Neil F. Cosgrove
New City, N.Y.

Michael D. Hull responds: Sometimes it is hard to tread the thin line between fact and legend because research unearths so many discrepancies. But I think my article on Francisco is about as factual as it could have been. I have no reason to doubt my principal source, William Arthur Moon, author of Peter Francisco, the Portuguese Patriot, when he quotes Captain William Evans as stating that it was Francisco who "was the first man who laid hold of the flagstaff and being badly wounded laid on it that night and in the morning delivered it to Colonel Fleury."

I hope that Mr. Cosgrove did not misread me as to Francisco's special 5-foot broadsword. He did not use it at Stony Point. In fact, as I made clear in the article, it was delivered to him on Washington's order almost two years later.

Moon, who served as state supervisor of the Virginia Historical Inventory Project and headed the Virginia State Library's Extension Division, did a great deal of
research on Francisco in Virginia, Massachusetts, New Jersey, the Azores and elsewhere. His book, published in 1980 by Colonial Publishers of Pfafftown, N.C., is thoroughly annotated. I also used other resources, including the Virginia Historical Society and the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution.

Nevertheless, I have asked the Library of Congress for a copy of an 1828 letter from Captain Evans to the Virginia General Assembly in Richmond supporting a petition for a pension for Francisco. Evans, according to Moon, served with Francisco "in all the Northern campaigns."

When I receive a response to my request, I will forward a copy to Mr. Cosgrove. Meanwhile, please rest assured that after many years of freelancing without complaints, and after 51 years as a journalist, I do not take a casual approach to the facts.

Correction
In the feature "Blood, Sand and Snow" in the January-February 2007 issue, the caption on P. 29 refers to the "Finnish port of Narvik." As correctly stated in the text itself, Narvik is in Norway.

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