Places and Artifacts of The American Revolution

  One of our favorite family vacation destinations is Virginia. Specifically, the Historical Triangle area, which is comprised of:  Jamestown, Colonial Williamsburg and Yorktown.   We have been vacationing there every few years for the better part of 10 years and each time we seem to find new sites to visit and always run out of time before we run out of things to do. Most recently, we expanded out past the Historic Triangle and ventured to Monticello which is around 110 miles from Williamsburg in Charlottesville, and Mount Vernon which is around 105 miles from Williamsburg in a completely different direction. Both are equally amazing and majestic, but in very different ways. I'll start off with our basecamp, Colonial Williamsburg. Colonial Williamsburg Williamsburg was founded in 1632 between the James and York rivers. It was the capital city of the Commonwealth of Virginia from 1699 to 1780, when it moved to Richmond. Williamsburg just was just as central to the po...

  Round shot, solid shot, small shot, grape shot, swivel shot, canister shot, cannonballs and so on and so on and so on. So many names, variations and types of round projectiles used during The American Revolutionary War to inflict harm to property and person. I'll keep the subject matter of this post limited to 18th century solid shot, swivel shot and case/grape shot. I'll post at a later time in regards to musket balls and pistol balls, as they are a whole other matter which merits discussion. Here we go with some definitions and a few examples from my personal collection. Dating back to the 15th century, initially made of stone then cast iron, cannonballs were first utilized by the French as a means to level castle walls. By the time of the American Revolution, cast iron solid shot were in standardized sizes with their calibers based on the weight of the shot ranging from less than a pound up to fifty pounds. Anatomy of an Iron Solid Shot Ball   Cannon balls and the smaller...