Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Hessians
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://www.bradycrytzer.com/
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
https://www.amazon.com/Brady-J.-Crytzer/e/B0058U1Q8W
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Male.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer. Host of Wartime: A History Podcast. Host of the cable television series Battlefield Pennsylvania. Has taught at Southern New Hampshire University and Robert Morris University.
AWARDS:Donald S. Kelly Award for Outstanding Scholarship; Donna J. McKee Award for Outstanding Scholarship.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Brady J. Crytzer is a writer of nonfiction books. He has taught at educational institutions, including Southern New Hampshire University and Robert Morris University. Crytzer also hosts Wartime: A History Podcast and the cable television series Battlefield Pennsylvania. He has received the Donna J. McKee Award for Outstanding Scholarship and Service and the Donald S. Kelly Award for Outstanding Scholarship and Service.
Major Washington's Pittsburgh and the Mission to Fort Le Boeuf, Fort Pitt, and Guyasuta and the Fall of Indian America
In 2011, Crytzer released his first book, Major Washington’s Pittsburgh and the Mission to Fort Le Boeuf. In this volume, he examines an important mission that George Washington led as a twenty-one-year-old in 1753. Washington had recently been named a major in the army and had not yet led a mission. His first assignment to lead troops to Fort Le Boeuf proved to be particularly dangerous. Washington’s life was put in danger on two separate occasions during the mission. First, a guide who was helping them to cross the rugged terrain gave Washington and his troops up to their enemies. The second instance occurred during an attempted crossing of the Allegheny River. The icy conditions made the crossing perilous. Crytzer cites journals that Washington wrote to support the information he includes in the book. Major Washington’s Pittsburgh and the Mission to Fort Le Boeuf also includes descriptions of the Pennsylvania city where Washington lived. Crytzer highlights the city’s mixed population, which included a significant Native American population.
Crytzer examines an important location in the early history of America in Fort Pitt: A Frontier History. It was most significant during Pontiac’s Rebellion and the French and Indian War. Later, Fort Pitt was captured by the Americans when they began fighting for independence from the British. The fort was situated near the new and growing town of Pittsburgh, and the troops there were charged with protecting the town.
In Guyasuta and the Fall of Indian America, Crytzer profiles a leader of the Seneca/Mingo tribes during the late 1700s. Guyasuta was an important figure during the French and Indian War, as well as other conflicts during the time period. Crytzer follows Guyasuta as his power increases and, later, declines. Reviewing the book in Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, L.M. Hauptman commented: “Too often, the reader loses track of the chief.” Hauptman categorized the book as “not recommended.” Other assessments of the volume were more favorable. John R. Burch, contributor to Library Journal, remarked: “Crytzer’s monograph is recommended for readers interested in the role of the Iroquois in the Ohio Country.” A Publishers Weekly critic suggested: “Early American history buffs will relish this perspective on a seminal period of rebellion and revolution.”
Hessians and War in the Peaceable Kingdom
Hessians: Mercenaries, Rebels, and the War for British North America finds Crytzer discussing the groups of German men whom the British hired to fight against the rebels in the American colonies. He profiles Hessian leaders and those close to them, including Captain Johann Ewald and Frederika Charlotte Louise von Massow. David Head offered a mixed review of Hessians in the Journal of Southern History. Head commented: “Unfortunately, we seldom get to hear the baroness in her own words, even though she kept a diary (Crytzer’s principal source) and wrote regular letters to her husband. When we do get to hear her voice, the results are fascinating.” Head added: “Nevertheless, for an on-the-ground account … Crytzer’s stories are unlikely to be surpassed.”
Crytzer discusses a conflict between a Pennsylvania militia and the Lenape Native American tribe in War in the Peaceable Kingdom: The Kittanning Raid of 1756. The Lenape were responsible for attacks on communities in the western part of Pennsylvania. A militia formed and sought out the Lenape to punish them for their actions. Therefore, they attacked Kittanning, a Lenape village. Crytzer also comments on Pennsylvania’s Quaker population and its role in the conflict with the Native Americans.
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, November, 2013, L.M. Hauptman, review of Guyasuta and the Fall of Indian America, p. 530.
Journal of Southern History, David Head, review of Hessians: Mercenaries, Rebels, and the War for British North America, p. 661.
Library Journal, May 15, 2013, John R. Burch, review of Guyasuta and the Fall of Indian America, p. 86.
Publishers Weekly, May 6, 2013, review of Guyasuta and the Fall of Indian America, p. 52.
ONLINE
Brady J. Crytzer Home Page, http://www.bradycrytzer.com/ (March 13, 2017).
LC control no.: n 2011008922
Descriptive conventions:
rda
Personal name heading:
Crytzer, Brady
Fuller form of name
Brady J.
Found in: Major Washington's Pittsburgh and the mission to Fort Le
Boeuf, 2011: CIP t.p. (Brady Crytzer)
Hessians, 2015: title page (Brady J. Crytzer)
================================================================================
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS AUTHORITIES
Library of Congress
101 Independence Ave., SE
Washington, DC 20540
Questions? Contact: ils@loc.gov
Brady J. Crytzer is the host of the weekly series "Wartime: A History Podcast." He has served on the faculties of Robert Morris University and Southern New Hampshire University. A recipient of the Donald S. Kelly Award for outstanding scholarship, he is the author of "Major Washington's Pittsburgh and the Mission to Fort Le Boeuf" (2011), "Fort Pitt: A Frontier History" (2012),"Guyasuta and the Fall of Indian America" (2013), "Hessians: Mercenaries, Rebels, and the War for British North America" (2015) and "War in the Peaceable Kingdom: The Kittanning Raid of 1756" (2016). For more information visit www.BradyCrytzer.com and www.WartimePodcast.com
Brady J. Crytzer is the author of five books studying empire in North America and is the host of the hit cable television series "Battlefield Pennsylvania" on PCN. He is the winner of the Donald S. Kelly and Donna J. McKee Awards for Outstanding Scholarship and Service in the fields of History. His newest book
"The Kittanning Raid: Making War in America's Peaceable Kingdom" is due for publication this fall from Westholme Publishing.
QUOTED: "Crytzer's monograph is recommended for readers interested in the role of the Iroquois in the Ohio Country."
Crytzer, Brady J. Guyasuta and the Fall of Indian America
John R. Burch
138.9 (May 15, 2013): p86.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2013 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Crytzer, Brady J. Guyasuta and the Fall of Indian America. Westholme. Jun. 2013. 312p. illus. maps. notes. bibliog. index. ISBN 9781594161742. $29.95; ebk. ISBN 9781594165580. HIST
Guyasuta was a Seneca by birth, but he was known as a Mingo in the Ohio Valley. Mingos were members of the Iroquois Confederacy who migrated to the region to assert Iroquois authority over the local native peoples, although they never had the power they claimed. Guyasuta earned a reputation for opposing Euro-American encroachment into the Ohio Country. His opposition was not absolute, as opportunism prevailed in 1753 when he helped guide George Washington and his troops through the region. Crytzer (history, Robert Morris Univ.) depicts his subject in this narrative as the equal of such native leaders as Pontiac, Little Turtle, and Blue Jacket, which he clearly was not. Furthermore, the assertion that Guyasuta's death marked the effective end of native resistance in the Ohio Country ignores the colossal impact that Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa would have soon thereafter. VERDICT Crytzer's monograph is recommended for readers interested in the role of the Iroquois in the Ohio Country, but for further balance and context, readers should acquire Michael N. McConnell's A Country Between: The Upper Ohio Valley and Its Peoples, 1724-1774 and David L. Preston's The Texture of Contact: European and Indian Settler Communities on the Frontiers of Iroquoia, 1667-1783.--John R. Burch, Campbellsville Univ. Lib., KY
Burch, John R.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Burch, John R. "Crytzer, Brady J. Guyasuta and the Fall of Indian America." Library Journal, 15 May 2013, p. 86. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA330143075&it=r&asid=c133dbbb3ea2238197813a9852dae8c3. Accessed 24 Feb. 2017.
QUOTED: "Early American history buffs will relish this perspective on a seminal period of rebellion and revolution."
Gale Document Number: GALE|A330143075
Guyasuta and the Fall of Indian America
260.18 (May 6, 2013): p52.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2013 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Guyasuta and the Fall of Indian America
Brady J. Crytzer. Westholme (Univ. of Chicago, dist.), $29.95 (312p) ISBN 978-1-59416-174-2
Crytzer (Major Washington's Pittsburgh and the Mission to Fort Le Boeuf), who teaches history at Robert Morris University, traces the life and times of Guyasuta, an influential sachem, or chief, among the Iroquois. The author's task is a difficult one--Guyasuta lived a relatively long life (1724-1799) during one of the most tumultuous centuries on the North American continent, especially for Native Americans. The book unfolds as a litany of woes--ambushes, massacres, sieges, battles, and treaties (drafted and broken)--that constituted frontier conflict in the heyday of the hatchet and musket. Complicating the narrative are the shifting allegiances and reciprocal savageries of an age in which "Indians fought as a group of individuals seeking individual glory" and, for settlers, "each colony had its own character." Crytzer emphasizes the fickle relationship between Guyasuta and his sometime ally George Washington, "two men whose careers were defined by battling the ideological fortunes of the other." Although a visionary in his ideation of a "unified Indian identity," Guyasuta never saw his dream fulfilled, and indeed witnessed the beginning of the end of Native America. Early American history buffs will relish this perspective on a seminal period of rebellion and revolution that saw the rise of one nation atop the remains of many more. 21 illus. & 8 maps. (June 21)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Guyasuta and the Fall of Indian America." Publishers Weekly, 6 May 2013, p. 52. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA329365854&it=r&asid=89fc8b12c232a901b870779cc32b6095. Accessed 24 Feb. 2017.
QUOTED: "Unfortunately, we seldom get to hear the baroness in her own words, even though she kept a diary (Crytzer's principal source) and wrote regular letters to her husband. When we do get to hear her voice, the results are fascinating."
"Nevertheless, for an on-the-ground account ... Crytzer's stories are unlikely to be surpassed."
Gale Document Number: GALE|A329365854
Hessians: Mercenaries, Rebels, and the War for British North America
David Head
82.3 (Aug. 2016): p661.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 Southern Historical Association
http://www.uga.edu/~sha
Hessians: Mercenaries, Rebels, and the War for British North America. By Brady J. Crytzer. (Yardley, Pa.: Westholme Publishing, 2015. Pp. xxiv, 296. $29.95, ISBN 978-1-59416-224-4.)
Brady J. Crytzer's new book tells the story of the Hessians, the 30,000 soldiers hired by the British from the German states, principally Hesse-Cassel and Hesse-Hanau, to put down the rebellion in the North American colonies. Crytzer does so through biographies of three particular Hessians: Captain Johann Ewald, the leader of an elite unit of Jager Corps on maneuver against the Continental army; Frederika Charlotte Louise von Massow, Baroness von Riedesel, the wife of a Wolfenbuttel general who followed her husband on General John Burgoyne's 1777 campaign; and Philipp Waldeck, a chaplain to the Waldeck soldiers fighting along the Gulf Coast. Crytzer's approach reveals the varied geography of the Revolutionary War, with his stories set in central Europe and Canada, New York and New Jersey, South Carolina and Virginia, West Florida, Jamaica, and Louisiana. He also calls attention to the varied roles played by men and women in eighteenth-century wars: officer and leader of men; wife, mother, and camp follower; minister of souls. But as much as the reader learns about these individuals, the Hessians' overall role in the war remains elusive.
The strengths and weaknesses of Crytzer's approach can be seen in the story of Baroness Riedesel's quest to follow her husband on campaign in North America. Staying behind in Wolfenbuttel to have their baby while the baron took up his post in North America, Riedesel set out to find her husband in May 1776, with an infant and two small children in tow. Reaching England, she bounced between London, Bristol, and Portsmouth amid transportation delays, quarrels with the woman Baron Riedesel had selected as her traveling companion, and fashion faux pas--her fondness for ribbons and taffeta brought cries of "French women!" and "French whore!" from Britons used to a more subdued style (pp. 98, 100). The baroness and her children braved an ocean crossing to land in Quebec, where people found her clothes too British. Later, they reached Fort Chambly, where, at long last, more than a year after leaving home, she was reunited with her husband. The Riedesels followed the Hessian-British army as it fought at Freeman's Farm, battled at Bemis Heights, and surrendered at Saratoga. Becoming prisoners of war, the family continued its American odyssey, moving from Boston, Massachusetts, to Charlottesville, Virginia (where they rented a house from Thomas Jefferson), and finally to New York, where the baron was officially exchanged. Before departing, they welcomed their fourth child, a girl they named "America." Baroness Riedesel was an amazing woman. My wife and I have a hard enough time flying with our one-year-old on an airplane to visit family in upstate New York, and she brought three little ones there by ship, carriage, and canoe. Unfortunately, we seldom get to hear the baroness in her own words, even though she kept a diary (Crytzer's principal source) and wrote regular letters to her husband. When we do get to hear her voice, the results are fascinating. Furthermore, as interesting as the baroness is, it is not clear where she and her husband fit with the tens of thousands of other men and women connected to the Hessians fighting in America. Were they representative of other Hessians or were they exceptional? The answer is probably somewhere in between. Nevertheless, for an on-the-ground account of what it was like for these three Hessians to fight in North America, Crytzer's stories are unlikely to be surpassed.
DAVID HEAD
Spring Hill College
Head, David
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Head, David. "Hessians: Mercenaries, Rebels, and the War for British North America." Journal of Southern History, vol. 82, no. 3, 2016, p. 661+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA460447763&it=r&asid=ea1d19bde0cb24c835e55c08d0fd10c5. Accessed 24 Feb. 2017.
QUOTED: "Too often, the reader loses track of the chief."
"not recommended."
Gale Document Number: GALE|A460447763
Crytzer, Brady J.: Guyasuta and the fall of Indian America
L.M. Hauptman
51.3 (Nov. 2013): p530.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2013 American Library Association CHOICE
http://www.ala.org/acrl/choice/about
51-1667
E83
MARC
Crytzer, Brady J. Guyasuta and the fall of Indian America.
Westholme, 2013. 286p bibl index ISBN 9781594161742, $29.95
Guyasuta, a Seneca/Mingo chief and uncle of Complanter, was a spokesman for the disparate Native communities in the Ohio country. He was also one of the most important leaders in the second half of the 18th century. Crytzer (Robert Morris Univ.) traces his rise and fall from 1753 to his death in 1794. The author treats Guyasuta's major involvement in the French and Indian War, Pontiac's War, the Treaty of Fort Stanwix of 1768, and the American Revolution. The book's content is hardly new, except for what the author presents on the chief's life in his declining years in the early 1790s. The work reads like two separate accounts, one on French, British, and American diplomacy and military campaigns, the other on Guyasuta. Too often, the reader loses track of the chief (e.g., pp. 96-206, 233-46). Crytzer has not made use of Richard Middleton's Pontiac's War (Jun'08, 45-5773), William Campbell's work on the 1768 Treaty of Fort Stanwix (Speculators in Empire, 2012), or Joy Bilharz's 2009 report on the Battle of Oriskany (Oriskany: A Place of Great Sadness), nor has he used the writings of anthropologists in order to place Guyasuta and council deliberations in the context of Seneca culture. Summing Up: Not recommended.--L. M. Hauptman, emeritus, State University of New York at New Paltz
Hauptman, L.M.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Hauptman, L.M. "Crytzer, Brady J.: Guyasuta and the fall of Indian America." CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, Nov. 2013, p. 530. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA350164993&it=r&asid=12efabe3c04c1262c2baf16921f5749d. Accessed 24 Feb. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A350164993