Diaries and Memoirs
Coghlan, Margaret. Memoirs of Mrs. Coghlan, (Daughter of British Major Moncrieffe) written by herself, and Dedicated to the British Nation; being interspersed with Anecdotes of the late American and present French War with remarks Moral and Political, London: Printed for the author and sold by C. and G. Kearsley, Fleet-street, 1794.
A captivating account of the daughter of British Major Thomas Moncrieffe starting in pre-war colonial America. As a teenager, Margaret encounters American generals Israel Putnam and George Washington in 1776 in New York City. Margaret is rumored to have had an affair with Aaron Burr. After the British retake the city, she is married at age 14 to British Lt. John Coghlan. It is an unhappy marriage. The Coghlan returned to Britain in 1778. The couple soon separated but not divorced. Margaret engages in a series of high-profile affairs with prominent means. She died suddenly in 1787. Her memoir was published in 1793 in two volumes. All or part of the second volume may have been constructed and written by a second person.
Enys, John. The American Journals of Lt. John Enys. Edited by Elizabeth Cometti. 1st ed. Blue Mountain Lake, N.Y.: Adirondack Museum, 1976.
French, Allen, ed., The Diary of Lt. Frederick MacKenzie, 23rd (Royal Welch Fusiliers) Foot. Cambridge,MA: The Harvard University Press, 1926.
Lt MacKenzie’s diary covers the period of British occupation of the city of Boston.
Hattendorff, John B.. A Redcoat in America: The Diaries of Lieutenant William Bamford, 1757-1765 and 1776. United Kingdom: Helion, 2019.
The second portion of the dairy, running from January through December 1776, documents William Bamford’s service in the 40th Regiment at Boston after the battle of Bunker Hill, during the winter and early spring of 1776, the British evacuation to Halifax, return to Staten Island, New York, the campaign on Long Island, and the occupation of New York City.
Lamb, Roger, and Don N Hagist. A British Soldier’s Story: Roger Lamb’s Narrative of the American Revolution. Baraboo, Wis.: Ballindalloch Press, 2004.
Lord Shelburne The Bowood Circle and the American Revolution – Letters To Lord Shelburne 1776-1789. Oxford, England: University Press, 1976.Muenchhausen, Friedrich Ernst von. At General Howe’s Side, 1776-1778: The Diary of General William Howe’s Aide de Camp, Captain Friedrich Von Muenchhausen. United States: Philip Freneau Press, 1974.
Sullivan, Thomas. From Redcoat to Rebel: The Thomas Sullivan Journal. Edited by Joseph Lee Boyle. Bowie, MD: Heritage Books, 1997.
Remarkably, Thomas Sullivan deserted the British Army to join the Rebel cause. He arrived in North America as a member of the Forty-ninth Regiment of Foot just before the Battle of Bunker Hill. He remained in Boston until the British evacuated in 1776. After spending several months in Nova Scotia, he traveled with the army to New York City, where he participated in the Battle of Brooklyn and several other battles. The next year he fought in the Philadelphia Campaign in the Battles of Brandywine and Germantown. During this period, Sullivan married Sarah Stoneman from Bucks County, PA. As a result, he deserted the British Army during its transit of New Jersey to New York in 1778. Upon switching sides, Sullivan joined the staff of John Cox, an Assistant Quartermaster General in the Continental Army. Abruptly, the journal ends and little is known of his live post-1778. Sullivan journal recounts the life of an enlisted British soldier who finds America to be a better place to live. The journal demonstrates that privates were remarkably informed of military strategies and events.
Scull, G. D., James Gabriel Montrésor, and John Montrésor. The Montresor Journals. Collections of the New-York Historical Society … 1881. Publication Fund Series.[v. 14] xiv, 578 p. [New York: Printed for the Society, 1882. //catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/00001284.
Other Published Primary Sources
Balderston, Marion, and David Syrett, eds. The Lost War: Letters from British Officers during the American Revolution. New York: Horizon Press, 1975.
Barnes, James J., and Patience P. Barnes, eds. The American Revolution through British Eyes: A Documentary Collection. 2 vols. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2013.
Tarleton, Banastre. A History of the Campaigns of 1780 and 1781 in the Southern Provinces of North America. Dublin: Colles, Exshaw, White, H. Whitestone, Burton, Bryne, Moore, Jones and Dornin, 1787.
Secondary Sources
Procknow, Eugene. William Hunter – Finding Free Speech: The Son of a British Soldier Who Became an Early American. Sunbury, PA: Oxford Southern, 2022.
William Hunter, the son of a Revolutionary War British soldier, witnessed the terrors of combat and capture and penned the only surviving Revolutionary account written by a child of a British soldier. Remarkably, Hunter immigrated to America and became a gutsy Kentucky newspaper editor and a prominent politician, businessman, and community leader.
Researching the American Revolution 