FLAG DAY and OUR WAR OF INDEPENDENCE

The next time you are in the library, you'll want to spend some time looking at the display in the case outside the Bullis Room. This month, the display showcases Bullis books that pertain to Flag Day and our War of Independence.

Here is a partial list of those on display:

The Pictorial History of the American Revolution;

with a sketch of the early history of the country.

By Robert Sears (1810-1892)

      The Life of George Washington, Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces;

during the war which established the independence of this country, and

first president of the United States

By John Marshall (1755-1835)

Published by Crissy & Markley, and Thomas, Cowperthwait and Co., 1850

The Pictorial Field-Book of the Revolution;

or illustrations, by pen and pencil, of the history, biography, scenery, relics, 

and traditions of the war for independence

By Benson John Lossing (1813-1891)

Published by Harper & Brothers, 1855

The books will be back in the Bullis Room, available for reading, in mid-July.  So please plan to visit the Bullis Room to take a closer look at some of them. We especially recommend The Pictorial Field-Book of the Revolution as a reminder of what our military men and women did for us during that war as well as all the wars that have followed.

War of 1812

Yesterday we received notice of a Bicentennial Symposium on the War of 1812 in Oswego NY .  And we started wondering what materials we might have in the Bullis Book Collection that were on that topic.  To our surprise there were several.  They will be on display in our Bullis display case.  One of them includes the transcript of Major-General James Wilkinson's trial on charges of neglect of duty and unofficer-like conduct.  He has included that in his 3 volume Memoirs of my own times.  Another is Thomas Wilson's The Biography of American Military and Naval Heroes.  In this little two volume set you will find the biography of the "Hero of Lake Erie", Captain Oliver Hazard Perry.  Theodore Roosevelt has written two volumes titled The Naval War of 1812.  Willis J. Abbot has a wonderful book titled The Naval History of the United States with 150 illustrations.  The above photo is from that book. Lieut.-General Winfield Scott had a long military career which is written about in Mansfield's The Life and Military Services of Lieut.-General Winfield Scot.  There's a great drawing of him tearing down the British flag at Fort George.  In Lossing's A Centennial Edition of the History of the United States(1876) we have an engraving of Perry on Lake Erie.  In another of Lossing's books, The Pictorial Field-Book of the War of 1812 (1868), we find more info on Major-General James Wilkinson , lots of engravings, and good information.  In another book, Mastery Units in American History (1936) by Maurice B. Rovner, we find a really concise explanation of the War of 1812.  We also found that the student who owned this book had class on Monday morning and that "Washington said to stay out of all permanent alliances" (a pencil notation on the title page.)  A tourism book by Silliman, A Gallop Among American Scenery (1881), takes us to the Battle of Lundy's Lane.  It appears that General Scott was there.
 So if you would care to visit these will all be on display, along with the invitation to the Symposium and "The War of 1812: A Bicentennial Resource List" by Preston Pierce, the Regional Archivist for the Rochester (NY) Regional Library Council.