and, and it, sergeant major john h. hopkins was with it from 1777 through two 1783, and i am very thankful that he left us a journal to see part of this regiments travels, thank you very much. [applause] >> shall we? >> behind you, just raise your hand. maybe i will kick things off as soon as our contingency plan comes into effect with our handhelds. i really appreciated your casting the role of the continental army as a sort of nationalizing force, it is something that for those of you who are familiar with our core exhibition here at the museum he will recall that very dramatic tableau seen with the life cast figures of the snowball fight with george washington breaking up this fight between new england and virginia soldiers. we did that, of course, because we wanted to remind or for the first time tell visitors that the nation did not spring out of the heads of the man who were gathered down the street here, it was a very hard, long process, perhaps an ongoing process that is still going on a little bit later in the core exh

and, john h. hopkins realist in congress's own. as he realest it, because he also had service time, and also because he was so literate he was a writer, he had come to that moment. he was first given a corporal's enlistments. and then, very quickly, within weeks was made a sergeant of the regiment. so, john h. hopkins, who is he? i think he is from philadelphia. some of this, i will not say full assumptions, but i am following clues. i spent probably way too much time trying to find this guy in the records. not always the easiest person to find, but, from what i could understand. first of all, by reading his journal is that he kept talking about his typographical brethren. hey talked about printing offices, hey talked about newspapers. he was holding newspapers and books in his knapsack's. in fact, when you look at that journal over there they have it on the page. he is talking about what he lost when he threw his knapsack when he was running before those british highlander's to get away at brandy wine. and then, part of, it when y

about the regiment in particular and then actually spend more time talking about sergeant major john h hopkins, who was the person who introduced me to this regiment through his writings in that journal that i found at the historical society of pennsylvania. so i wanted to take it a step further to talk about this with you and make sure i'm going in the right direction here. is to pick up and talk about the congress's own regiment which actually went through about three or four different names through its lifetime. as this uncommon regiment it was first formed actually in january of 1776 authorized by the continental congress for moses hazen as the colonel and lieutenant colonel edward until as the second in command and it was commissioned as the second canadian regiment. so it brings us up to this point about why a canadian regiment and i asked students at time. did you know that canada was involved? well, yeah, there was an invasion the americans lost they had to retreat from quebec, you know by june of '76 they're gone and that was the end of canada. well, no, not really not by any means in