Come early and enjoy dinner at MaGerks before our meeting!!
Live Meeting at MaGerks Fort Washington – 582 S. Bethlehem Pike, Fort Washington, PA 19034
We recommend that you get here before 6:30pm to order your food and drinks before the lecture. Bring $1 or $5 cash for our used book raffle and you could win a Revolutionary War book!! Program begins around 7:15pm, Lecture around 7:30pm.
From the Patriot perspective, the Battle of Germantown exhibited one of the most complicated battle plans ordered during the American Revolution by Gen. Washington Four units, marching through the night and not in communication with each other, were supposed to simultaneously hit the combined British and Hessian forces from four different locations early in the morning. Gabe Neville will focus on the actions of the Virginia Continental Line at the Battle of Germination, at the April ARRTOP meeting. It’s a story that comprises a chapter of Gabe’s 2025 book, The Last Men Standing: The 8th Virginia Regiment in the American Revolution.
The strong survived. Nearly 800 men followed the famous ‘fighting parson,’ Colonel Peter Muhlenberg, into the Continental Army in 1776. Few of them remained at the end of the war. Meticulously researched and accurately told, this is the story of the Last Men Standing.
In colonial times, thousands of German and Irish immigrants settled in Virginia’s western reaches. The 8th Virginia Regiment was conceived as a way to recruit them. Men from Pittsburgh to Tennessee were collected into 10 rifle companies and sent into some of the hardest service of the war. Only a few remained for the final victory at Yorktown.
Historians once said The Last Men Standing could not be written. Neville was challenged by a librarian at the David Library of the American Revolution to uncover the story. ‘It’s out there,’ the librarian said. ‘You just have to find it.’ The Last Men Standing is the result of many years of research in distant archives, small museums, private collections, and other sources. Neville likens the project to a jigsaw puzzle or a treasure hunt. The Last Men Standing traces the lives of immigrant children from the terrors of the French and Indian War, through the Revolution, to the settlement of the American frontier. Historians will appreciate Neville’s use of little-known sources, attention to neglected incidents, and reinterpretation of major events at Sullivan’s Island, Germantown, and Monmouth. Every reader will enjoy the story
Book Purchase: To purchase this book please click on this link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1804516724
About the Author: Gabriel Neville is the author of the 8th Virginia Regiment and Revolutionary Virginia websites and has written numerous essays about Virginia, Pennsylvania, and the western frontier in America’s founding era. He is a former journalist and senior staffer in the U.S. Congress, now working as a business advisor. He was raised in Pennsylvania and lives in Virginia with his wife and children.