Kidder on Jacob Francis, 15 Feb.

Back in 2018, I wrote a series of blog posts that turned into the Journal of the American Revolution article “The General, the Corporal, and the Anecdote.”

It discussed the evolution of a story that appeared in the 1832 pension application of an African-American veteran named Jacob Francis.

As those posts appeared, William L. Kidder contacted me with the news that he was researching all of Pvt. Francis’s full life and military career. That, too, became a J.A.R. article, “The American Revolution of Private Jacob Francis.”

Now Larry Kidder has shared his full research in a book titled The Revolutionary World of a Free Black Man: Jacob Francis: 1754-1836.

On Tuesday, 15 February, at 7:00 P.M., Kidder will discuss this new book online as part of Roger Williams’s History Author Talk series. You can register for that event here.

One detail of Francis’s life that I find especially interesting is how he moved around a lot as a teenager indentured to a series of men. Born in New Jersey, he traveled south to the Caribbean and then north to Salem in 1768.

Thus, Francis witnessed the coming of the war in Essex County, enlisted in the Massachusetts army, and fought in the siege of Boston.

After two years as a Continental soldier, Francis settled back in New Jersey. He found his mother after years of separation, married, raised a family, and lived into his eighties. This new book has all the details of that long American life.