History of AmericanRevolution.org
This website was founded in 1996 during the early years of the Internet.
Created, researched, curated, and maintained by Edward St. Germain (1945 – 2009), it contains scores of scholarly writings and original articles from historians, plus many links to museums, historical groups, and other expert insights on the American Revolution.
Edward St. Germain dearly loved history. He was an avid reader, a collector of books and information, with a deep interest in the American Revolution — sparked at an early age when his grandmother told him about his family history. His first ancestor in the New World came aboard the Mayflower in 1620; another ancestor fought in the Revolutionary War.
The information on his site is highly researched. St. Germain spent a lifetime investigating the history of the American Revolution and was interested in finding out the truth about everything. Consequently, he investigated topics in-depth and, whenever possible, sought out the oldest descriptions of events — those written as close to the time an event actually occurred — to glean what were likely to be the most accurate details. St. Germain was frequently called upon to give talks on history at various gatherings; he re-enacted battles and events of the 18th century; and he was happy to share the information he had collected.
Edward St. Germain and his legacy are both honored here — by keeping his work alive online and building on it.
Our mission
Our goal with this website is to create a complete, accessible encyclopedia of everything you could ever want to know about the American Revolution.
We have taken the works of Edward St. Germain and updated them, to make them more accessible and more insightful, and to reflect the latest knowledge from primary and secondary sources about the American Revolution.
We are also publishing new articles about topics not yet covered on the website, to improve the overall usefulness of americanrevolution.org to historians, students, teachers, and anyone else with an interest in the Revolutionary War.
With our content, we aim to make it as easy as possible to find the information you’re looking for. The American Revolution is an extremely broad topic, and there are thousands of pages on this website. We have used a search function and a category filtering system to help make it as easy as possible to find relevant information.
Publishing principles
Our content publication is guided by the following principles:
- We aim to make our content as accessible as possible to the widest possible audience, including students. Content will be written in a way that is easy to understand and digest.
- Content must be accessible on a range of different devices, including computers, mobiles, and tablets.
- When historical facts are disputed, we aim to present the different historians’ opinions on the matter, and explain how and why they differ.
- Each individual article will be specific and to the point. To make it easier to find useful information, we aim to have a larger number of smaller, more specific articles, rather than large guides that may make it difficult to find what you’re looking for.
Have any questions about our website? Get in touch with us.
Contributors
Over the years, a number of historians and scholars have contributed towards works published on AmericanRevolution.org.