The Delaware and Raritan Canal
The Delaware and Raritan Canal

Author: Linda J. Barth

Publisher: Arcadia Publishing

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 132

ISBN-13: 9780738510811

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For nearly one hundred seventy years, the Delaware and Raritan Canal has meandered across the narrow waist of New Jersey through bustling cities, suburban towns, and rural landscapes. One of the most successful towpath canals in the United States, the Delaware and Raritan carried more tonnage in 1866 than the famous Erie Canal. Transporting mainly anthracite coal, the Delaware and Raritan also stimulated industries as diverse as Roebling's wire-rope factory in Trenton, Johnson & Johnson pharmaceuticals in New Brunswick, and Fleischmann's Distillery in East Millstone. Today, as the centerpiece of the Delaware and Raritan Canal State Park, the canal provides the people of central New Jersey with both a water supply and a premier recreational facility.The Delaware and Raritan Canal introduces you to this manmade waterway through some two hundred historical photographs and postcards. In these pages, discover the locks, aqueducts, and machinery that enabled the waterway to transport military men and supplies between New York and Philadelphia during three wars. See how inventor John Holland used the canal to deliver his Holland VI submarine to Washington for its naval trials and how luxury yachts, including J.P. Morgan's Tarantula, cruised the waterway. The Delaware and Raritan Canal documents a historical and recreational gem in the heart of New Jersey.

In Small Things Forgotten
In Small Things Forgotten

Author: James Deetz

Publisher: Anchor

Published: 2010-07-07

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 0307874389

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History is recorded in many ways. According to author James Deetz, the past can be seen most fully by studying the small things so often forgotten. Objects such as doorways, gravestones, musical instruments, and even shards of pottery fill in the cracks between large historical events and depict the intricacies of daily life. In his completely revised and expanded edition of In Small Things Forgotten, Deetz has added new sections that more fully acknowledge the presence of women and African Americans in Colonial America. New interpretations of archaeological finds detail how minorities influenced and were affected by the development of the Anglo-American tradition in the years following the settlers' arrival in Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1620. Among Deetz's observations: Subtle changes in building long before the Revolutionary War hinted at the growing independence of the American colonies and their desire to be less like the British. Records of estate auctions show that many households in Colonial America contained only one chair--underscoring the patriarchal nature of the early American family. All other members of the household sat on stools or the floor. The excavation of a tiny community of freed slaves in Massachusetts reveals evidence of the transplantation of African culture to North America. Simultaneously a study of American life and an explanation of how American life is studied, In Small Things Forgotten, through the everyday details of ordinary living, colorfully depicts a world hundreds of years in the past.

Engineers of Independence
Engineers of Independence

Author: Paul K. Walker

Publisher: The Minerva Group, Inc.

Published: 2002-08

Total Pages: 424

ISBN-13: 9781410201737

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This collection of documents, including many previously unpublished, details the role of the Army engineers in the American Revolution. Lacking trained military engineers, the Americans relied heavily on foreign officers, mostly from France, for sorely needed technical assistance. Native Americans joined the foreign engineer officers to plan and carry out offensive and defensive operations, direct the erection of fortifications, map vital terrain, and lay out encampments. During the war Congress created the Corps of Engineers with three companies of engineer troops as well as a separate geographer's department to assist the engineers with mapping. Both General George Washington and Major General Louis Lebéque Duportail, his third and longest serving Chief Engineer, recognized the disadvantages of relying on foreign powers to fill the Army's crucial need for engineers. America, they contended, must train its own engineers for the future. Accordingly, at the war's end, they suggested maintaining a peacetime engineering establishment and creating a military academy. However, Congress rejected the proposals, and the Corps of Engineers and its companies of sappers and miners mustered out of service. Eleven years passed before Congress authorized a new establishment, the Corps of Artillerists and Engineers.

The Ordnance Department
The Ordnance Department

Author: Constance Green

Publisher: CreateSpace

Published: 2015-07-02

Total Pages: 562

ISBN-13: 9781514795316

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The U.S. Army fought World War II with materiel much of which was developed in the decade prior to our entry, particularly in the period following the German blitz in Poland. Our efforts to develop munitions to the point where our armies could cope on equal terms with those of potential enemies are covered here in this, the first of three projected volumes on the history of the Ordnance Department in World War II. How well the Ordnance Department succeeded in matching the Germans in quality continues to be a matter of debate both within the Ordnance Department itself, and between the using arms and the Department. That the battle of quantity was won-with the help of a superb industrial machine-can hardly be denied. This volume, the result of diligent research by Dr. Constance McL. Green and her associates, should interest not only military men but also scientists, industrialists, and laymen in general. Among other things, it shows the urgent necessity of a directed, continuous, and intensive research program and the danger in failing to recognize and profit by developments abroad. Also shown is the inherent time interval between the drawing board and the production of the end item in quantity."