Museum gets sailor’s account of Revolutionary War escapades

NEWPORT, N.Y. – A manuscript detailing a New York man’s experiences as a teenage prisoner of the British during the Revolutionary War has been donated to the Museum of the American Revolution.

Curators at the Philadelphia museum say Rhode Island native Christopher Hawkins was 13 when he was captured in 1777 while serving aboard an American ship. He later escaped from one of England’s infamous prison ships moored in New York Harbor.

After the war, he was the first settler of the town of Newport in New York’s Mohawk Valley.

In 1834, at age 70, he wrote down his wartime experiences in a journal. The manuscript stayed in his family and was rediscovered about 20 years ago in a descendant’s home in Kansas City, Missouri.

The family recently travelled to Philadelphia to donate the journal to the museum.