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. Asit 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, compiledfrom the Army Lists
and from informa tion communicated to me by his great-grandson, are
as follows.
General
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