ONLINE LIBRARY
Verbruggen 3-lb Gun Online
Strach, Stephen, History of the Three Pound Verbruggen Gun and Its Uses in North America 1775-1783 (c).
Eastern National Park and Monument Association, 1986, unpublished. 100 mb, full-text searchable. Created from the original manuscript in the archival files of Cowpens NB. Only this works: Right-click, save link as...
Not public domain. Made available for personal research and reading from History and Culture page, Cowpens National Battlefield.
Cresap, Charles 'Cap',"Comments on Strach's History of the Three Pound Verbruggen Gun...". If all of 'Cap's' corrections, contained in a few terse sentences, were added as notes to Strach's report, it would require notes on 25 or so pages!
Some trivia ref Strach's work from a Revlist post in Apr 2009 when a first effort was made to make the study available online. It may be noted that the filesize was a whopping 283 mb (now down to 100mb) and was not full-text searchable (it is now searchable).
Strach, Steven G. A History of the Three Pound Verbruggen Gun and Its Use in North America 1775-1783 but shows no publisher and no date of publication or creation. Note: This reference was not present on this page as late as the archived version for 21 March 2008, so may well have been added after the Apr 2009 effort to make it downloadable online. The current page was last modified on 15 May 2009, making this even more probable.
Company of Military Historians Forum:"Two more Saratoga surrender cannons identified?". Posts by forum manager John Morris relating to Strach, his 1986 Verbruggen study, and additional tubes presumably not included in Strach's study. They include mention of the initial (Apr 2009) effort to make Strach's study available online for personal research and study, as well as the current effort (Mar 2011).
Colonial Williamsburg Cannon Project
"Ordnance taken at Detroit, 16th
August, 1812. ", Historical Collections, Michigan State Historical Society, 1896.
The 3 Pounder is an English Piece cast by P. Verbruggen 1776, on it is inscribed surrendered by the capitulation of York Town, Carriage is not good.
Donations of cannon, ... Military Academy, ..., Reports of Committees: 30th Congress, 1st Session - 48th Congress, 2nd Session , p.740. 1882.
One 3-pounder bronze gun? Inscription "Surrendered by the Convention of Saratoga, Oct. 17, 1777." "J. and P. Verbruggen, (undecipherable) A. 1775". Broad arrow.
Addresses on the Battle of Bennington, Free Press Office Print, 1849
It is a common opinion that these field-pieces were of French manufacture and taken by Wolf at Quebec. But the manufacturers' name plainly marked on them is J. & P. Verbruggen ? a name no Frenchman, ? and none but a 'Dutchman, will claim. The date of their casting, also legible upon them, is 1776, or but one year before they came into the power of Stark. By reason of the British broad arrow or crowfoot marked upon them, they have been considered of British workmanship ; but that mark is thought by good judges not to have been cast, but cut with a graver. ... 
Jan
Verbruggen
(1712 - 81)
Verbruggen was born in Enkhuizen, West Friesland, and trained as an artist and architect before his appointment in 1746 as Master Founder for the Admiralty of West Friesland. Within a year he began to apply techniques for boring cannon from solid castings that had been developed in Switzerland by Johann Maritz, Master Founder at Burgdorf, and transmitted by his sons to Spain and France, where they were in use at the royal foundry at Douai by the 1730s. Previously cannon had been cast as tubes, and machined to the required tolerances in vertical boring machines. Maritz made solid castings, that were rotated by water-power in horizontal machines, in which the cutters were advanced through gearing by hand wheels.
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