The British In Indiana 1760 1777

Most history concentrates on the broad sweep of events, battles and political decisions, economic advance or decline, landmark issues and events, and the people who lived and made these events tend to be lost in the big picture. Cayton's lively new history of the frontier period in Indiana puts the focus on people, on how they lived, how they viewed their world, and what motivated them. Here are the stories of Jean-Baptiste Bissot, Sieur de Vincennes; George Croghan, the ultimate frontier entrepreneur; the world as seen by George Rogers Clark; Josiah Hamar and John Francis Hamtramck; Little Turtle; Anna Tuthill Symmes Harrison and William Henry Harrison; Tenskwatawa; Jonathan Jennings; Calvin Fletcher; and many others. Focusing his account on these and other representative individuals, Cayton retells the story of Indiana's settlement in a human and compelling narrative which makes the experience of exploration and settlement real and exciting. Here is a book that will appeal to the general reader and scholar alike while going a long way to reinfusing our understanding of history and the historical process with the breath of life itself.

During the 1930s in the United States, the Works Progress Administration developed the Federal Writers’ Project to support writers and artists while making a national effort to document the country’s shared history and culture. The American Guide series consists of individual guides to each of the states. Little-known authors—many of whom would later become celebrated literary figures—were commissioned to write these important books. John Steinbeck, Saul Bellow, Zora Neale Hurston, and Ralph Ellison are among the more than 6,000 writers, editors, historians, and researchers who documented this celebration of local histories. Photographs, drawings, driving tours, detailed descriptions of towns, and rich cultural details exhibit each state’s unique flavor. The WPA Guide to Indiana documents a region with a diverse group of people and backgrounds, appropriately known as “the Crossroads of America.” Bounded by Lake Michigan and the Ohio River, Indiana contains a wealth of natural resources—all carefully detailed in this guide. In addition to a great deal of interesting early 20th century history, the WPA guide to the Hoosier State also has one of the most richly documented Native American histories in the collection.

In 1777 Normand MacLeod, a British army officer, assumed the post of town major of Detroit, then a British colony on the frontier of late eighteenth-century America. Although it was not in the forefront of action in the American Revolution, the fort at Detroit had an important role because its strategic location made it a point of interest to military leaders on both sides. Detroiters, under the leadership of Captain Normand MacLeod, played a role in the War for Independence that is described in detail in this journal. During the bitter winter of 1778-79, MacLeod led a party of Detroit Volunteer Militia in advance of Henry Hamilton's main force. Hamilton was attempting to hold Fort Sackville (modern Vincennes, Indiana) against George Rogers Clark and his troops. MacLeod was a shrewd and witty reporter. His diary, published for the first time in this volume, details the daily routine of the arduous midwinter military campaign. He describes daily life within the walls of the fort at Detroit, the military adventures planned within those walls, and the rumors, the gossip, and the personal relationships within the community. Offering an unprecedented personal glimpse of Detroit life in the years 1778-79, the diary preserves the flavor of one bitter winter of the American Revolution of special significance for historians of Michigan and Detroit. It is presented in an attractive clothbound volume suitable as a gift for history buffs, a volume which will be treasured by the collector. William A. Evans's introduction to the journal places MacLeod's expedition in the context of Hamilton's strategy and provides a biographical account of MacLeod himself that has not been available previously. Norman MacLeod (1731?-1796) is now a relatively minor figure in American history, but he was a man of some position and power in the early life of Detroit. Born in Scotland, he came to the American colonies as an ensign in the famous Black Watch regiment. He remained primarily a military man throughout his American career, first transferring to the Eightieth Regiment (Gage's Light Infantry), and eventually holding posts at Ontario and as town major, the chief executive officer of the garrison, at Detroit. He also tried his hand at farming and was for a time a partner in a fur-trading company. In 1796 he died in Montreal as he had lived, a loyal subject of the British crown.

Epic Landscapes is the first study devoted to architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe’s substantial artistic oeuvre from 1795, when he set sail from Britain to Virginia, to late 1798, when he relocated to Pennsylvania. Thus, this book offers the only extended consideration of Latrobe’s Virginian watercolors, including a series of complex trompe l’oeil studies and three significant illustrated manuscripts. Though Latrobe’s architecture is well known, his watercolors have received little critical attention. Epic Landscapes rediscovers Latrobe’s watercolors as an ambitious body of work and reconsiders the close relationship between the visual and spatial sensibility of these images and his architectural designs. It also offers a fresh analysis of Latrobe within the context of creative practice in the Atlantic world at the end of the eighteenth century as he explored contemporary ideas concerning the form of art for Republican society and the social impacts of revolution. Published by University of Delaware Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.