Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
This is the definitive work on Americans taken prisoner during the Revolutionary War. The bulk of the book is devoted to personal accounts, many of them moving, of the conditions endured by U.S. prisoners at the hands of the British, as preserved in journals or diaries kept by physicians, ships' captains, and the prisoners themselves. Of greater genealogical interest is the alphabetical list of 8,000 men who were imprisoned on the British vessel The Old Jersey, which the author copied from the papers of the British War Department and incorporated in the appendix to the work. Also included is a Muster Roll of Captain Abraham Shepherd's Company of Virginia Riflemen and a section on soldiers of the Pennsylvania Flying Camp who perished in prison, 1776-1777.
Synopsis
This compendium of forty-eight family histories was fashioned together from a variety of primary and secondary sources. Among other things, the compilers made a careful study of Botetourt County marriages, wills, deeds, and death records from microfilm available at the Virginia State Library, as well as Botetourt County records housed at the county clerks'offices in Fincastle (Botetourt County), Salem (Roanoke County), and Lexington (Rockbridge County). The end result is an extensively annotated collection of early Botetourt families, many of whose progenitors were born in the 18th century.