"Need help identifying a continental regiment" Topic

I recently came into possession of a continental infantry regiment that is wearing a brown coat but with sky blue facings. I have looked in my Leffert's but cannot seem to find which regiment it could be. Online has turned up nothing as well. I have found brown coats with a navy blue facing for a Pennsylvania battalion but that is all. Any help would be appreciated!

According to Mollo/McGregor, it's from a deserter report from Gamaliel Bradford's Massachusetts regiment, sometimes referred to as the 14th – although the Massachusetts Line was not numbered until 1779. (This is the plate that spawned entire regiments of men in "peach blossom" trousers.)

Other deserters from this unit were wearing scarlet faced black (a drummer), blue faced white, "sailors' clothing", and various styles of civilian dress – all from 1777. However, there is an unusual report of a deserter supposedly from Warner's Additional Regt (also in 1777) wearing a light brown coat faced blue (shade not mentioned) with buttons bearing the number "14", so quite possibly the brown/lt blue combo was at least one of the official uniforms of the regiment, even if it wasn't THE official kit.

Thanks so much Super! Now that I look at them more closely they are in peach trousers as well. I thought it an odd shade for leggings. 14th Massachusetts it is then.

"Let's all dress like the guy who is running away!"

I have learned to distrust deserter descriptions unless they specifically say "wearing regimentals".
Otherwise you would find a regiment wearing a green coat with purple velvet trousers.

Oddly enough, deserter descriptions might be a better guide to painting civilians or militia.

I don't believe we should dismiss contemporary evidence, and that is what deserter descriptions are. The better approach is to figure out what they mean.

We are not in disagreement.
What regiment was fully uniformed? Instead they were most likely heavily clothed by soldiers in civilian clothing. I never said the deserter descriptions were inaccurate. Just that few accurately described the "uniforms" of specific regiments.

Agreed – you need to look at groups, or multiple deserters from the same regiment to get an idea of uniform, or sometimes uniformS as there was often more than one in force at the same time.

As you rightly say, Winston, deserter reports can be a very good source for civilian dress.

As an aside, as John said, this is one of the reasons why the AWI can be so much fun to paint. Similar to the Confederates during the ACW, you have one regiment or unit with an eclectic mix of uniforms or civilian attire which keeps the painting process from being too boring. When you get tired of that, paint some Hessians or Brits in the Warrant outfits for something completely different!

Now, when do we get the "ragged militia" uniforms John? Eureka maybe?

Erik

I have always thought that the term "militia uniform" was an oxymoron. Like Viking uniform, or Gaul uniform, or Iroquois uniform.

Which does not mean that I would not happily support a range of ragged militia.
King's Mountain has a nice range of Over Mountain Men in various frontier dress of hunting shirts, fringed and not fringed, smocks etc. A bonus is the separate heads.

Winston – Militia rarely served long enough to become ragged, so I'm not sure how accurate such figures would be, at least in that context – I'm sure you could use them for Continentals in civvies.

Uniformed militia were not uncommon at the start of the war, as pre-war formations (mainly long-standing ones from wealthy urban areas) often had some form of standard dress. Outside of New England, it was often the case that smaller units merged to form battalions or regiments, and could make a very colourful appearance – Smallwood's Marylanders wore tan hunting shirts in the Long Island campaign to cover up that they were from several pre-war units (and also that the majority of the men wore red coats, I suspect).

Alan Perry made two sets of "uniformed militia" to go alongside his civilian attire militia as part of the Foundry AWI range. Very nice figures they were, too, all standing at rest (one guy was smoking a pipe, I recall); if you included the "ramming home" figures from the matching Firing Line packs, you could have a unit of 20 rank-and-file with every figure different.