The 1777 March of the Saratoga Convention Army

The German column of the Convention Army spent two nights in   Kinderhook, New York , and  resumed their march from Saratoga to Cambridge on October 24, 1777 .   T heir commander,  Major-General Friedrich Adolph Riedesel , along with his wife and three of their children, now traveled with them.  In the week since the surrender on the 17th, the column had traveled south through the Hudson River Valley and now southeast along the west slope of the  Taconic Mountains .  Four months earlier Johann Christoph Dehn, a clerk with the Specht regiment, had written optimistically to his parents in Germany: "We are on a march to visit the rebels. To this end, we will be embarking on Lake Champlain, leave Canada and take up residence in Albany."   [1]  Instead, their march on the 24th would take them further east and further away from the objective of their campaign. From Kinderhook they entered Claverack.  "Klaverack", as it appears o...

When the British Army surrendered at Saratoga on October 17, 1777, Lieutenant-General John Burgoyne's soldiers were close to starving.    Brigadier-General William Whipple "who with Gen. Glover conducted G. Burgoyne & his Army prisoners from Saratoga to Cambridge..."  shared with the Reverend Ezra Stiles that Massachusetts Militia  troops had c aptured three-quarters of the supplies Burgoyne had left, and at the time of surrender "... Burgoyns Army had but one day's Store of Bread left & this bad ... & the failure of Stores obliged him to surrender on the 17th."   [1 ]   Article V of the  Articles of Convention  shifted the responsibility for feeding Burgoyne's men to his American captors, providing:  "The troops are to be supplied on their march ... with provisions, by General Gates's orders, at the same rate of rations as the troops of his own army...".   Neither British or American soldiers ate well by today's ...

The prisoners of the Convention Army traveled through a region most had likely heard about, but never seen.  Their march from the Saratoga battlefield in the fall of 1777 took them through Hudson Valley villages settled by Dutch and German farmers, isolated hamlets in the Berkshires which had sprung up beyond prosperous English settlements along the Connecticut River, and the towns of Worcester and Middlesex Counties which marked a century and a half of expansion from the settlement of Boston in 1630; all land occupied by a Native population for countless generations before the arrival of Europeans.   What did they see?  Most obvious was the terrain: two major rivers and two mountain ranges before reaching the hills of central Massachusetts, and then their barracks overlooking Boston Harbor.   A painting in the collection of the Worcester Art Museum, " Looking East From Denny Hill"  seen in an image © Worcester Art Museum , offers a glim...

The first town on the route of march of the British column after crossing to the east bank of the Connecticut River was Hadley, Massachusetts.  Many of the British prisoners spent the nights of October 27th and 28th in Northampton, waiting for the weather to clear, and passed through or stopped in Hadley on the 29th.  Others crossed over the river, arrived in the town October 31st, and spent the night.   Most of those who kept journals of the march paid little attention to the town.  Massachusetts Militia Lieutenant Israel Bartlett would note: “[Oct.] 29 Wednsday. We are ordered to advance in front.  We marched [from Northampton] and crossed the river at 10 o’clock, and advanced four miles from Hadley: place called Amherst.”   Others, including Private David How stopped there: “[Oct.] 29 This Day we Crossed Coniticut River [from Northampton] and Staid at old Hadley At Night  Its ben Wet marching”   Most British entries were even briefer: "Oct...