Ravencrest Historical Writing

Ravencrest Historical Writing Jonathan Klemens, MS, FSA-Scot
Writer . Author . Historian
American Revolution Institute
The Aldus Society . . . Always Moving Forward

Past President of the Depreciation Lands Museum and Historian

12/21/2025

December 20, 1775
The Continental Congress orders a temporary cease-fire between the colonies of Connecticut and Pennsylvania in their dispute over conflicting land claims in the Wyoming Valley.

12/21/2025

In the five decades preceding the American Revolution about a quarter of a million Irish people immigrated to the North American British colonies. The vast majority of them were Protestants, almost always Presbyterians from Ulster (northern Ireland)—descendants of folks who had immigrated to Ireland from Scotland and northern England in the 17th century. Fleeing religious persecution and in search of better economic opportunities, they usually arrived in Pennsylvania, and from there took the Great Wagon Road south, into Virginia and the Carolinas. Typically poor and without the means to acquire property in the lowlands, they settled along the Appalachian and Piedmont frontiers, places that tended to suit their fiercely independent manner of living. Quick-tempered, resourceful, and Calvinist, they were called “Irish” by their neighbors, though they preferred to refer to themselves as Ulster folk. We know them today as the Scots-Irish.

The term “Scots-Irish” (or sometimes “Scotch-Irish”) came into use in the mid-19th century, as mass migration brought millions of Irish Catholics into the northeastern United States—an exodus that became a tidal wave during the Great Potato Famine (over the last 50 years of the 19th century, immigration—and starvation—emptied Ireland of almost half of its population). To distinguish the descendants of the Ulster Protestant immigrants from the Irish Catholic immigrants, the former came to called “Scots-Irish” and the later simply “Irish” (or Irish-American).

Today nearly 10% of the U.S. population (over 31 million people) self-identify their ancestry as “Irish.” About 3 million self-identify as “Scots-Irish.”

The image is an artists’ depiction of a family of Scots-Irish immigrants traveling to the North Carolina frontier.

09/28/2025

Samuel Adams was an abject failure as a businessman. After graduating from Harvard with two degrees, his father gave him the money with which to launch his business career. Sam soon lost it all. He was 26 when his father died, leaving him a substantial inheritance. But by the time Samuel reached middle age most of the money was gone and he was barely able to support his wife and two children. He was well on his way to being someone history would not remember. But in 1764, at age 42, Samuel Adams gave up any further pretense of being a businessman and devoted himself to his true calling—politics.

An ardent proponent of the rights of the colonists since his college days, and a strident admirer of the writings of John Locke, Adams was a brilliant political organizer and a stirring public speaker—seemingly a natural-born revolutionary. He emerged as a leader of the resistance to taxation without representation. To the Patriots he was an inspiring motivator. To the Tories he was a provocative rabblerouser. Adams played key roles in the events leading to both the Boston Massacre and the Boston Tea Party. He founded the Sons of Liberty. He conceived the idea of Committees of Correspondence. He organized and championed the boycott of British goods. And he served as a delegate to the Continental Congress. Thomas Jefferson would later call him, “truly the man of the Revolution.”

After retiring from Congress, Samuel Adams served as governor of his beloved Massachusetts, before dying peacefully on October 2, 1803, at age 81.

Samuel Adams was born on September 27, 1722, three hundred three years ago today.

“If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.”

The image is John Singleton Copley’s portrait from 1772.

09/27/2025

George Washington was plagued with severe dental problems nearly his entire adult life. In a diary entry he wrote at age 24 he mentions paying a doctor to remove one of his teeth. By the time he was inaugurated as president, he only had one tooth remaining, and it was pulled a few years later.

So, Washington was forced to wear dentures. Although they were state-of-the-art technology at the time, the dentures were ill-fitting and extremely uncomfortable when worn. It is generally believed that Washington’s famous reticence and aversion to public speaking were due at least in part to his concern over how his missing teeth affected his appearance and to his discomfort when wearing the dentures.

By the way, the long-repeated story that Washington’s dentures were made of wood is false. His dentures were made of metal alloys, connected with springs, and to which cow, horse, and human teeth were affixed.

Another oft-repeated claim is that Washington’s dentures were made using teeth taken from his slaves. The only evidence which could possibly support that claim is a May 1784 entry in the Mount Vernon account book by Washington’s plantation manager (and distant cousin) Lund Washington for payment of 122 shillings to “Negroes for 9 Teeth on acct of the French Dentist Doctor Lemay.”

Beginning in 1781 Washington’s dentist was Jean-Pierre Le Mayeur, a Frenchman who had previously been the dentist of British general Henry Clinton and other British officers. Selling teeth to dentists for use as transplants was a common way poor people could earn money at the time, and Le Mayeur frequently placed notices in newspapers advertising his availability to perform tooth transplants and seeking “Persons who are willing to dispose of their Front Teeth.” (Interestingly, in his advertisements in Virginia, Le Mayeur specifically stated that he would not buy teeth from slaves.) For transplants, healthy teeth from living persons were necessary. And while such teeth could also be used in dentures, so could teeth from animals, from human corpses, or human teeth that had fallen out naturally. In other words, for use in dentures (as opposed to transplants) it wasn’t necessary that healthy teeth be extracted from a living person. There would have been no reason, therefore, to buy teeth this way for Washington's dentures.

We know that George Washington never received any tooth transplants. But were the nine teeth purchased by Lund Washington on Le Mayeur’s behalf to be used in Washington’s dentures? There is simply no way of knowing, although as is pointed out on the Mount Vernon website, the notation that the purchase was “on the account” of the dentist suggests that the dentist was the intended end user, not Washington. Presumably had the teeth been for Washington, the ledger would have simply indicated the item and amount of payment, as was done when Washington purchased other items from slaves on the plantation.

Likewise, whether the persons who Lund Washington paid for the teeth sold to Le Mayeur were slaves or free blacks cannot be determined from the ledger entry. And if the sellers were slaves, we have no way of knowing if they sold their teeth voluntarily (as many poor people in those days did) or whether they were forced to sell them (which a slaveowner would have been able to do).

The bottom line is that while it is possible that the nine teeth that Mount Vernon plantation manager Lund Washington bought from “Negroes” ended up in George Washington’s dentures, it is also possible (indeed more likely based on the way the transaction is recorded in the ledger) that they were for other patients of Dr. Le Mayeur or for his tooth inventory.

The image is Gilbert Stuart’s 1798 portrait of Washington.

09/21/2025

Ernest Hemingway’s 7 Tips for Writing:
1: To get started, write one true sentence.
“Sometimes when I was starting a new story and I could not get it going, I would sit in front of the fire and squeeze the peel of the little oranges into the edge of the flame and watch the sputter of blue that they made. I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, ‘Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now.’”
2: Always stop for the day while you still know what will happen next.
“The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. If you do that every day when you are writing a novel you will never be stuck.”
3: Never think about the story when you’re not working.
“I had learned already never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.”
4: When it’s time to work again, always start by reading what you’ve written so far.
“When it gets so long that you can’t do this every day read back two or three chapters each day; then each week read it all from the start.”
5: Don’t describe an emotion—make it.
“In writing for a newspaper you told what happened and, with one trick and another, you communicated the emotion aided by the element of timeliness which gives a certain emotion to any account of something that has happened on that day; but the real thing, the sequence of motion and fact which made the emotion and which would be as valid in a year or in ten years or, with luck and if you stated it purely enough, always, was beyond me...”
6: Use a pencil.
“If you write with a pencil you get three different sights at it to see if the reader is getting what you want him to. First when you read it over; then when it is typed you get another chance to improve it, and again in the proof.”
7: Be Brief.
“It wasn’t by accident that the Gettysburg address was so short. The laws of prose writing are as immutable as those of flight, of mathematics, of physics.”

09/18/2025

Colonel William Crawford was a historic figure essential to the early history of the Pittsburgh and Ohio Country regions. We're happy to announce the release of our new portrait of Crawford, depicting the frontiersman in his Virginia Regiment uniform during the French & Indian War, in which he served alongside his friend George Washington. Crawford later acted as Washington's right-hand man in frontier land speculation, having surveyed and claimed the Washington tracts in Mount Pleasant Township, Washington County, PA, as well as several others in the region. Crawford was captured, tortured, and executed during his infamous 1782 Revolutionary War campaign at Upper Sandusky, Ohio.

This is the latest of multiple other portraits of the colonel. Learn more about these depictions in the accompanying article "Face of a Frontiersman: The Portraits of Colonel William Crawford." Check out the article in the comments below, and be sure to stop by our Etsy shop to buy a print!

09/13/2025

in 1748, Pennsylvania-employed interpreter Conrad Weiser met with American Indian leaders at Logstown to open negotiations between the Ohio Valley Indians and the British government.

Tanaghrisson, a Seneca Indian, told Conrad Weiser, "Brethren, you came a great way to visit us and many sorts of evils might have befallen you by the way which might have been hurtful to your eyes and your inward parts, for the woods are full of evil spirits. We give you this string of wampum to clear up your eyes and minds and to remove all bitterness of your spirit, that you may hear us speak in good cheer."

A wampum is a bead made from the Quahog clam shell. The shell is broken into white or purple cubes to make into beads. White beads signified peace and purple signified more serious or political matters. The beads were woven into intricate patterns on belts to narrate histories, traditions, and treaty negotiations.

08/10/2025

🇺🇸 American Fort LeBoeuf 🇺🇸... in Allegheny County??
Did you Know?

After the American Revolution , most of Northwest Pennsylvania actually resided in Allegheny County. It wasn't until March of 1800 that Erie County would be created!

The men that were tasked with building Fort LeBoeuf & Fort Presque Isle in 1794-95 were recruited from Allegheny, Westmoreland, & Washington Counties. These areas were not densely populated as they are now and turnout was much less than desired for volunteers. A militia "draft" was instituted to raise the men needed to build the forts and protect the land surveyors that would lay out Waterford and then Erie. Circumstances would change when Captain Ebenezer Denny arrived at the site of Fort LeBoeuf as he would be ordered to go no further until the "Erie Triangle" discussions with the Six Nations (Haudenosaunee) were concluded.

08/09/2025

in 1974, The Washington Post featured a front-page story on the excavation of Meadowcroft Rockshelter, “Ice Age Man Trod Pa. Area,” bumping arguably the most talked about story in the world at the time, the Watergate scandal, to a sidebar!

The article covered what would be the groundbreaking discovery of the Rockshelter as the oldest site of human habitation in North America.

The piece also includes interviews with Meadowcroft’s founder Albert Miller and Dr. Jim Adovasio, who led the excavation of the Rockshelter from 1973 to 1974 and continues to work with Meadowcroft today as the director of archaeology.

08/09/2025

On this date in history, July 31, 1777, one of the most remarkable allies of the American Revolution was officially welcomed into the fight.

The Marquis de Lafayette, a wealthy French aristocrat barely 19 years old, was commissioned as a major general in the Continental Army.

He had defied the King of France and risked his fortune and his life to cross the Atlantic, arriving in South Carolina in June 1777. His passion for the American cause of liberty was immense.

He journeyed overland to Philadelphia and presented himself to the Continental Congress, making a simple but profound offer: he would serve at his own expense and without any official command.

This demonstration of sincerity and commitment deeply impressed the members of Congress. They saw not just a zealous young man, but a powerful symbol of potential French support.

Though his commission as major general was initially honorary, Lafayette quickly proved his worth and bravery on the battlefield, most notably at the Battle of Brandywine where he was wounded.

He would go on to form a deep, father-son-like bond with General George Washington, who took the young Frenchman under his wing. 🇺🇸🇫🇷

Lafayette's dedication never wavered. He became a brilliant commander and a crucial link to securing vital French aid, which ultimately helped win the war, especially during the decisive Siege of Yorktown.

He is remembered as a hero in two nations, a man who staked everything on the American experiment in freedom.

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Ravencrest Historical Writing and Presentations: History on My Mind.

The following presentations are available:

Defending The Forks: The Six Forts of. Pittsburgh, Eager to Serve: The Invincible George Washington and His Seven Historic Trips to Western Pennsylvania, Surviving the 18th Century: Disease - Diagnosis - Treatment, The Western PA Backcountry and the History of the Depreciation and Donation Lands, The Ohio Forks and Young George Washington’s Trip to Fort LeBoeuf

Jonathan Klemens FSA-Scot, Clan Gregor, a Duquesne University graduate and retired clinical pharmacist, is an 18th & 19th century historian, author, and lecturer. Author of a book on alterntaive medicine and over seventy scholarly presentations, articles and short stories in local, national, international and on-line publications. He is also published in the textbook, Write It Review: A Process Approach to College with Readings. He is biographed in Marquis Who's Who in America and the International Authors and Writers Who’s Who.

His baseball novelette - The Secret of The Red Pine Box - was accepted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame Museum Library,