The German column of the Convention Army marched seventeen miles on October 24, 1777, then stopped for the night near "... a miserable village." It would be their last night in New York (in 1777 at least), or perhaps their first night in Massachusetts. Their march "on hilly and stony roads" had taken them well into the Taconic Mountains, and to "... Nobletown, a village undeserving of its beautiful name." [1] Their stay was not pleasant, as: "... we had to sleep in the open air for want of houses; we got so covered with frost during the night that we looked like great sugar dolls." [2]
The Germans were not the first or the last Revolutionary War travelers to stop in the village. Impressions were mixed.
Several months earlier Lieutenant Samuel Armstrong of the 8th Massachusetts Regiment of the Continental Line had passed through. On July 21st he noted that he:
"... march'd 8 miles to Kenyon's Tavern in Noble Town and Eat dinner of baked Pigg Walked about 2 Mile and was Catch'd in the Rain, keept on a Mile further and put up at Capt. McKenster's Tavern [w]here we tarried all night." [3] Neither tavern operates today, but the Hillsdale House welcomes guests to its 1797 home in the center of town (seen here, but unfortunately not experienced, as it was only open for dinner on the day I passed through the town).
Four days after the German column spent the night, Brigadier-General William Whipple, who was escorting Lieutenant-General John Burgoyne to captivity in Cambridge, Massachusetts, passed through and was not impressed. While Burgoyne likely spent the night of October 28th somewhere in Nobletown, Whipple continued on, explaining in his journal: "set out from Kendar Hook in the morning arrived at Noble Town about 12 which is 18 miles rained Exceeding hard the whole way but the accommodations being very bad I left the company at 3 o'clock and rode to Barrington". [4]
"Nobletown" doesn't appear on any modern maps of the area. According to The Historians of Hillsdale, up until 1783 there was a dispute as to whether the town was in New York or Massachusetts. Today, it is the village of Hillsdale, New York.
Nobletown may be where the German column received its
"apostolic blessing", rather than at either the
Reformed Dutch Church in Claverack, or Saint Peter's in Spencertown. That
pastor, one wrote, had been a stocking weaver before he became a minister, something that "...happens in America, I am sorry to say, almost only in the Evangelical Church". [5] Today, as seen in this photo, the church is gone and only its cemetery remains, just north of the intersection of Harlemville and Wolf Hill Road in Hillsdale.
In 1777 what was known as "The Reformed Unity Lutheran Church", and is now referred to as the "
Krum Church", was was used simultaneously by two congregations. The Reverend Johannes Schuneman dedicated the building as a Reformed Dutch Church on July 2, 1776. The Reverend Johan Friederich Reiss dedicated the building as a Lutheran church on July 5, 1776.
Whether either man was a stocking weaver is yet to be determined. [6]
[1] Specht Journal, p. 106.
[2] Letters From America, p. 121.
[3] Armstrong, p. 240.
[4]
Whipple Journal Transcript, p. 7, available online from the Portsmouth Athenaeum. Whipple noted that on the 29th "the company", as he referred to his travel companions, arrived in Great Barrington around noon.[5] Letters From America, p. 120.
[6] Little seems to be known about Reiss (alternately spelled as "Reis" and "Ries"). Schuneman was ordained in the Netherlands, in Amsterdam, in 1753, at age 41. Weis, Frederick Lewis, "Colonial Clergy Of The Middle Colonies", American Antiquarian Society Proceedings, Worcester, MA, 1956, pp. 298 and 311.
For more on the Convention Army's 1777 march from Saratoga to Boston, see:
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