(AMERICAN REVOLUTION--1775.) "John Anderson." Anderson Improved: Being an Almanack, and Ephemeris, for the Year of our Lord 1775. [32] pages. 12mo, stitched; moderate wear and dampstaining including slight loss to illustrated half-title. Newport, RI, [1774] The author advises his fellow colonists in a preface: "Wear the manufactures of your own country . . . stop all trade with Great-Britain . . . take up a firm resolution to have no farther connexion with them." The predicted result: "that America may rise to the summit of freedom and happiness, and prove the guardian of liberty to all the rest of the world." Alden, Rhode Island 529; Drake 12841; Evans 13115.
Like many 18th-century almanacs, this was used for occasional memoranda or diary entries. This one has two notes regarding British incursions at Jamestown, RI. One reads "Ninth of Octo'r, fired upon the ferry, Jm's Town." The other briefly notes a brutal December raid (in which the British burned many buildings and shot an 80-year-old man): "Between the ninth & tenth, burnt the ferry."