The 1777 March of the Saratoga Convention Army

I intended this blog post to focus on Cambridge as the final stop of the march of the Convention Army.  Two things changed that.  The first was learning that while Burgoyne and his senior officers were primarily quartered in Cambridge, his troops were held in Continental Army barracks on Prospect Hill, the site today marked by the magnificent stone tower shown below, and Winter Hill.  The second was visiting Somerville, which in 1777 was still part of Charlestown and is where both hills are located. The 1777 march of the Convention Army began in earnest on October 18th, with many thinking their destination was Boston.  German Grenadier Johann Bense noted in his diary for that day  "... we set out for Boston..." [1]  A letter dated October 22nd from Greenbush, New York, published in the Massachusetts Spy in Worcester, noted that after grounding their arms, Burgoyne's troops "... marched down to Stillwater, and crossed Hudson's river the 18th in order to ma...

February 22, 2023, marks the 291st anniversary of the birth of George Washington, pictured here in a  Library of Congress  print published in Germany in 1777 or 1778.  For more than two centuries Washington's birth has been widely noted, and was a federally recognized holiday from 1885 to 1971.  For the last five decades an all encompassing "Presidents' Day" has supplanted not only a holiday observance on the date of Washington's birth, but the February 12th celebration of the birthday of another truly great American President, Abraham Lincoln. In the fall of 1777 Washington hands were full as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army.  While Major-General Horatio Gates defended the upper Hudson River Valley, Washington was responding to British General Sir William Howe's expedition moving not north to support Burgoyne, but south by ship into the Chesapeake Bay and then north by land to Philadelphia.  On September 11th British forces maneuvered to fla...

Last week I shared that tracking the 1777 journey of Lieutenant-General John Burgoyne from Saratoga to Cambridge was a challenge.  Several primary sources document he stayed in Albany at Major-General Philip Schuyler's home until October 27th, and arrived in Cambridge on November 7th.  Less clear was where he stopped in between, though multiple locations lay claim to the statement "Burgoyne slept here" - some relatively easy to challenge, others not so much so. Travelers during the Revolutionary War going from Albany to Boston (or Boston to Albany) generally followed one of two major routes that correspond to the routes taken by the British and German columns.  A traveler leaving Albany could head south towards Kinderhook, then east through Great Barrington to Springfield, and on to Boston (or Cambridge for our purposes) along the Western Post Road.  Alternatively, a traveler could head east from Albany to Pittsfield or Williamstown, then through the Berkshires to c...

  "The famous Gen. Burgoyne and his army..." proclaimed the  Massachusetts Spy on October 30, 1777, "... are expected in town tomorrow."   The citizens of Worcester, home to the pro-patriot newspaper since April of 1775, would wait two additional days for the first elements of the Convention Army to arrive in their town, and the famous General Burgoyne seems to have come and gone without much notice.  I found tracking his journey to be a challenge as well. Lieutenant-General John Burgoyne (seen here as a younger man in the painting  John Burgoyne , in the National Portrait Gallery in London, NPG 4158) remains a well-known figure of the American Revolution.  Unfortunately, many of the stories told about him appear suspect, while others remain rarely told or untold - especially the details of his journey from Saratoga to Boston.   Burgoyne dedicated the publication of his defense of his failed campaign before Parliament,  A State of the ...