Excerpt from Letters and Diary of John Rowe, Boston Merchant 1759-1762 1764-1779 Rowe estate AT milton Bought of Gov. Belcher's Heirs in 1781. (see Letters of James Murray, pages 252 By permission of Miss Suter meister. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

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This book focuses on the experiences of officers and soldiers of the Continental army rather than of the militia. However, occasionally, the experiences of the militia are crucial to our understanding and are included where necessary. Historian Holly Mayer used the phrase ''Continental Community'' to embrace people such as wagoners and camp followers, mostly the wives and other female relatives of soldiers who lived, worked with, and were dependent on the army. The phrase serves us well, too, but for different purposes. The differences in treatment between militia and Continental service were distinct - especially in terms of punishment - and yet the men of each were frequently in close contact, and in sickness and at death, the men and their friends faced some of the same problems. The ways in which these differences were resolved are important and make it worth our while to keep both in view, as did the participants themselves.