Originally published in 1926. British Fusilier in Revolutionary
Boston- Diary of Lieutenant FREDERICK. MACKENZIE by ALLEN FRENCH.
Text extracted from opening pages of book: INTRODUCTION: IN much of
the re-writing of American History which has been so general in the
past few years, the main effort has been to penetrate the tradition
which so heavily overlays it and by the use of con temporary
documents to reach the actual facts. That this effort is wholesome,
few will deny, nor can any harm come from knowing the truth about
our ancestors. This would be reason enough for publishing any
Revolutionary diary, but the one herewith presented, written in
Boston in 1775 by Lieutenant Frederick Mackenzie, a British
officer, has its own intrinsic value. Until now the only portion of
it printed was a part of the narra tive of a single day, which has
long been the standard account of Lord Percys expedition to
Lexington on the eigth of April, 1775. No writer upon that first
day of our Revolution but has drawn heavily upon this narrative.
Yet, buried in the Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical
Society ( for March, 1896), it has not been easily accessible to
the general reader, nor in convenient form for one assembling a
library of Revolutionary Americana. In writing my Day of Lexington
and Concord two or more years ago, I depended greatly upon this
narrative, and finding it of the highest value, wished to discover
the remainder. The extract had been communicated to the
Massachusetts Historical Society by Mrs. Frances Rose-Troup, an
American married in England, but when at length I managed to get
word from her, I found that she had lost track of the original
diary and believed it de stroyed. As it was my plan to visit
England in the summer of I wrote in advance to the Literary
Supplement of the London Times, stating the object of my search. By
good fortune a copy containing my letter came under the eyes of a
descendant of the original writer, and on landing in England I was
greeted by a letter from Lieutenant-Colonel Frederick Mackenzie
saying that the ancestral diary was in his possession and at my
service. Of his kindness and interest in my work then and ever
since I can speak only in terms of gratitude and appreciation. I
had hoped that the diary would contain accounts of events of the
siege of Boston, and particularly of the Battle of Bunker Hill,
equal in value to the section which describes the events of the
iyth of April. Unluckily the volume containing this information has
been lost. A family memorandum of the year 1858 mentions the
journals as covering the period from 1748 to ijgi. All have hen
lost but eight volumes, including all those previous to 1775. Our
volume begins with January of that year and ends with thejOth of
April following. The next volume begins with the campaign which
culminated in the capture of New York in 1776, so that almost the
whole period of the siege of Boston is lacking. There is no record
or memory of when the lost volumes left the Mackenzie family, and
one can only hope that they will some day be found. Fortunately
there still exists a single letter from the writer of the diary,
written to his parents in 1773, describing his voyage to America in
a troop ship. That letter, with the Boston section of the diary, is
incor porated in the present volume. The general facts in regard to
Frederick Mackenzie, the diarist, and his family, compiled from the
Army Lists and from informa tion communicated to me by his
great-grandson, are as follows.
General
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