On To Blandford - "Scattered Over Three Strong English Miles"

On Sunday, October 26th, the German column of the Convention Army left Great Barrington, Massachusetts.  They were probably glad to put the town behind them, given one German officer's comment: "I never saw ruder, more spiteful people..." [1]  The next three days would be the most difficult days of their march.  On the second day they would reach Blandford, Massachusetts.

After leaving Great Barrington on the 26th, one German officer wrote: “We marched in a desolate mountain range…  It extends up to Westfield.”  These were the Berkshires.  The roads, he noted, "were as bad as we had ever seen in America. They were not only very hilly but also stony and rocky and in many places so swampy that the men sank up to their knees.” [2]  On the 26th it would turn out that: "We were wrong in cursing the abominable roads, for we found them worse later.  The 27th, ... the roads got so bad we had no desire to curse them.” [3]  

They marched through an area that had only recently been settled by Europeans.  Private Joshua Pillsbury, a guard with the Massachusetts militia, noted that after leaving Great Barrington, he stopped on the night of the 26th in “Number Won”, an earlier name for the town of Tyringham, which had been incorporated in 1762. [4]   One German noted that they marched further that day, seventeen miles to Pillsbury's twelve, “... through woods and real wilderness where we encountered no more than 7 or 8 wretched dwellings.”  As a result, German soldiers slept on the ground, in an area known as Green Woods. [5]   

On the 27th Pillsbury traveled twenty-seven miles, “through the greenwoods Lowden and Glasgo mountain ...", and on to Westfield, where he stayed for two nights.  The main body of the German column marched only as far as Blandford - Pillsbury's "Glasgo".   According to the town's website: “The first settlers arrived in what is now Blandford in 1735. They were Scots-Irish coming from Hopkinton, Massachusetts (30 miles from Boston). ... In keeping with their Scottish heritage, they chose Glasgow as the name for the new settlement....  In 1765, Blandford consisted of 68 houses, 68 families and 406 residents, two of whom were black.  A decade later, in 1776, town's population had almost doubled to 772 inhabitants." [6] 

The march to Blandford was far from pleasant.  One account notes: "The rain continued the whole day and with it there blew a disagreeable, cold wind; we therefore had another very bad march." [7]  A German officer recorded that: "After eleven miles we got wretched cantonment quarters in some twenty houses of the village of Blandford, scattered along over three strong English miles; here seven regiments and our escort, consisting of six hundred men, had to help themselves as best they could. I was so out of sorts and uncommunicative to myself to-day that I soon lay down in an open attic, hoping to sleep; but because of the cold, wind, and the beating of hail I could not get to sleep. Thoughts of to-morrow's march pestered me worse than the fleas, which seemed to be holding their General Congress here." [8]

As to the common soldier: "Our men found shelter in barns but they did not all fit." [9]   One of those was Brunswick Grenadier Johann Bense.  He would note in his diary: "today, we were supposed to be quartered in a house designated for our company, but the farmer did not want to take us.  He was very bold.  … We found an old cellar near by and spent the night there.” [10]    

As bad as things as things were on the 27th, it would take the Germans another day to cross the Berkshires, and the worst was yet to come.

Over a century later Blandford minister Sumner Gilbert Wood would publish a history of the town's roads and taverns.  Wood's account included a reference to the passing of Burgoyne's German troops,  "Up and down these steep and rocky declivities ... the sorrowful way of some of the Hessians on their involuntary trip to Boston after their capture." [11]  It also included photographs of several buildings in the town that the German troops may have seen, or, if they were among the lucky, even stayed in.

[1] Letters From America, 121.

[2] Specht Journal, 106.

[3] Letters From America, 121.

[4] Pillsbury, "To Saratoga and Back 1777", 787.  Pillsbury may have traveled in advance of the column on occasion, perhaps making arrangements for where it would stay, as he spent the night of October 23rd in Egremont, Massachusetts while others noted stopping in Nobletown (Hillsdale, New York), and crossed the Connecticut River on October 29th, two days ahead of the main body.

[5] Specht Journal, 106.  Bense, Brunswick Troops and Saratoga, 76.

[6] https://townofblandford.com/town-history/ (using information from “Gateway Hilltown History”)

[7] Specht Journal, 106.  Back in New York, the 1st New Hampshire Regiment would "Lay still" in Livingston on October 27th and 28th, due to it "... being too wet to march.”  (Kidder, History of the First New Hampshire Regiment, 38.)  Major Henry Dearborn, in Albany, would note in his journal: “[Oct.] 27th this Day a very heavy Rain Came on which continued until the 29th. it is said so heavy a Rain was Never known here Before.” (Dearborn, Journals of Henry Dearborn, 10.)

[8] Letters From America, 121-122.  The Specht Journal as translated indicates Blandford was "... a place consisting of about 30 houses and extending over 3 Engl. miles." Specht Journal, 106-107.

[9] Specht Journal, 107.

[10] Bense, Brunswick Troops and Saratoga, 76. 

[11] Sumner Gilbert Wood, The Taverns & Turnpikes of Blandford 1733-1833 (Published by the Author, 1908), 74.

Next Week: Black History Month 2024 - "Stolen By The Americans Before The Revolutionary War"

For more on the Convention Army's 1777 march from Saratoga to Boston, see:

1777 March Blog Home          Overnight Stopping Points          Towns and Villages Along the Way

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