The Society of the Cincinnati catalog access provided
in honor of Thomas Hillery
by his second great grandson Thomas H. Hillery.
The Society of the Cincinnati’s mission is to perpetuate the memory of the American Revolution, to honor the services and sacrifices through which American independence was secured, and to acquire, preserve, and make accessible the records, documents, and relics of the Revolutionary era.
The American Revolution Institute of the Society of the Cincinnati serves as a center for education dedicated to promoting understanding and appreciation of the American Revolution and its legacy. The Institute’s research library and archives give lasting expression to this mission, embodying the Society’s enduring commitment to preservation, scholarship, and public understanding of the Revolution and its legacy.
Researchers are welcome by appointment, and the library supports scholarship through annual research fellowships, teacher professional development seminars, and public programs.
Visit https://www.americanrevolutioninstitute.org/using-the-library/ or email library@societyofthecincinnati.org
The Institute’s research library collections include contemporary books, manuscripts, maps and prints which support the in-depth study of eighteenth-century politics, culture, naval and military history, and the art of war in the age of the American Revolution.
The Robert Charles Lawrence Fergusson Collection, established in 1988 to honor the memory of Lieutenant Robert Charles Lawrence Fergusson who was killed during the Vietnam war, is the largest body of rare printed and manuscript materials in the library’s holdings. Numbering more than twelve thousand items, the collection focuses on early works relating to the art of war in the eighteenth century, with particular strength in materials documenting the conduct of the American Revolutionary War and the broader military and international context in which American forces and their French allies secured the independence of the United States.
The Society of the Cincinnati was founded in May 1783 at Newburgh, New York, by officers of the Continental Army at the close of the American Revolution. From the beginning, it operated through a federated structure consisting of a national body, the General Society, and fourteen constituent societies, one in each of the original thirteen states and a French society representing allied officers. This structure shaped the Society’s earliest records, which include national governance materials, triennial meeting proceedings, and officer correspondence, as well as separate membership rolls, minutes, and financial records maintained by individual constituent societies. Prominent early members included George Washington, Henry Knox, Alexander Hamilton, Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, the marquis de Lafayette, the comte de Rochambeau, the comte d’Estaing, and Pierre L’Enfant. Since 1938, the General Society has maintained a permanent headquarters at Anderson House in Washington, D.C., where its central records, library, museum collections, and educational programs have been preserved and developed.
The American Revolution Institute holds a significant collection of more than fifty manuscript orderly books, making it one of the larger institutional holdings of such material in the United States. The majority document the daily operations of the Continental Army and local militia during the American Revolution, with additional examples from British Army units in both the French and Indian War and the Revolutionary War. Together, they provide a rare opportunity to compare American and British military administration and decision-making across two eighteenth-century conflicts. The orderly books vary widely in size, format, and materials, reflecting their practical field use, from compact pocket-sized volumes bound in boards with simple leather spines to notable exceptions such as the folio-sized orderly book of Colonel John Philip De Haas’s First Pennsylvania Battalion (1775–1776) and the vellum-bound orderly book kept at Major General Nathanael Greene’s headquarters in 1781.