User:Nlx*n's regt

Dedicated to the Memory of General John Nixon of Framingham, Massachusetts.

Hi.

I live in the Boston area and I'm interested in the American Revolution. There's no connection between the two, necessarily. Most of the important stuff in the Revolution happened outside the Boston area. This user page is dedicated to General Nixon because, of the Continental brigadier generals from Massachustts, his home town is closest to mine. In fact one of his field officers was from here.

At the moment I'm compiling histories of all Continental Army units for myself. Like many others, I have a copy of Wright's book, "The Continental Army." I think he's done a reasonable job of presenting the history of the Continental Army as a whole. It seems, though, that most readers accept his lineages as regimental histories. Unfortunately they aren't true histories, and Wright doesn't claim that they are. His purpose in writing the lineages was institutional rather than historical. He wanted to show a purpoted connection, where possible, between a Continental Army unit and a U.S. Army unit, Regular Army or National Guard, existing now. This is fine from an institutional point of view but it's historically inaccurate. The lineages group separate regiments under single headings, as Wright's own text makes clear. The lineages are also confined to showing assignment to higher headquarters. (None of them mention Valley Forge, for instance).

I'd like to see something like true Continental Army regimental histories on Wiki: histories that go into exhaustive detail about a unit's commanders, movements, stations, actions, etc. It would be fun to see histories written that use not only Wright but also Lesser, Heitman, Fitzpatrick, Ford, and other well-known sources. Alas there's no consensus on how this should be done. Some units are neglected, others are someone's favorite project, and some coverage strays far off topic. Misconceptions are repeated by otherwise reliable printed sources and are revived on the internet.