The 1777 March of the Saratoga Convention Army

If you reenact the Revolutionary War period, and have enjoyed a cup of coffee in camp, you may have had a visitor ask:  "Did they drink coffee back then?" .  The answer can always be  "It depends" ,   but in many cases the answer is  "yes" .  Some time ago I suggested the acronym "SALT" as an assessment tool for determining who ate what during the Revolutionary War period.  Each of the letters, "S" for status, "A" for activity, "L" for location and "T" for time of year, is a factor to consider for understanding what "they" ate or drank based on who they were, what they were doing, and when they were doing it.  Taken together, it is also a good reminder that much of the meat eaten in an age before refrigeration and canning was preserved by being salted. [1]   This approach is helpful when answering the coffee question.   Ads for coffee appear regularly in Revolutionary War era newspapers.  The exam...

I am a fan of "living history", and do enjoy visiting historic sites, tours and lectures, but of the opinion that the best way to learn about history is reading.  There are plenty of choices when it comes to books regarding the Revolutionary War era, some good, some not so good.  These are my top three.  The first two have nothing to do with the 1777 march of the Convention Army .  Only two of the nine accounts in the third are from soldiers who fought in the Saratoga campaign with Burgoyne.  That's because regardless of one's interest in a particular aspect of the Revolution, it's essential to have some understanding of the broader framework of the war - and the world in the eighteenth century - to truly appreciate what happened with respect to any single person, battle or event. First on my list is Joseph Plumb Martin's  Narrative of Some of the Adventures, Dangers and Sufferings of a Revolutionary Soldier.   If, for some reason, you are on...

This post, according to the automated count on my "Blogger" dashboard, is the one-hundredth that I've made since I began documenting the 1777 march of the Convention Army in January of 2023.  It's been well worth the effort to find and explore the people, places and events of the march, across sixty or so communities in three states (or what was two states and a republic in 1777), and to track the path they followed as accurately as possible.   Doing so has had its challenges, and perhaps at times mirrored the frustration of British Ensign Thomas Anburey  noted with regard to the Saratoga campaign that:  "... this expedition appears to have been planned by those, who, sitting in their closets, with a map before them, ridiculously expect the movements of an army to keep pace with their rapid ideas..."  [1]  Anburey, or whoever drew the map which was included in his account of his travels, has not only frustrated but definitely confused at least a ...

I've walked short sections of the Convention Army's route of march from Saratoga to Cambridge in the past.  My favorite, so far, runs for a mile or so from the Joshua Spooner well marker on East Main Street in Brookfield, and then along Slab City Road in North Brookfield.  This year I decided to commemorate the Convention Army's 1777 journey  by, among other things, walking an entire day's march on its anniversary date.   In terms of selecting a section to march in its entirety, the German column's march on November 4, 1777,  from Leicester into Worcester , had a lot going for it.  Practically speaking, it begins a couple of miles from where I live; there are sidewalks along the entire length of this section of the route; and for the most part it is downhill.  As I hiked, I also realized that the anniversary of the day's march I'd chosen fell exactly one week before Veterans Day. It's also relatively short, about six miles, compared to more tha...

A number of museums have displayed items said to be associated with British Lieutenant-General John Burgoyne.  They offer visitors a physical connection to the Saratoga campaign, and serve as a reminder of the American victory in October of 1777, which changed the course of the Revolutionary War.  One of these objects is a kettle described as “Burgoyne’s Camp Kettle” which, up until recently, was on display at the Bennington Battle Monument in Bennington, Vermont. My introduction to Burgoyne’s Camp Kettle came by way of a postcard, as pictured here.  In addition to the painted description on the kettle itself which identified this as “Gen. Burgoyne’s Camp-Kettle”, the back of the postcard indicated that this was “Gen. Burgoyne’s Camp Kettle captured October 17, 1777, in the battle of Saratoga, where Gen. Burgoyne surrendered” .  A caption on the front of the postcard indicated that the picture was taken at the Bennington Battle Monument, a Vermont State Historic Sit...

British accounts of the 1777 march of the Convention Army after the  surrender at Saratoga  are brief, with the exception the letters published by Ensign Thomas Anburey in 1789 under the title "Travels Through The Interior Parts Of America" .  German accounts of the march are rich in detail, and describe not only where they went and when, but what they saw and did along the way.  In addition, a series of drawing available online through  The New York Public Library Digital Collection  by Hessian Captain Friedrich von Germann show us what various German regiments looked like before the Saratoga campaign started, such as this soldier from the Brunswick Regiment von Specht.   German accounts of the 1777 march range from the memoirs and letters of its commander, to the brief diary entries of one of his soldiers, and include one kept by a woman, the wife of Major-General Friedrich Adolph Riedesel , the commander of General Burgoyne's German troops....