Eliza Halroyd Farmar, the English wife of Dr. Richard Farmar, who came to Philadelphia ca. 1767, was dismayed by the actions of the British ministry in 1775, as this letter to her nephew Jack Halroyd, a clerk at the East India Company in London shows.

June 28th, 1775My Dear Jack—
We have nothing going on now but preparations for war … there is hardly a man that is not old but is leaving, except the Quakers; and there is two Companys of them, all in a Pretty Uniform of Sky blue turn’d up with white. There is Six or Seven different sorts of Uniforms beside a Company of light Horse and one Rangers and another of Indians: these are all of Philadelphia; besides all the Provinces arming and Training in the same Manner for they are all determined to die or be Free. It is not the low Idle Fellow that fight only for pay, but Men of great property are Common Soldiers who secretagogue hgh say they are fighting for themselves and Posterity. There is accounts come that they are now fighting at Boston and that the Army set Charles Town on fire in order to land the Troops under cover of the Smoak. …
The People are getting into Manufacture of different Sorts particularly Salt Peter and Gunpowder; the Smiths are almost all turned Gunsmiths and cannot work fast enough. God knows how it will end but I fear it will be very bad on both sides; and if your devilish Minestry and parliment don’t make some concesions and repeal the Acts, England will lose America for, as I said before, they are determined to be free.

The letter is from In the Words of Women, Chapter 4, page 94. “View of the Attack on Bunker’s Hill with the Burning of Charlestown,” engraving after Millar in Edward Bernard, The New, Comprehensive and Complete History of England (London: Alex. Hogg, 1783), Early Printed Collections, The British Library (47).

The mineral springs of Saratoga, New York, were first thought to have healing and restorative powers by the Indians. Their reputation spread by word of mouth, and in 1783 the first published article about the Springs appeared. The naturally carbonated water, green in color and at a stable 55 degrees, was presumed to cure various skin diseases as well as kidney and liver ailments. In 1791, Abigail Alsop of Hartford, Connecticut, traveled with a party of young men and women to the Springs, more out of curiosity than in need of treatment. She kept a journal on the trip that was later published. It is interesting that the party consisted of young men and women going off on their own. Abigail included many details about her companions and the journey, as well as a description of the Springs.

From Hartford, where I resided … our party of eight proceeded westward, and some idea of the fashions may be formed from the dress of one of the ladies, who wore a black beaver with a sugar-loaf crown eight or nine inches high, called a steeple crown, wound round with black and red tassels. … Habits having gone out of fashion, the dress was of London smoke broadcloth, buttoned down in front, and at the side with twenty-four gilt buttons. … Large waists and stays were in fashion, and the shoes were extremely sharp-toed and high-held, ornamented with large paste buckles on the instep. At the tavern where we spent the first night, we ladies were obliged to surround ourselves with a barrier of bean-leaves to keep off the bugs which infested the place; but this afforded only temporary benefit, as the vermin soon crept to the ceiling and fell upon us from above.

After stopping at Hudson, New York, Abigail’s party traveled on to Saratoga, “the efficacy of the water being much celebrated, as well as the curious round and hollow rock from which it flowed.”

The country we had to pass over, after leaving the Hudson (River), was very uninviting, and almost uninhabited. The road lay though a forest, and was formed of logs. … On reaching the Springs at Saratoga, we found but three habitations, and those but poor log-houses on the high bank of the meadow. … on the ridge near the Round Rock. This was the only Spring then visited. The log-cabins were almost full of strangers, among whom were several ladies and gentlemen from Albany. … We found the Round Rock at that time entire; the large tree, which two or three years after fell and cracked a fissure in it, being then standing near, and the water, which occasionally overflowed and increased the rock by its deposits, keeping the general level five or six inches below the top. The neighborhood of the Spring, like all the country we had seen for many miles, was a perfect forest. … We arrived on Saturday, and left there on Monday morning. …

The above passages appear in The Saratoga Reader: Writing About an American Village, 1749-1900, by Field Horne, Saratoga Springs: Kiskatom Publishing, 2004, pages 22-23. The illustration High Rock Spring, which appeared in the Columbian Magazine, March 1788, is on page 10 of Field Horne’s book.

Anna Rawle, the twenty-four-year-old daughter of Quaker Loyalists, recounted in a diary for her mother what happened in Philadelphia when the surrender of General Cornwallis at Yorktown (19 October 1781) became known. She and her sister Margaret were living at the time with their grandmother on Arch Street, between Front and Second Streets.

October 22, 1781.—Second day. The first thing I heard this morning was that Lord Cornwallis had surrendered to the French and Americans— intelligence as surprising as vexatious. …

October 25.—Fifth day. I suppose, dear Mammy, thee would not have imagined this house to be illuminated last night, but it was. A mob surrounded it, broke the shutters and the glass of the windows, and were coming in, none but forlorn women here. We for a time listened for their attacks in fear and trembling till, finding them grow more loud and violent, not knowing what to do, we ran into the yard. … Coburn and Bob Shewell … called to us not to be frightened, and fixed light up at the windows, which pacified the mob, and after three huzzas they moved off. … French and J. B. nailed boards up at the broken pannels, or it would not have been safe to have gone to bed. … For two hours we had the disagreeable noise of stones banging about, glass crashing, and the tumultuous voices of a large body of men, as they were a long time at the different houses in the neighbourhood. At last they were victorious, and it was one general illumination throughout the town. … in short the sufferings of those they pleased to style Tories would fill a volume and shake the credulity of those who were not here on that memorable night

October 26.—Sixth day. It seems universally agreed that Philadelphia will not longer be that happy asylum for the Quakers that it once was. Those joyful days when all was prosperity and peace are gone, never to return. …

The excerpts are from In the Words of Women, page 155, and from The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, published by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Volume 16, 1892, “A Loyalist’s Account of Certain Occurrences in Philadelphia after Cornwallis’s Surrender at Yorktown,” pages 104-107. The image is from The Freeman’s Journal: or The North-American Intelligencer, Philadelphia, 31 October 1781,included in the National Humanities Center Resources Toolbox, Making the Revolution: America, 1763-1791.

Mercy Otis Warren, wrote a history of the Revolution, published in 1805, based on her first-hand observations. It was a remarkable undertaking in itself, all the more so because it was assumed by a woman. The words in the last chapter seem to have special relevance for the Fourth of July and this election year.

If peace and unanimity are cherished, and the equalization of liberty, and the equity and energy of law, maintained by harmony and justice, the present representative government may stand for ages a luminous monument of republican wisdom, virtue, and integrity. The principles of the revolution ought ever to be the pole-star of the statesman, respected by the rising generation; and the advantages bestowed by Providence should never be lost, by negligence, indiscretion, or guilt.

The people may again be reminded, that the elective franchise is in their hands; that it ought not to be abused, either for personal gratifications, or the indulgence of partisan acrimony. This advantage should be improved, not only for the benefit of existing society, but with an eye to that fidelity which is due posterity. This can only be done by electing such men to guide the national counsels, whose conscious probity enables them to stand like a Colossus on the broad basis of independence, endeavor to lighten the burdens of the people, strengthen their unanimity at home, command justice abroad, and cultivate peace with all nations, until an example may be left on record of the practicability of meliorating the condition of mankind.

The excerpt is from History of the Rise, Progress & Termination of the American Revolution, by Mercy Otis Warren, Vol. 3 (Boston: E. Larkin, 1805), pages 431-32.