The Battle of Rhode Island Association Lecture Series sponsored by the Rhode Island Senate Legislature and the General Society of Colonial Wars continue as we partner with the Portsmouth Historical Society and the Varnum House Museum to bring a series of lectures from historian Dr. Robert A. Selig in Portsmouth and East Greenwich.
“Rochambeau’s Engineers at Butts Hill Fort, July 1780-June 1781” a translation of the Comte De Rochambeau’s Orderly Reports pertaining to Butts Hill Fort. This research was funded by the Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati.
Dr. Selig is a historical consultant who received his Ph.D. in history from the Universität Würzburg in Germany in 1988. He has published several books on the American War of Independence and is a specialist on the role of French forces under the Comte de Rochambeau during the War. In 2022 the French government recognized his contributions by awarding him the National Order of Merit. He serves as a project historian to the National Park Service for the Washington-Rochambeau Revolutionary Route National Historic Trail Project (WARO). For this project he researched and wrote surveys and resource inventories for the nine states (and the District of Columbia) through which American and French forces marched in 1781 and 1782.