SPRING LECTURE SERIES: "Would the Real Colonel John Rodgers Please Stand Up?"

For more than 200 years, the house on the banks of the Susquehanna in Perryville has been known as  Rodgers Tavern, the home of Colonel John Rodgers of Revolutionary War fame. The list of people who crossed on the Lower Susquehanna Ferry, and possibly ate and slept there, almost reads like a Who's Who of American soldiers and statesmen during the second half of the eighteenth century. Washington, Rochambeau and their armies crossed here in 1781 and 1782 on their way to and from the victory at Yorktown. John Rodgers met most of them, but details about his life are largely unknown. Based on in-depth research in little-known sources this illustrated talk will look at the activities of John Rodgers during the War of Independence and his contributions to American victory.

Our Speaker:

Robert A. Selig is a historical consultant who received his Ph.D. in history from the Universität Würzburg in Germany in 1988. He is a specialist on the role of French forces under the comte de Rochambeau during the American War of Independence and serves as project historian for the Washington-Rochambeau Revolutionary Route National Historic Trail Project. For this project he researched and wrote surveys and resource inventories for the nine states through which American and French forces marched in 1781 and 1782.

Among his publications are Hussars in Lebanon! A Connecticut Town and Lauzun's Legion during the American Revolution, 1780-1781 (Lebanon, 2004), and some 150 articles in American, German, and French scholarly and popular history magazines such as the William and Mary Quarterly, Eighteenth-Century Studies, the Yearbook of the Society for German-American Studies, as well as chapters in books and anthologies.

Honors and awards include the French Ordre national du Mérite (February 2022), La Médaille d’Or des Valeurs Francophones of La Renaissance Française (2019), the Erick Kurz Memorial Award for German-American History of the Steuben Society of America (2015), the Distinguished Patriot Award, National Society of the Sons of the American Revolution (2012), and the Ordre des palmes académiques (2011).

Please Note

All lectures are recorded and will be made available for public viewing on the Rodgers Tavern Museum website and on YouTube.