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.
The speaker for this meeting is Larry Kidder. He’ll be speaking to us about his 2020 book, Revolutionary Princeton 1774-1783: The Biography of an American Town in the Heart of a Civil War.
The battles of Trenton and Princeton have been the subject of several recent books, but this story complements them by expanding the story to include the many experiences of the people of Princeton in the wider Revolution and their contributions to it. This story combines social history with the better known military and political history of the Revolution. It does not just deal with amorphous groups and institutions, but rather with individuals working with and affected by various groups on both sides of the conflict. Readers can identify with real people they get to know in the story. This story of Princeton unfolds in narrative format and, while deeply researched, reads more like a novel than an academic study.
Richard Herrera says, “Larry’s book is a smart local history of Princeton’s place in the American Revolution. Kidder rightly reminds his readers that the American struggle for independence was also a civil war within the British empire, within each colony, and within towns, villages, and cities. The people pf Princeton lived through the civil war that was the American War for Independence. Larry Kidder deftly reminds us that the reality of the war was ugly, messy, and tore apart families and communities”.
Mark Edward Lender says, “Larry has given us a piercing view of a town caught up in an international and a civil war. For a time the town was at the epicenter of both, with dramatic consequences for the region and the wider conflict. The struggles of Princetonians–patriots and tories–will disabuse any notion that the War for Independence at the local level was an easy time. Cogently written, Revolutionary Princeton is a good read and a welcome contribution to the literature of the American Revolution.”
Book Purchase: To purchase this book please click on this link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1682619397`
About Larry Kidder
William “Larry” Kidder was born in California and raised in California, Indiana, New York, and New Jersey. He received his
bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Allegheny College. A US Navy veteran with service in Vietnam, he considers teaching to be both his vocation and avocation, continuing in retirement after having taught for forty years in public and private schools. For thirty years, Larry has been a volunteer historian, interpreter, and draft horse teamster for Howell Living History Farm. He is active in central New Jersey historical societies and is an avid member of the Association for Living History, Farm, and Agricultural Museums (ALHFAM), the Washington’s Crossing Roundtable of the American Revolution, the New Jersey Living History Advisory Council, and the Advisory Council for Crossroads of the American Revolution.