Talk:Siege of Yorktown

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[edit] Silly Vandals

Someone must 've been tampering with this page, as it has been changed totally as an American defeat to the British. Ridiculous.

Okay, i ass the joke was actually quite funny, but I was pretty freaked out by the wiki info change. Elefuntboy 04:09, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
Haha, that last edit made me laugh out loud....an army of 7,000 dwarves? Priceless. Heads up to who caught the error, i missed it. =) Elefuntboy 01:00, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
Um... someone vandalized it again... but I don't want to try and fix it, as computers most definitely do not want me to succeed in this area...
That's it. I'm requesting semi-protection. MMetro (talk) 20:33, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
In the few minutes it took to set up the protection, two more vandal edits. Going over revision history, several of the dates and numbers were changed. Does anybody know a clean version we can reference for clean-up? MMetro (talk) 21:30, 19 November 2007 (UTC)


[edit] is there a list of all those who served at this battle?

In the HISTORICAL REGISTER OF VIRGINIANS IN THE REVOLUTION 1775-1783 by John H. Gwathmey, page 386 is listed:

    Nightever, Jacob, Capt. James Bell's Co., Augusta

A listing of tithable in the RECORDS OF AUGUSTA COUNTY VIRGINIA 1745-1800 (Chalkley) lists a

    Jacob Nightover for the year of 1781.

Abstracted from Records in the Virginia State Library, Richmond, Virginia, from AUGUSTA COUNTY COURT MARTIAL RECORDS, 1756-1796, pp. 187, 216, 217:

Jacob Nightever, a Private in Captain James Bell's Company of Augusta County Militia, was acquitted by a court martial held on October 25, 1780, of the charge of failing to appear at a private muster on October 23, 1780. On October 11, 1781, he was acquitted of two charges: being absent from a private muster held on October 9, 1781; "not appearing at the Rendezvous when ordered Under the Command of Lt. Col. William Bowyer for Twenty Days."

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the debate was move. —Nightstallion (?) Seen this already? 07:45, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Requested move

Reason for move request: The event is more accurately described as a siege rather than a battle, and many (but not all) popular and scholarly works describe it as such. (See, for example, this site.) The Library of Congress Subject Headings calls it "Yorktown (Va.) -- Siege, 1781." We can avoid the "(1781)" disambiguation in the title by using the more accurate name. — Kevin Myers | (complaint dept.) 21:51, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

[edit] Discussion

I've been checking the British name for this action. The most common seem to be "surrender at Yorktown" followed by "capitulation of Yorktown" (Google [Yorktown site:mod.uk]). The SG History site says "No battle honours have ever been awarded for this civil war" --Philip Baird Shearer 01:35, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Most uses of those phrases ("surrender at Yorktown" and "capitulation of Yorktown") appear to be descriptions of what happened on the last day of the siege, rather than a name per se of the engagement itself. That is, I don't see any capitalized, formal names like "Capitulation of Yorktown" or "Surrender at Yorktown". Naturally, British historians also describe the action itself as a siege: Christopher Duffy, for example, writes of "the culminating siege of Yorktown" (The Military Experience in the Age of Reason, p. 18). The title "Siege of Yorktown" is often capitalized, and gets 52,800 general google hits; second place seems to belong to "Surrender at Yorktown", though it appears to be used more as a phrase than a formal name,. --Kevin Myers | (complaint dept.) 05:08, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Hello all, I am currently in the process of updating the page for one Ebenezer Denny, who incidentally is my many times great grand father. His biography is well documented by my family and I have many original texts from the period and well documented histories from which I am compiling a brief synopsis. Denny played an interesting role in Yorktown and I would like some input on how to integrate his history into this page. Of particular interest is his military journal of which I have. It is his original and quite infamous accounts of his military actions, one of which is his role in Yorktown. I think it is a great addition, almost a necessity to this page and will add a first hand account of the actions herein. Please follow the link to his wikipage, Ebenezer Denny to check it out. Comments are welcome here and my user page which I'm just starting so please bear with it. -- Harmar D. Denny V

[edit] About Alexander Scammel . . . .

Why is Alexander Scammel listed in the "See Also" links? I see from reading his entry in the Wikipedia that he was killed at the Siege of Yorktown, but he's not mentioned in the main body of the article. Surely he wasn't the only one killed? Perhaps he was the highest ranking officer to die in the battle, since I note that he was the Adjutant General of the American Army? Is it usual to mention the highest ranking officer killed or captured in a battle or siege? tharkun860 13:14, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Artilary

Does any one know anything about the artilary used at Yorktown? I have a project to build a model of a cannon used, so it woulk be helpfull if anyone has any info!!! ~Miafan1~

Guns used at the Siege ranged from small Coehorn Mortars to large 3 pounders up to 24 pound guns supplied by the French Navy. You can find pictures of them by searching for them on Google images. Hope this has been helpful. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.28.237.200 (talk) 16:26, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] References

I suppose the 'elephant book' isn't real? CarVac 15:05, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Sorry Champ?

Is there an edit war over whose flag is on top in the infobox? And here I am worried about the vandalism. Principal combatants first. The French, although numerically superior, were analogous to the German mercenaries-- allied support (and listing allies is optional). Next. Somebody make sure we can trust the actual history? MMetro (talk) 06:04, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

You know, pages like these have a tendency to sprout silly, prep-school arguments such as, "oh, so-and-so were only allied support, allies are optional" (no rules governing "allied support" exist outside your imagination, by the way). So we like to follow a simple custom: Nationalities appear in order of the number of men in the field. Saves everyone a lot of time better spent, say, writing articles. (Now, considering the French orchestrated the bulk of operations on land and sea, and that Washington's army only existed by virtue of French funds and provisions, it would be much fairer to dismiss the Americans as "allied support" (whatever that means). But again, these questions are neither here nor there—I'm not convinced anything in your message is in the slightest related to "actual history.") Albrecht (talk) 18:54, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
Forget who comes first, the entire article should be proofread for vandalism to numbers, figures, and dates. When I was sorting through the edit history, I couldn't tell what was what. That's why I had to stop the IP vandalism. Since you seem to be the active expert, have you proofed the current revision, and can you tell us which version you have approved so that the article can be checked against this vandalism that is more subtle and likely to perpetuate? MMetro (talk) 23:45, 28 November 2007 (UTC)