Favorite referance

[pathfinder]

What is your favorite referance for studying your version of a longhunter?

I have 2. First is "The Frontier Rifleman" by Richard B. LaCrosse Jr. Though ''technicly" not a longhunter per se,it still has all the info needed to figure out who these guy's were and kinda how they thought.

My next is Mark Bakers 2 book's. He's taken some hit's from thread counters,but he was the one who got countless numbers of guy's interested in doing this.

I haven't read Dodridge's accounts,so I'll rely on Mark's writings as inspiration.

I like Lacrosses book due to the exerpt's from letter's and journal's as a basis for reasearch.

And being a rather handy craftsman,these two publications give me a lot of project's to while away the time!

Your's?

[david32cal]

those same three books and anything i can read on Daniel Boone. i really like Baker's Pilgrims Journey vol I and would some day like to read Sons of the trackless forrest.

[pathfinder]

I was once able to "rent"one from my library, a lot of referance listed material,more than half the book if I recall. More for a scholorlye(sp,we need spell check!) type than a greasy long haired old fart!

Heard rumor he was going to re-print it with less of the university stuff in it.

[mario]

I'm not into the longhunter "thing", but I do research the Southern frontier of 1760-1783.

The Journal of Nicholas Cresswell has some good info. Cresswell went out with parties of hunters 1774-77.

As does The Carolina Backcountry of the Eve of the Revolution by Charles Woodmason.

Both of these are quoted by Baker in his articles.

SotTF was Baker's Master's thesis that he published as a book. Probably why it's a bit "scholarly" rather than just a good read.

His "Pilgrim's Journey" books are good reads, but one must remember that things he wrote about in Vol. 1 aren't thing he believes to be correct by Vol. 2. These were articles written over a 19 year period so the farther along you read, the farther along he is in his own research.


William Bartram's Travels is great for folks looking into the GA/FL frontiers in the 1770s.

LaCrosse's Frontier Rifleman is a good compilation of various quotes. But other info is outdated. I bought my first copy from LaCrosse in Williamsburg over 20 years ago. Our understanding of the past and the information available have both changed.


Mario

[Loyalist Dave]

I have found The Hunters of Kentucky, by Belue, Sons of a Trackless Forest by Baker, and Notes on the settlement and Indian wars of the western parts of Virginia and Pennsylvania, from 1763 to 1783, by Doddridge to be good sources for information on the occupation of "hunting".  Not only for the material culture but also on human interaction.  Doddridge's observations on the institution of slavery, both on how slaves were treated as well as his perspective on it, are quite interesting (imho).  Doddridge also documents from actual experience the customs and attitude of folks on what was the "frontier" in his day.  

LD