Paige+S.+-+Historical+Fiction+Character

toc

Colonial Life
My name is Gemma Smithston, and I am a sixteen-year-old girl living in Pennsylvania on my family’s farm. My family consists of my mother Elizabeth, my father William, my 12-year-old twin sisters Mary and Louisa, my 11-year-old brother Paul, my 9-year-old sister Joanna, and little baby Thomas.

All my life I’ve lived at our weathered, wooden barn house, with a white picked fence, and immense oak trees shadowing overhead. My father and mother decided to travel to Pennsylvania because they desired to be free of religious rulings. Both my parents are now Quakers, and I was born three years after their departure.

Roaming on the rolling, grassy hills above are our sheep, goats, and horses. Behind our house is where we keep all of our chickens and hens. Joanna and Pauls’ jobs are to collect eggs and feed the horses.

“Gemma!” my mother shouts. “Get over here and help me sew your sisters’ dresses! You’ve //got// to stop daydreaming.”

A smoky and warm breeze ruffled my hair. Smoky? Was Joanna playing with fire again?

“Joannnaaaa!!!!” I called out into the woods. The breeze got thicker and forced me into a coughing fit. Just beyond the towering trees, my home was going up in flames.

Without thinking I sprinted towards the flaming wreckage. Out the door ran my mother, baby Thomas, my father, Paul and Louisa.

“Where’s Joanna and Mary?!” I gasped through the black wool blanket of air.

“I’ll get them!” father shouted and darted into the house.

Before I could stop him, the piles of blazing logs fell onto him. Within the afternoon I had lost half my family, and the start of the hardest winter I’ve experienced begun.


 * Historical Fiction Character Story Plot Outline **
 * 1) Exposition
 * 2) Jeremy Adamson
 * 3) 19 year old boy in Continental Army
 * 4) 1777 Winter in Valley Forge
 * 5) Son of Gemma Smithston and George Adamson
 * 6) Rising Action
 * 7) Jeremy is fighting against British in the woods
 * 8) 2,500 of the army has died due to conditions
 * 9) Also army is inexperienced and unprepared compared to Redcoats
 * 10) Economical Impact
 * 11) It’s cheaper for American merchants to sell to Britain than locally
 * 12) Economy suffers and goods are scarce to soldiers
 * 13) Gold vs. paper
 * 14) Climax
 * 15) When the future looks bad for soldiers, French and Spanish assist out of bitterness towards Britain
 * 16) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;">Baron Friedrich von Steuben, a military officer from Prussia, joined Washington and helped to train the troops
 * 17) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;">Falling Action
 * 18) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;">At the Battle of Monmouth, Washington leads his troops on an attack on the retreating British
 * 19) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;">Denouement
 * 20) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;">Valley Forge symbolized the bravery and intrepidity of the American Revolution
 * 21) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;"> Jeremy and the survivors move south to Virginia with Washington to meet up with the British


 * Theme:** The American Revolution impacts Jeremy and the Continental Army because there is limited supplies for the soldiers due to the failing economy. The reason it is failing is because American merchants are selling to Great Britain rather than locally.

Revolution
Topic: Winter at Valley Forge and the Battle of Monmouth

Source 1: Hart, Diane, and Bert Bower. //History alive!: the United States through industrialism//. Palo Alto, Calif.: Teachers' Curriculum Institute, 2011. Print.


 * The army was obstructed by shortages in food, guns, gunpowder, and clothing or uniforms. (Hart 88)
 * Patriotism and assistance from the Spanish and French kept the rebels alive (Hart 88)
 * Due to inexperience, American troops were thoroughly diminished in New York and lost 1,407 of their men. (Hart 91)
 * Washington’s troops were ill and hungry. The merchants and farmers preferred to sell to the British for gold versus the Americans who used paper.
 * “At the Battle of Monmouth in New Jersey, George Washington led his troops in an attack on retreating British forces.” (Hart 95)

Source 2: "Valley Forge." //Kidport Home Page//. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Nov. 2010. <http://www.kidport.com/RefLib/UsaHistory/AmericanRevolution/ValleyForge.htm>. · 1777-78 Valley Forge, Pennsylvania · Cite of Continental Army
 * “Baron Friedrich von Steuben, a military officer from Prussia, joined Washington and helped to train the troops.”

Source 3: "The Winter At Valley Forge." //americanrevwar//. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Nov. 2010. <http://americanrevwar.homeste


 * " Some were still boys -- as young as 12 -- others in their 50s and 60s. They were described as fair, pale, freckled, brown, swarthy and black. While the majority were white, the army included both Negroes and American Indians."
 * “Because of the suffering endured there by the hungry, poorly clothed, and badly housed troops, 2,500 of whom died during the harsh winter, Valley Forge came to symbolize the heroism of the American revolutionaries”