The Compleat Carosa Commentaries Archives

Thomas Boyd And The Brutality Of The Western Frontier

By Chris Carosa on February 3, 2026

The monument at the site of the Boyd and Parker ambush. The monument reads: “Sacred To The Memory of Lieut. Thomas Boyd and Sergt. Michael Parker Who were captured and afterward tortured and killed. Afar their bones may lie/but here their patriot blood/baptized the land for aye/and wideened freedom’s flood”
Photo credit: Ed Dehm, CC BY-SA 3.0 httpcreativecommons.orglicensesby-sa3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

In the darkness of September 1779, Thomas Boyd heard the muffled squeal of death.

Murphy, he thought. Can’t that man follow orders?

Boyd—an officer barely into his twenties—missed the fatal irony of his question.

But he did sense his mission was compromised. Boyd had orders to scout the British forces, not to engage them. Timothy Murphy’s shot must have echoed through the woods, alerting the Seneca. Worse, the others got away. No doubt the Indian would quickly warn his brothers. The encounter yielded one scalp, a horse saddle, and a bridle.¹ It seemed hardly worth the risk Sullivan’s men now faced.

The scouts needed to get out. And they needed to get out quickly. More importantly, Boyd needed to get word back to the General sooner. He dispatched two runners to ride ahead. They returned to report discovering a handful of Seneca on horseback up ahead.²

The young lieutenant remained confident that he would meet up with the main army soon enough. He rode on with his troops. They had not gotten far before they came upon Continue Reading “Thomas Boyd And The Brutality Of The Western Frontier”

Posted in History, The Compleat Carosa Commentaries, Western New York State of Mind Tagged 1779, Adam Hubley, Ambuscade, Benjamin Lodge, British, Corporal Calhoun, Edward Hand, General Hand, General Sullivan, Genesee Flats, Groveland, Henry Dearborn, John Sullivan, Little Beard, Little Beard's Town, Major General John Sullivan, Mary Jemison, Michael Parker, Mt. Hope Cemetery, Rochester, Seneca, Sullivan, Sullivan Campaign, Sullivan Expedition, Thomas Boyd, Timothy Murphy, Tory

William French and the Westminster Massacre

By Chris Carosa on January 27, 2026

On a late Winter morning in 1775, William French woke up for the last time. The lively 22-year-old lived in the Town of Bennington—itself scarcely older than he was.

Self-named by Benning Wentworth, Governor of New Hampshire, Bennington became—in 1741—the first township granted west of the Connecticut River. It was a fact that would soon matter far more than anyone expected.

French headed to Westminster, a small hamlet on the west side of the Connecticut River, nestled in the broad curve of the oxbowing waterway, in the fertile eastern valley beneath the Green Mountains.

That afternoon, French walked along King’s Highway to the farmhouse of Capt. Axariah Wright, an eccentric old patriot. There he met Daniel Houghton and nearly 100 other men. They were there to confront a problem they believed could no longer be avoided.Continue Reading “William French and the Westminster Massacre”

Posted in History, The Compleat Carosa Commentaries, Western New York State of Mind Tagged Act of Outlawry, Albany County, Axariah Wright, Benning Wentworth, Bennington, British, Cadwallader Colden, Charles II, Connecticut River, Daniel Houghton, Duke of York, Dutch, Ethan Allen, French, French and Indian War, General Council of Safety, George Clinton, Green Mountain Boys, Green Mountains, Henry Bridge, Irish Corners, James II, King's Highway, Liberty Men, Mahican, Mohawk, New Connecticut, New Hampshire, New Netherland, New York, Vermont, West Bennington, Westminster, Westminster Massacre, William French, William Patterson

America’s Forgotten First Frontier

By Chris Carosa on January 13, 2026

Before America looked west, it looked here.

Before the wild wilderness of Alaska, before the trans-Mississippi west, even before the Appalachian forests and the Cumberland Gap, the Greater Western New York region stood as America’s First Frontier. It was a rugged place where individuals could test the fruits of its promise—and sometimes discover its limits.

But it was tamed.
Quickly tamed.
Too quick for history books to notice.

And so, it slipped quietly out of the national memory.

Until a sportscaster unintentionally reframed its true origin story.

When Chris Berman proclaimed, “Nobody circles the wagons like the Buffalo Bills,” he wasn’t merely referring to a professional football team. He was describing a people. Perhaps without realizing it, he was echoing the rich experience of the region’s earliest pioneers—men and women who braved brutal winters to build permanent homes in the post-Revolutionary War virgin arboreal woodlands and lush valleys of the Greater Western New York Region.

Far beyond the settled coastal cities of the Atlantic, this was the first true frontier of the new nation. Unlike what would later become Kentucky and Ohio, it lay within an original state rather than a federal territory. That distinction mattered more than history remembers.

Europeans called Western New York “terra incognita” during the colonial era. It was, however, home to the Seneca and Cayuga, two member nations of the Iroquois Confederacy. The French were the first Europeans to pass through. Their explorers camped here. Their missionaries converted here. Their soldiers fought and built forts here.

But they didn’t settle here.

That omission was not accidental. Western New York was too valuable to ignore—and too dangerous to control without alliances.

It became a critical artery in the economy of New France, later brokered by the Dutch, and ultimately claimed by the British. That final transfer was secured not by force alone, but through alliance with the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy.

The Seneca served as “Keepers of the Western Door.” Ostensibly defensive, that door became a gateway to expansion. During the Beaver Wars, the Confederacy used it to eliminate the Erie tribe and to push its Algonquin adversaries off the map. This left the lands west of the Genesee River wholly vacated a century before the Revolutionary War.

The consequences were profound. French trappers lost their allies. British traders gained control of the valuable fur routes along the fertile waters that flow through western New York and beyond. And America’s First Frontier became one of the earliest battlegrounds for European supremacy in upper North America.

The Western New York region has always been a strategic crossroads.

Long before French missionaries first set foot in the New World, the feud between the Confederacy and its Iroquoian and Algonquin neighbors had been ongoing. The arrival of the Europeans didn’t change the dynamic. It intensified it.

At one time or another, all four Old World powers laid claim to the region. Ambitious Spanish claims, the French fur trade, the Netherlands river-based financial colonies, and the British desire for Empire, all collided here (and elsewhere).

Spain’s claim existed only on paper. They never came close. The Dutch, on the other hand, made the unfortunate decision to choose the Erie as their partners. When the Cat Nation disappeared, New Netherlands shortly followed, mostly without a fight. Mostly.

The French and the British, however, did what the French and the British always did. They went to war. Whether you call it “The French and Indian War” (as North Americans do) or the “Seven Years’ War” (as Europeans do), its outcome determined the fate of American colonies.

Decades later, before Horace Greeley championed Manifest Destiny when his New York Tribune pronounced, “Go West, young man,” New Englanders loaded up their wagons and headed down the ancient Central Trail of the Iroquois Confederacy. They looked past Geneva, at that time, the westernmost settlement in New York State (which itself became a point of controversy).

The Greater Western New York Region promised opportunity and risk in equal measure. It became the proving ground for a new nation’s first attempts to settle undeveloped land.

But it was more than that.

As George Washington quickly learned, America’s first frontier wasn’t just about the pioneers; in true mythic form, this west also posed diplomatic challenges regarding the conquered peoples who had previously claimed the land. The dance between state and federal power in the infant United States proved precarious. Fortunately, Washington’s wisdom and restraint helped protect both the State of New York and the Seneca Nation.

Still, uncertainty lingered.

Though technically part of New York State, the western portion of this original colony lacked clearly defined boundaries. Not until the War of 1812 would the dispute of the “Mile Strip” on the Niagara River be resolved.

Before then, however, the future of the Greater Western New York Region was cloudy at best. It stood on the cusp of history, on the edge of possibility.

Would that history be British, as part of Upper Canada?
Would it remain tethered to America and New York State?
Or would it become an independent state, following Vermont’s example?

Indeed, within a decade of the Paris Treaty that ended the Revolutionary War, no fewer than three attempts were made to separate Greater Western New York from New York State. What was the motivation for this? Why did they fail? How did state and local leaders respond? And what does that response reveal about the fragile architecture of the early republic?

Those unanswered questions are not historical curiosities.

They are the central mystery of our own backyard.

As we celebrate America’s 250^th, perhaps now is a good time to rediscover a chapter of our past that unfolded quietly, quickly, and almost invisibly.

After all, history is not what survives in a bland textbook. It is more alive than that. More contingent. More human. And to the attentive ear, the all-seeing eye, and the genuinely curious, it often reveals far more than we were ever taught to notice.

A history too often skipped in classrooms.
A history unfamiliar to many elected officials.
A history even seasoned historians sometimes overlook.

It’s the history of America’s forgotten first frontier.

And it leads, inevitably, to one enduring question that can finally be revealed to you:

Why did Vermont become a state—
but Greater Western New York did not?

To understand why that question was ever asked—and why it was never answered—we must return to the moments when authority was uncertain, allegiance was fluid, and the future of this frontier was still undecided.

Interested? Have you joined the 1786 Project yet? Go to http://1786project.com/ to access cool stuff about the history of the Greater Western New York Region! (And find out how to participate in the hidden treasure hunt!)

Posted in History, The Compleat Carosa Commentaries, Western New York State of Mind Tagged 1786 Project, Algonquin, America's First Frontier, Beaver Wars, Buffalo Bills, Cat Nation, Cayuga, Central Trail, Chris Berman, Colonial Era, Dutch, Erie, Europe, France, Frontier, Genesee River, George Washington, Great Britain, Greater Western New York, Horace Greeley, Huron, Iroquois Confederacy, Keepers of the Western Door, Manifest Destiny, Mile Strip, missionaries, New England, New Netherlands, New World, New York, New York Tribune, Niagara River, Old World, Paris Treaty, Revolutionary War, Seneca, Spain, trappers, Upper Canada, Vermont, War of 1812

Too Many Mondays

By Chris Carosa on January 6, 2026

There’s a reason your car doesn’t enjoy driving in the city (or Henrietta). Too many red lights. Vehicles can’t stand all that stopping and restarting. That’s what red lights force them to do. Cars hate it. And it kills your miles per gallon, too.

What red lights do to cars, Mondays do to you.

Think about it. Why has no other day been as universally panned as Monday? From Garfield’s primordial meme—“I hate Mondays”—to the Carpenters’ immortal “Rainy days and Mondays always get me down,” the first day of the week has always borne the brunt of criticism.

Unlike what the calendar implies, Sunday is not really the first day of the week. For those unfamiliar with the Bible, the Lord’s Day is the seventh day of creation; ergo, the seventh day of the week.

But even if you go by your day planner, at the very least, Monday remains the first day of Continue Reading “Too Many Mondays”

Posted in Gray Matter Musings, Memoir of a Real Life, The Compleat Carosa Commentaries Tagged Bible, Black Friday, Carpenters, Christmas, deadlines, December, efficiency, end of year, Garfield, I hate Mondays, Monday, New Year's, red light, Thanksgiving, The Lord's Day, The Rainy Day, traffic

To The Tables Down At Yorkside… (Wherever That May Be)

By Chris Carosa on December 2, 2025

The Game. For generations, it has been referred to as that. Not the “Yale Harvard game” (or alternatively, depending on your home team, the “Harvard game” or the “Yale game”). No. It’s simply “The Game.”

That tells you everything you need to know. There may be other contests throughout the fall sports season. There may be other seasons throughout the year. But only one singular event towers above all. It is the ultimate game (or at least it used to be—but more on that in a moment) of the Ivy League football season. It is the world’s second-longest continuous football rivalry (behind only Yale-Princeton). Students, alumni, and affiliates of New Haven and Cambridge eagerly await the finale between Yale and Harvard.

But it’s not just “a” game; it is “the” game, as in “The Game.”

People don’t go merely to watch a classic eleven-on-eleven gridiron clash. They go for Continue Reading “To The Tables Down At Yorkside… (Wherever That May Be)”

Posted in Memoir of a Real Life, The Compleat Carosa Commentaries Tagged 2019, Betsy, Blue, Brown, Cambridge, Cantab, Catarina, Cesidia, Crimson, Davenport, Eli, FCS, football, hockey, Ingall's Rink, Ivy League, New Haven, Peter, Princeton, tailgate, The Game, Villanova, Yale Bowl, Yale Harvard, Yale Harvard game, Yorkside, Youngstown

Hate Is The Real Root Of All Evil

By Chris Carosa on November 18, 2025

Hate is evil. You agree, don’t you? Of course you do. They say “money is the root of all evil,” but they’re wrong. It’s hate—not greed—that corrupts the soul. Hate is the real root of all evil.

“Money is the root of all evil” is really just a message from those who hate the wealthy. They cherry-pick words from the Bible to change the original meaning. The Bible (1 Timothy 6:10) actually says, “For the love of money is the root of all evils” (or “all kinds of evil,” depending on your translation). Whatever your preferred reading, it’s not the coins. It’s the obsession with them.

Money may sometimes corrupt the soul, but hate almost always does. Worse, hate burns hotter than greed ever could. It melts away the conscience like acid eating through steel.

And if you don’t believe the Word of Scripture, perhaps you’ll listen to Yoda’s words: “Fear is Continue Reading “Hate Is The Real Root Of All Evil”

Posted in Gray Matter Musings, The Compleat Carosa Commentaries Tagged Abraham Lincoln, Bible, Bronx cheer, C.S. Lewis, charity, Civil War, devil, Envy, Episode I, fear, French Revolution, hate, Hobbes, Jar-Jar Binks, liberty, logic, malice, passion, pride, Red Sox, Reign of Terror, resentment, root of all evil, Salem Witch Trials, Saul of Tarsus, Second Inaugural Address, Spanish Inquisition, St. Aquinas, St. Augustine, Star Wars, The Phantom Menace, The Screwtape Letters, Timothy, virtue signal, war of all against all, Yankees, Yoda

Should You Preserve The Past Or Forge The Future?

By Chris Carosa on November 11, 2025

Forbidden Planet movie poster, Copyrighted by Loew’s International. Artists(s) not known., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Down below stretched the New York Central’s vast sun-bathed Seneca Yard. As far as my four-year-old eyes could see, the many trains slow-danced with smooth precision. Colors. Shapes. Mesmerizing! “When I grow up, I want to be like the man who owned all these trains,” I told my mother. “Why?” she asked. Without hesitation, I said, “Because he must be rich!”

Yet, hours later, I sat with my father and watched our small black-and-white TV. News of the latest NASA manned rocket launch captivated me. I moved closer to take in all the details. Countdown. Fiery thrust. Liftoff! I spun around and said, “Dad, when I grow up, I want to be an astronaut.” “Why?” “Because it must be fun!”

Would you rather preserve the past or forge the future? Or is that the wrong question? Yesterday’s lessons and tomorrow’s dreams don’t collide in the present—they converge.

Longtime readers know my split soul: classic fallen-flag railroads and space exploration. Born fifty years too late—or fifty years too early. Yet, here I am, existing in the limbo between rails and rockets—and I wouldn’t trade it.

Consider how differently they move—and how each shapes how we think. Trains vs. rockets. Rails vs. launch windows. Memory vs. momentum.

Trains offer little flexibility—you’re confined to the fixed rails they run on. You know the route, trust the schedule, and sleep easy. There are no surprises. For example, New York Central’s premier passenger train, the 20th Century Limited (1902–1967), was famously on time—often to the minute.

That precision breeds confidence. Sure, there might be delays, but the interconnectedness of things makes it less likely that the entire system will collapse. Short of a catastrophe. And even then, the rails remain.

Flipping the script, space travel is literally limitless—the whole “to infinity and beyond.” You can reach into the unknown and “boldly go where no man has gone before.” It’s thrilling. It’s liberating. It’s also a little dangerous. You never know what alien landscapes might reveal.

But aliens may be the least of your worries. It’s a Twilight Zone–like twist: the real danger isn’t aliens. It’s you. The temptation to wander takes you off the beaten track (pun intended). It can also take your mind off the ball. Mission drift. Failure mode. One detour and you’re lost in the void.

You don’t have to be a Dr. Dolittle to see how this pushmi-pullyu dynamic works. Preserve the past? Or forge the future? It’s a constant tug-of-war. It’s enough to drive you crazy.

How does this false choice play out in the real world? In Hollywood-speak, should we opt for the sure thing of endless sequels until the characters become monotonous, or should we instead risk creating a brand-new story?

But wait—that’s still binary thinking. Instead of either/or, it’s more of a yin/yang engine. The past is the fuel. The future is the fire. Together, they launch you forward.

Exit Hollywood. Enter Elizabethan theater. Shakespeare’s The Tempest debuted in 1611. The first scene of Act 2 features Antonio uttering the phrase, “What’s past is prologue.” His meaning is quite deceptive. He seeks to convince Sebastian to commit murder because the Fates—history—have set the stage for just such an act.

Ironically, the original meaning of the phrase “What’s past is prologue” has not been preserved. It has morphed into a more literal interpretation. Whereas its original use called upon the classical gods of fate, today it simply refers to how our historical past can reveal our future. Think Napoleon’s winter in Russia—and Hitler’s, a century later.

Philosopher George Santayana famously summed this up when he warned, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Not quite as pithy as Shakespeare, but just as memorable. And it has more bite than “if you are mindful of the past, you will plan better for the future.” That’s what the Greek rhetorician Isocrates advised Cyprian Prince Nicocles in the 4^th century BC. It’s not fate. It’s pattern recognition.

It’s not just empires. It’s your life, too. “History may not repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” This oft-repeated quote, attributed (probably wrongly) to Mark Twain¹, embodies this key idea: the past gives us echoes, if not exact replicas. We can learn from the spirit of the past without being bound by its letter.

When “the past is prologue,” then “the future is now.” This latter phrase implies the future is happening right before our very eyes. We might not recognize it until sometime later. As with rocket ships, the future launches to sites unknown. Unburdened by the unmoving iron path of the rail, the future wanders from the straight line into a world—or pattern of thought—no one ever expects (like the Spanish Inquisition).

Just like the future, the “Spanish Inquisition” non sequitur came out of nowhere. To some extent, the same could be said of the entire Mark Twain footnote.

The future is all about these unexpected turns—the rabbit holes that make discovery possible. You can’t schedule serendipity. You can’t plot creativity on rails. But you can learn to recognize when you’ve stumbled onto something valuable—and that recognition comes from pattern, from memory, from the past.

It’s not a choice between preserving the past and forging the future. These are not distinct world lines—separate timelines that never touch, like mainline tracks that run parallel forever. Rather, they represent an interconnected mosaic that converges in the present. We look to the rails of the past to jump into the future. It’s like taking a hit radio series and adapting it for TV (like The Lone Ranger—a 1933 radio hit reborn as a 1949 television series). Same story. New medium.

Or like using Elizabethan prose (say, The Tempest) as the launching pad of a classic sci-fi spectacle (Forbidden Planet).

The old becomes fuel for the new. It’s the ultimate in recycling.

What does this mean for you?

Study the rails. Pack the rocket.

That four-year-old on the bridge understood something profound: the trains below weren’t relics—they were launching pads. The astronaut dreams didn’t replace the railroad dreams. They were fueled by them.

The past isn’t prologue.

It’s propellant.

¹ Here’s what Twain really said: “History never repeats itself, but the Kaleidoscopic combinations of the pictured present often seem to be constructed out of the broken fragments of antique legends.”

Well, either Twain or his coauthor Charles Dudley Warner said that in The Gilded Age: A Tale of To-Day, the 1874 novel that they co-wrote. Some years later, Twain wrote, “no occurrence is sole and solitary, but is merely a repetition of a thing which has happened before, and perhaps often.”

If you’re interested, the closest approximation of the “rhyme” quote comes from a 1965 essay by psychologist Theodor Reik, who wrote: “It has been said that history repeats itself. This is perhaps not quite correct; it merely rhymes.” This is the likely original source of the “rhyme” quote, as it wasn’t until the January 25, 1970, edition of the New York Times that the quote was first attributed to Twain. Did the Times try to preserve the past that wasn’t?

Posted in Gray Matter Musings, Memoir of a Real Life, The Compleat Carosa Commentaries Tagged 20th Century Limited, Antonio, Buzz Lightyear, Charles Dudley Warner, Dad, Dr. Dolittle, Elizabethan Theater, Forbidden Planet, George Santayana, Hitler, Isocrates, Kenny, Mark Twain, mom, Monty Python, Napoleon, NASA, New York Central, Prince Nicocles, pushmi-pullya, Ridge Road Bridge, rockets, Russia, Sebastian, Shakespeare, Spanish Inquisition, Star Trek, The Lone Ranger, The Tempest, Theodore Reik, Toy Story, trains, Twilight Zone

From Tun To Tripoli, Happy 250th U.S. Marines!

By Chris Carosa on November 4, 2025

Samuel Nicholas, First Commissioned Marine Officer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Happy 250^th U.S. Marines! Two hundred fifty years of storied tradition and patriotic inspiration. Wow. If only they made a movie about them. Or a TV series.

I always wanted to be a Marine. I don’t know why. Maybe it was the dress blues. That’s the uniform I wanted for my G.I. Joe. I was just the right age to get the first run of G.I. Joe action figures. Mine was the “Action Soldier.” It came in Government Issue regular army green fatigues, not the camo fatigues of the Marine version. Still, I insisted he was a Marine. My family allowed it; after all, I was only five years old. (FYI: My uncles and great uncles were in the Army and Air Force. They didn’t seem to mind.)

Naturally, I still have my Gomer Pyle U.S.M.C. lunchbox. The thermos was broken when we purchased it. Those were the days when it was hard to return things. Besides, I would never use it as the school sold milk for lunch. To prevent confusion, my brother got the Rat Patrol lunchbox. His thermos worked. Maybe he used it once or twice.

Back then, the Marines weren’t yet 200 years old. This year, on November 10, 2025, will be the 250^th birthday of the Marines. At least that’s the official birthday according to the official website of the United States Marine Corps.¹

It’s true that the Second Continental Congress passed a resolution establishing the “American Marines” on the cold afternoon of Friday, November 10, 1775. The resolution reads plain as day (from the official journal):

“Resolved, That two Battalions of marines be raised, consisting of one Colonel, two Lieutenant Colonels, two Majors, and other officers as usual in other regiments; and that they consist of an equal number of privates with other battalions; that particular care be taken, that no persons be appointed to office, or enlisted into said Battalions, but such as are good seamen, or so acquainted with maritime affairs as to be able to serve to advantage by sea when required; that they be enlisted and commissioned to serve for and during the present war between Great Britain and the colonies, unless dismissed by order of Congress: that they be distinguished by the names of the first and second battalions of American Marines, and that they be considered as part of the number which the continental Army before Boston is ordered to consist of.”²

Two entries just before that order hint at a bolder strategy. They reveal an intriguing story that, if it worked, might have shortened the war and pushed America’s border farther north.

The committee responsible for offering the resolution spent a week working on it. It was in response to a letter received from the inhabitants of Passamaquoddy, Nova Scotia, who “applied to the Congress to be admitted into the association of the North Americans, for the preservation of their rights and liberties”³

The first resolution authorized sending two persons “to Nova Scotia to enquire into the state of that colony, the disposition of the inhabitants towards the American cause…”⁴ The second directed General George Washington to attack Nova Scotia should he judge it “practicable and expedient.”⁵ Congress then ordered a copy of the three resolutions to be sent to Washington.

The General was miffed. As politely as possible, he returned his reply to Congress on November 19, 1775. He wrote, “I beg leave to submit it to the consideration of Congress, if those two battalions can be formed out of this army, whether this is a time to weaken our lines, by employing any of the officers appointed to defend them on any other service? … would it not be eligible to raise two battalions of marines in New York and Philadelphia, where there must be numbers of sailors now unemployed?”⁶

Congress received and read the letter on November 27. By November 30, they agreed with Washington and passed a resolution to suspend the raising of two battalions of Marines from the army.⁷ Oddly, they likely made their decision on November 28. That was the day they commissioned Samuel Nicholas as the first officer of the Marines.⁸

With an amphibious assault of Nova Scotia off the books, attention turned elsewhere. The British suspected the Marines would target New York or Boston. The Marines made the move in Nassau. Not the one in Long Island, but the one in the Bahamas. They seized the British armaments there without firing a single shot.

Legend has it that Nicholas was responsible for recruiting the first few companies of Marines at Tun Tavern. It’s more likely he used his connections with the Schuykill Fishing Company and the Fox Hunting Club to recruit. A look at the membership rolls of those two organizations shows some overlap with the first group of Marines.⁹

After the success of Nassau, Nicholas returned to Philadelphia. In the summer of 1776, Congress tasked him to recruit four companies of Marines. He did something smart. He recruited the recruiters. One of those men, Robert Mullen, inherited Tun Tavern (a.k.a. “sign of the Old Tun”¹⁰) from his father in 1775, Thomas “Mullan” (yes, the names were spelled differently in the primary source material).¹¹ Other contemporary sources spell Robert’s last name as “Mullan.”¹²

Mullen (or “Mullan”) not only ran the Tun, but he was also a member of the Masonic lodge that met there. Between being an innkeeper and active in a fraternal organization with more than 300 members, Mullen was the perfect man to recruit Marines. ¹³

Many histories (including that of the Marine Corps itself) incorrectly associate Mullen and the Tun Tavern with the November 10, 1775, birthdate of the Marines. Some even place Nicholas at the Tun, but he clearly recruited from his sportsman clubs. He may have also recruited from the Tun, especially since it was located on Water Street and frequented by the many sailors from the nearby docks.

While the Tun may be legend—or, more accurately, misplaced history—the shores of Tripoli ring true. Following the end of the Revolutionary War in 1783, Congress disbanded the Continental Marines. Their retirement was brief due to the harassment by the French; Congress reestablished the Marines as the United States Marine Corps on July 11, 1798.

The U.S.M.C. earned its stripes—actually, its sword—during the Barbary Wars in 1805. 1st Lieutenant Presley O’Bannon and only eight Marines (but with 500 mercenaries), captured the city of Derna, just outside of Tripoli. Following that battle, the defeated Ottoman Prince presented O’Bannon with a Mameluke sword. Twenty years later, a replica of that sword became part of the ceremonial dress of all Marine officers.

That victory also inspired the line “shores of Tripoli” in the Marine Hymn (which wasn’t made official until 1929). Speaking of songs, “Semper Fidelis” is not only the motto of the U.S.M.C. (adopted in 1883), but it is also the title of the official Marine march. Composed by John Philip Sousa in 1889, it’s featured prominently during the movie Patton. Ironically, the movie is about the Third Army, not about Marines.

It’s funny. I recently shared the Tun Tavern story with an audience. I started by asking any Marines to raise their hands. No one did. Among the several dozen sitting before me, there were plenty of veterans, just no Marines. I guess they really are “the few.”

I never became a Marine. The closest I came—vicariously at least—was my freshman year college roommate. I was such a great roommate that he left school and joined the Marines. He served in Lebanon (but was reassigned before the Beirut barracks attack). Got his picture in Newsweek in some anonymous B-roll shot.

He’s one of the few.

And he’s proud of it.

¹ https://www.marines.mil/Marines250/ [Retrieved November 1, 2025]
² Journals of the Continental Congress 1174-1789, Volume III. 1775 September 21 – December 30, Washington, 1905, p.348 Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774-1789 [Retrieved November 1, 2025]
³ Ibid., p. 316
⁴ Ibid.
⁵ Ibid.
⁶ Ford, Worthington Chauncey, ed., The Writings of George Washington Vol. III. 1775-1776, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, The Knickerbocker Press, 1889, p225-226
⁷ Journals of the Continental Congress 1174-1789, Volume III. 1775 September 21 – December 30, p.393
⁸ Image of actual commission letter from the Marine Corps Museum. https://destroyerhistory.org/fletcherclass/0_449nicholas/commission.html [Retrieved November 2, 2025]
⁹ A History of the Schuylkill Fishing Company of the State in Schuylkill, 1732-1888, Philadelphia: Members of the State in Schuylkill, 1889, pp. 367, 407.
¹⁰ The Pennsylvania Gazette, Wednesday, September 6, 1770, p.4
¹¹ The Pennsylvania Journal and Weekly Advertiser, Wednesday, April 26, 1775, p.4
¹² The Pennsylvania Gazette, Wednesday, May 10, 1775, p.5
¹³ Moore, Rev. Henry D., The Masonic Review, Vol. 77 No. 1, February 1892, p.154

Posted in History, The Compleat Carosa Commentaries Tagged 1775, America 250, American Marines, Bahamas, Contenental Marines, Derna, Fox Hunting Club, George Washington, Gomer Pyle, John Phillip Sousa, Mameluke sword, Nassau, Nova Scotia, November 10, Patton, Philadelphia, Presley O'Bannon, Rat Patrol, Revolutionary War, Robert Mullan, Robert Mullen, Samuel Nicholas, Schuykill Fishing Company, Second Continental Congress, semiquincentennial, Semper Fidelis, Third Army, Thomas Mullan, Tripoli, Tun Tavern, U.S.M.C., United States Marine Corps

My Life With AI—Part VI: How To Spot AI Content – Or – Apparently, I Am A Robot

By Chris Carosa on October 28, 2025

I’ve learned how to spot AI content because I’m never sure if a potential source is real or a computer. Well, not exactly. It’s usually easy to confirm the person is real.

Financial professionals often have public footprints. I find them by perusing firm bios, scrolling LinkedIn’s polished profiles, and searching for prior quotes. A business email helps, too. I rarely consider replies from generic addresses like Gmail or Yahoo.

The problem isn’t the people. It’s their answers. Are they genuine—or pasted from a GenAI platform?

Last Monday, I opened an email from a “retirement planning expert” responding to my Continue Reading “My Life With AI—Part VI: How To Spot AI Content – Or – Apparently, I Am A Robot”

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My Life With AI—Part V: Why GenAI (And All Search Engines) Fail

By Chris Carosa on October 21, 2025

When generative artificial intelligence (“GenAI”) platforms first appeared, I tried them all. GenAI fails—but not in the way you’re thinking. They failed to collect the data I requested. Quite simply, the platforms couldn’t search the internet that well.

Ah, 2024. Those were the good old days…

Code that tapped LLMs did achieve—a bit—what I wanted, but the inconsistency drove me Continue Reading “My Life With AI—Part V: Why GenAI (And All Search Engines) Fail”

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