Talk:Isaac Sears

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 23 January 2019 and 8 May 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Jbanda0351. Peer reviewers: Drjoline, Jdang2019.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 00:49, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Untitled
I have reverted this article to the state it was in before a large chunk of (apparently) copyvio text was added from. -- Mwanner | Talk 17:58, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Did Sears ever marry or have children? If so this information may be beneficial to add to the page.

-Daniel Joline — Preceding unsigned comment added by Drjoline (talk • contribs) 20:59, 10 April 2019 (UTC)

Date of Birth
I have removed that other date of birth from "Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography", since this book is very old and is known to contain errors. BradMajors (talk) 22:44, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Better Source
A better source for Sears' illegal raid from Connecticut on New York may be found in Henry Barton Dawson's, Westchester County, New York, During the American Revolution, 1886. He sharply critiques Frank Moore's [1860] Diary of the American Revolution (sited in the article). For one example, the 16 self-appointed raiders who illegally vandalized Rivington's press, then kidnapped three West Chester Men becomes "80 citizens" in the article. When brought to New Haven, the "prisoners" were forced to pay for their own lodging, while Sears sat around Beer's Tavern in New Haven telling colorful lies about himself to an increasingly disillusioned group of cronies.

Sears is a colorful scoundrel, and this is a good article to have, and we must thank the contributors for it. But Dawson devotes some 13 pages of footnoted documentation to the incident; he might be a better source than Moore -- at least for this one incident in the colorful life of Isaac Sears.Harrycroswell (talk) 07:31, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

RTV Feedback
I wonder that using the standard Wikipedia Bio-format might not be a bit more straightforward. This is simply a matter of organization. Start with "Isaac Sears (1730-1786)" and then give a brief 1-2 sentence account of who he was in terms of his historical significance (King Sears!). Then move the bulk of that early section below the "contents" to an "Early Life" section. (For the final section, instead of "After War" use the more common nomenclature of "Post-War Years.")

I like that you're adding details - Isaac Sears is definitely a figure who can be overwhelming to write about in terms of details, but it's great to get that richer portrait. I would still aim to bring in more of the secondary source literature, from Pauline Maier's chapter in _Old Revolutionaries_ (and not just Banner's review of the book) to the articles by Roger J. Champagne. Other sources that mention Sears, if you don't get to them, can still be included as "For Further Reading."

As you proofread further, keep an eye on capitalization (religious not Religious, for ex.; if in doubt, be consistent, as with liberty poles or Liberty Poles), passive voice constructions, and longer sentences that can be broken down for clarity. Sons of Liberty (not Son's of Liberty). If Sears was more religious than his peers, give evidence of that. I would delete "great" before "adventure" in the East Indies trade (adventure refers to a shipping speculation in this era, while "great" as used here suggests a more modern use of the term).

Let me know if you have questions on any of this! Raevan2011 (talk) 07:36, 28 April 2019 (UTC)