Join the Historical Society of Easton and the Staples Academy Foundation as we welcome award-winning author and historian Richard Bell on Saturday, March 7th at 7pm at the Congregational Church Hall. Professor Bell will discuss how Irish heritage shaped the Patriot cause and how the Revolution, in turn, transformed Ireland itself.

Giving testimony to the British Parliament in 1779, Joseph Galloway estimated that Irishmen composed perhaps one-half of the Continental Army. Five years later, after Washington’s army won the war, another expert witness told Parliament that “the Irish language was as commonly spoken in the American ranks as English” and that Irish valor “determined the contest.” While exaggerated, those claims contained an essential truth: that men of Irish heritage played crucial roles in fighting the American Revolution. Irish-Americans sided with the patriots against the British Army in overwhelming numbers and shouldered muskets at every significant military encounter over the eight long years of war. Their numbers included general, colonels, thousands of enlisted men, and even spies. Professor Richard Bell explores the Revolution from the perspective of the Irish and their descendants in America as well as the all-important political and economic impact of the American Revolution on Ireland itself.

Richard Bell is Professor of History at the University of Maryland and author of the book Stolen: Five Free Boys Kidnapped into Slavery and their Astonishing Odyssey Home which was a finalist for the George Washington Prize and the Harriet Tubman Prize. He has held major research fellowships at Yale, Cambridge, and the Library of Congress and is the recipient of the National Endowment of the Humanities Public Scholar award and the Andrew Carnegie Fellowship. His new book, The American Revolution and the Fate of the World, was published by Penguin in November 2025. He maintains a list of upcoming events at Richard-Bell.com.

This is a free lecture provided and light refreshments will be provided.