This is just the beginning! Our collection holds over 300 years of history, including rare newspapers, obituaries, marriage records, birth records, and so much more—most of which you won’t find anywhere else!
Sturdy Beggar and John Paul Jones Crew Fighters From New Bern
The article recounts how New Bern recruited seamen for the privateer Sturdy Beggar, its 1777 voyage under John McKeel, and later crew joining John Paul Jones in Nantes. It traces Kilby and others through captures, prison at Portsmouth, exchange, and recruitment into Jones’s Bonhomme Richard, weaving a New Bern and North Carolina chapter of naval history.
MENTIONED IN THIS ARTICLE
England
New Bern
North Carolina
Durwood T. Stokes
Graham
John Kilby
Kilby
Museum of the Naval Academy
Annapolis
John Paul Jones
Maryland
John McKeel
Frederick Green
Baltimore
John Muir
North Carolina Gazette
Beggar
James Campbell
United States
America
Moore's Creek
Pender County
William Tryon
Tryon Palace
Josiah Martin
Tryon
Martin
Lexington
Concord
Mass
Vienna
Ocracoke
The
Bar
Glasgow
St. John's
Newfoundland
Smyrna
London
Resolution
Spithead
Portsmouth
Queen Anne's Hospital
Fortune's Jail
Portsea
Gar
Nantes l
Royal British Navy
Tobago
Admiralty Court