Nicholas Cresswell

Nicholas Cresswell (5 January 1750 – 26 July 1804) was an English diarist.^[1]

Cresswell was the son of a landowner and sheep farmer in Crowden-le-Booth, Edale, Derbyshire. At the age of 24 he sailed to the American colonies after becoming acquainted with a native of Edale who was now resident in Alexandria, Virginia. For the next three years he kept a journal of his experiences, along with comments on political issues. He became unpopular due to his opposition to the patriot cause in the American War of Independence. Cresswell returned to England, and after a failed attempt to receive a commission from the ex-governor of Virginia, John Murray, 4th Earl of Dunmore, he returned to Edale to resume farming. He died at in Idridgehay 1804.^[1]

Notes

1. ^ ^{a b} Gwenda Morgan, ‘Cresswell, Nicholas (1750–1804)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004, accessed 8 Nov 2010.

Further reading

• The Journal of Nicholas Cresswell, 1774–1777 (1924, with a preface by S. Thornely).
• The Journal of Nicholas Cresswell, 1774–1777 (New York, 1928, second edition, with an introduction by A. G. Bradley).
• H. B. Gill, ‘Nicholas Cresswell acted like a British spy. But was he?’, Colonial Williamsburg, 16 (1993), pp. 26–30.
• G. M. Curtis and H. B. Gill, ‘A man apart: Nicholas Cresswell's American odyssey, 1774–1777’, Indiana Magazine of History, 96 (2000), pp. 169–90.

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Name	Cresswell, Nicholas
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Date of birth	5 January 1750
Place of birth
Date of death	26 July 1804
Place of death