1777

• German mathematician and physicist Karl Friedrich Wilhelm von Gauss.
• Kentucky statesman and presidential candidate Henry Clay.
• Scottish poet Thomas Campbell.
• American horticultiralist John Bartram.
• Bernadine Eugénie Désirée Clary. Engaged for a time to Napoleon Bonaparte, she eventually married his marshal Bernadotte.
• Danish physicist Hans Christian Oersted.
• French physician Charles Cagniard de la Tour.
• French chemist Bernard Courtois
• French chemist Charles Desormes.
• German painter Philip Otto Runge.
• Future Russian Tsar Alexander I

• Alsatian mathematician Johann-Heinrich Lambert.
• English playwright Samuel Foote.
• Austrian composer Georg Christoph Wagenseil.
• Dolly Pentreath, the last person known to have been raised speaking Cornish and nothing else. She is often (incorrectly) called the last speaker of that language.
• King José of Portugal.

• War of American Independence:
• Political activities
• Prince Hall and eight other freed blacks in Boston present a petition urging the end of slavery.
• {thomas Jefferson] introduces a bill
• State constitutions
• Georgia (February 5)
• New York, (April 20)
• Vermont (July 8). Vermont is technically an independent republic at this point.
• (November 15) Congress adopts the Articles of Confederation (which do not become operative until 1781).
• The victory at Saratoga convinces France to openly aid the United States.
• Fighting
• (January) George Washington captures Princeton, New Jersey, then settles down for the winter in Morristown.
• (April-June) Lord Cornwallis tries to drive Washington out of New Jersey, but the Continental army and the New Jersey militia eventually force him to withdraw back to New York.
• (May) Count Casimir Pulaski arrives in Philadelphia.
• (June 27) The Marquis de Lafayette arrives in Philadelphia. Commissioned as a Major General by Congress, he meets Washington on August 1.
• British troops, Canadian loyalists and Seneca Indians advance into New York from the west.  they lay siege to  Fort Stanwix
• General Howe leaves New York and sails around to the head of the Chesapeake Bay with the intention of capturing Philadelphia.
• (August 6) The bloody Battle of Oriskany in western New York. A force of German militia and [Oneida Indians are mauled by the British, Canadians and Senecas, but the latter are forced to withdraw to Canada.
• (September 3) General Howe forces Washing ton's army to retreat at the Battle of Brandywine. Count Casimir Pulaski is commissioned as a brigadier general in the Continental army, in charge of all American cavalry.
• (September 20)  General Anthony Wayne is suprised by the British at the Battle of Paoli near Philadelphia,
• (October 3-4) Washington is badly defeated at Germantown, Pennsylvania.
• (September-October) British general Henry Clinton drives General Israel Putnam and his distant cousin George Clinton, Governor of New York, out of the the Highlands on the west side of the Hudson.  A British army advances up the Hudson River Valley.
• (October 17) The Continental army under Benedict Arnold and Horatio Gates defeats the British army at the Battle of Saratoga, capturing General Burgoyne.  This is one of the key victories of the war.
• (October 18) The British army advancing up the Hudson arrives in Albany, where the news of Saratoga forces them to withdraw back to New York City.
• (October 19) General Howe takes control of Philadelphia.  Congress retreats to York, PA.
• Washington's army retreats to Valley Forge for its terrible winter there.
• A secret treaty between the Duke of Bavaria and the Austrian emperor cedes lower Bavaria to Austria.  This leads to the War of Bavarian Succession between Austria and Prussia.

1776 - 1777 - 1778