian Wars. 𝐄𝐚𝐫𝐥𝐲 𝐥𝐢𝐟𝐞 Cathay Williams was born in September 1844 in Independence, Missouri to a free man and a woman in slavery, making her legal status also that of a slave. During her adolescence, Williams worked as a house slave on the Johnson plantation on the outskirts of Jefferson City, Missouri. In 1861 Union forces occupied Jefferson City in the early stages of the Civil War. At that time, captured slaves officially were designated by the Union as contraband, and many were forced to serve in military support roles such as cooks, laundresses, or nurses. 𝐀𝐦𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐧 𝐂𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐥 𝐖𝐚𝐫 It is possible that Cathay Williams was present at the Battle of Pe...

Andrew Sharp's exact facts of his beginnings are a little unclear. It has been stated that he was born between 1750-1755, in Northern Ireland, but some reports state that he was born, in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, to Scottish immigrants Thomas Sharp and Margaret Elder. Andrew spent his mid-twenties fighting as a patriot in the Revolutionary War and he served three separate enlistments. He first enlisted in March 1776, as a Private in Captain William Pebble’s Company, in Colonel Samuel Miles’ Pennsylvania Rifles. He fought with his unit under General George Washington during the Battle of Long Island, Princeton, and Germantown. His first enlistment expired on 31 December 1776. His second enlistment was from 1 March, through 1 May 1777, with the Pennsylvania State Regiment of Foote. His third enlistment started on an unknown date, and he was mustered out of service on 13 November 1783. During this enlistment, he fought at the Battle of Trenton Ferry, and after the battle, he w...

The “Oldest living being in America”, 137-year-old White Wolf Chief John Smith photographed here in circa 1921. White Wolf Chief John Smith was a Native American of the Ojibwe (also known as Ojibwa, Chippewa, or Saulteux) people that lived in the Cass Lake, Minnesota area of the United States during the 1800s and early 1900s. He is best known for his extremely wrinkled appearance, and that people claimed that he is the oldest Native American to ever live. It is often claimed that he was 137 years old at the time of his death on February 6th, 1922. Chief John Smith was not only known as “White Wolf” but he also had many other nicknames, often related to the way his skin looked, or the fact he was old. He was known as Gaa-binagwiiyaas (translates to “which the flesh peels off”), Kahbe nagwi wens, Ga-Be-Nah-Gewn-Wonce (which roughly means “wrinkled meat”), Grandpa John, and The Old Indian. John Smith had all of these nicknames because he was a relatively well-known face not only in Minnes...

ANGELA PERRY, SENECA/CAYUGA, 1957... LITTLE INFO ABOUT: The Seneca–Cayuga Nation is one of three federally recognized tribes of Seneca people in the United States. It includes the Cayuga people and is based in Oklahoma, United States. The tribe had more than 5,000 people in 2011. They have a tribal jurisdictional area in the northeast corner of Oklahoma and are headquartered in Grove. They are descended from Iroquoian peoples who had relocated to Ohio from New York state in the mid-18th century. The other two federally recognized Seneca tribes are located in New York: the Seneca Nation of New York and the Tonawanda Band of Seneca Indians. *The SENECA,, or Onödowága (meaning "People of the Great Hill"), traditionally lived in what is now New York between the Genesee River and Canandaigua Lake. *The name CAYUGA,(Gayogohó:no') means "People of the Great Swamp" and they also lived in what was later known as western New York. Both tribes were part of the Iroquoian la...

Joseph Gorham (sometimes recorded as Goreham, 1725–1790) was an American colonial military officer during King George's War and later a British army commander during the Seven Years' War and the American Revolutionary War. He is best known for leading a company of British imperial Rangers, called Gorham's Rangers, during the 1750s and early 1760s. Gorham's unit played an important role in the French and Indian War and were early practitioners of American frontier warfare, more commonly known as petite Guerre or Guerrilla warfare. He also became Governor of Placentia. The Gorham family (from Cape Cod) had a distinguished history in the New England colonial military. Serving alongside the early colonial military innovator Benjamin Church, John Gorham I died while fighting in the famous Great Swamp Fight during King Philip's War. Joseph's grandfather, John Gorham II, also served with Church during the fourth Eastward Expedition into Acadia, which involved the Raid...

Catecahassa or Black Hoof (c. 1740–1831) was the head civil chief of the Shawnee Indians in the Ohio Country of what became the United States. A member of the Mekoche division of the Shawnees, Black Hoof became known as a fierce warrior during the early wars between the Shawnee and Anglo- American colonists. Black Hoof claimed to have been present at the Battle of the Monongahela in 1755, when General Edward Braddock was defeated during the French and Indian War, although there is no contemporary evidence that Shawnees took part in that battle. Little documentary evidence of Black Hoof's life appears in the historical record before 1795. He probably took part in the Battle of Point Pleasant during Lord Dunmore's War against the Virginia militia in 1774. During the American Revolutionary War, he may have taken part in the siege of Boonesborough in 1778, which was led by Chief Blackfish, as well as the subsequent defense of the Shawnee village of Chillicothe in 1779. In the North...

John Reid Wolfskill (September 16, 1804 – May 27, 1897) was a California pioneer who helped establish the development of California's agricultural industry in the Sacramento Valley in the 19th century. In 1842, Wolfskill was the first settler to plant vineyards and fruit trees there. Born in the Bluegrass region of Kentucky, he migrated to join his brother William in California, where they bought land near Sacramento. Wolfskill became a pioneer of Solano County: "he was the first English-speaking man to settle in the area around what is now Winters, California". His brother, William Wolfskill, had migrated earlier to California and also contributed to its agricultural development, primarily in Southern California in the area of present-day Los Angeles. After they were settled, their younger brothers Milton, Mathus, and Sarchal Wolfskill joined John on his land grant Rancho de los Putos, later renamed the Wolfskill Ranch. In 1935 Wolfskill's descendants donated 100 ac...

Robert "Bob" Benge (c. 1762–1794), also known as Captain Benge (or "The Bench" to frontiersmen), was a Cherokee leader in the Upper Towns, in present-day far Southwest Virginia during the Cherokee–American wars (1783-1794). He was born as Bob Benge in 1762 in the Overhill Cherokee town of Toqua, to a Cherokee woman and a Scots-Irish trader named John Benge, who lived full-time among the Cherokee and had taken a "country wife." They also had a daughter Lucy. Benge stood out physically because of the red hair he inherited from his father. Under the Cherokee matrilineal kinship and clan system, children were considered born into their mother's family and clan. Their mother's eldest brother was considered the most important male figure in their growing up, especially for boys. The children were reared largely in Cherokee culture and identified as Cherokee. The available sources strongly imply, but do not prove, that young Benge and his sister Lucy wer...

Bemino (1710s–1780s, Delaware)—known as John Killbuck Sr. to white settlers —was a renowned medicine man and war leader of Delaware (Lenape) and Shawnee warriors during the French and Indian War (1754–63). He was a son of Netawatwees, at one time principal chief of Delaware (Lenape). Bemino lived with his people in what is now eastern Ohio. During the war, he allied with the French against British settlers and engaged with his warrior bands in attacks mostly in the upper Potomac River watershed, in what is now the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia. His son Gelelemend (John Killbuck Jr.), was a Delaware chief during the American Revolutionary War. Bemino was born into a Delaware, or Lenape (their autonym) family. This is an Algonquian language and the people historically occupied territory along the mid-Atlantic coast, from present-day Connecticut to New Jersey and Delaware, including Long Island in New York. They were gradually pushed out of this area by European colonists. As Delawar...

Major Thomas Forsyth (December 5, 1771 – October 29, 1833) was a 19th-century American frontiersman and trader who served as a U.S. Indian agent to the Sauk and Fox during the 1820s and was replaced by Felix St. Vrain, prior to the Black Hawk War. His writings, both prior to and while an Indian agent, provided an invaluable source of the early Native American history in the Northwest Territory. His son, Robert Forsyth, was a colonel in the United States Army and an early settler of Chicago, Illinois. Thomas Forsyth was born in Detroit to William Forsyth, a Scots-Irish Presbyterian who immigrated from Ireland around 1750. A veteran of the French and Indian War, his father was twice wounded, while fighting under General Wolfe at the capture of Quebec in 1759. The elder Forsyth had married the widow of another trader, so he was raised alongside his half-brother John Kinzie, with whom he would also later work. Shortly after Thomas Forsyth was born, his father was imprisoned as a loyalist d...

ARMY HISTORY SALUTES WOMEN’S HISTORY MONTH In March, the U.S. Army Center of Military History celebrates the women who have contributed to the force throughout history, from the Revolutionary War to the present day.  Throughout the U.S. Army’s nearly 250 years in service to the United States, women have supported its efforts to protect and defend the nation. Both on the battlefield and off it, in uniform and in civilian dress, women have contributed to U.S. Army success and victory in conflicts spanning hundreds of years. 

Dragging Canoe (ᏥᏳ ᎦᏅᏏᏂ, pronounced Tsiyu Gansini, "he is dragging his canoe") (c. 1738–February 29, 1792) was a Cherokee war chief who led a band of Cherokee warriors who resisted colonists and United States settlers in the Upper South. During the American Revolution and afterward, Dragging Canoe's forces were sometimes joined by Upper Muskogee, Chickasaw, Shawnee, and Indians from other tribes/nations, along with British Loyalists, and agents of France and Spain. The series of conflicts lasted a decade after the American Revolutionary War. Dragging Canoe became the preeminent war leader among the Indians of the southeast. He served as war chief, or skiagusta, of the group known as the Chickamauga Cherokee (or "Lower Cherokee"), from 1777 until his death in 1792. He was succeeded by John Watts. Born about 1738, he was the son of Attakullakulla ("Little Carpenter") and Nionne Ollie ("Tamed Doe"). Both parents had been born to other tribes, t...