Two Weeks On The Road - “Marched Through Belcher”

In September of 1774, as towns across Massachusetts reacted to laws passed by Parliament to punish the colony for its resistance to British rule, the residents of Belchertown, Massachusetts, approved a statement which read: "We declare that we will take no unreasonable liberties or advantage from the suspension of the course of law, but we agree to conduct ourselves agreeably to the laws of God, of reason, of humanity; and we hereby engage to use all prudent and justifiable and necessary measures to secure and defend each others persons and families, their lives, rights and properties, against all who shall attempt to hurt, injure, or invade them, and to secure and defend ourselves and our posterity our just and constitutional rights and privileges." [1]   

Seven months later, when fighting began at Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775, the "necessary measures" they pledged to take would for the most part involve sending men and materials out of town, east to Boston, north to the Champlain Valley, and south to New York City.  Some of what was required may seem inconsequential today, such as in January of 1776, when Provincial authorities directed the town to supply seven of the four thousand blankets needed for the Massachusetts regiments being raised that year.  While blankets were undoubtedly harder to come by in 1776, British Lieutenant Thomas Anburey (one of those who would pass through Belchertown, though he doesn't mention it specifically) would remark to his friends in England that  poor families would donate one of their blankets, even if they only had two, to support “... that idol, Independency”. [2]  

Other measures had a wider or deeper impact no doubt, such as at the start of the war in 1775, when two companies of militia marched to join the Provincial army in the siege of Boston, and served through August.  That winter Captain Elijah Dwight of Belchertown commanded a company sixty-two men who continued the siege.  Others served in the Champlain Valley in 1776 and 1777, including one who would name a son for the hero of Saratoga.  William Harrington was said to be the only soldier from the town to be killed in battle, at Yorktown, Virginia in 1781, though others died from disease or other causes, including thirteen year old Ebenezer Gould Parsons at Albany in 1777. [3]   

The war came to Belchertown in 1777 in the form of prisoners and their guards.   On October 30th, after two weeks on the road since the surrender at Saratoga, most of the British column of the Convention Army marched through the town.  Private David How of the Massachusetts militia would note in his diary:“[October] 30 This morning we Set off [from Hadley] march Through Belcher...” [4]  Another of the guards, Lieutenant Israel Bartlett, who had spent the night before in Amherst would similarly note: “[October] 30 Thursday.  We marched thro’ Belcher...”  [5]  Two days later, on November 1st, a trailing element of the British column which included troops from the 47th Regiment of Foot stopped in "Belcher Town" , still over eighty miles from Boston, as indicated on the milestone seen below, which is now at the entrance to South Cemetery, on Route 181, southeast of the center of town. [6] 

My research on the British column's passage through Belchertown has been aided immensely by Cliff McCarthy, an archivist with the Belchertown Historical Association.  Among the documents in the Association's collection which Cliff shared with me is an order directing town officials to feed a group of prisoners who would pass through, which reads: “Gentlemen  By Order You are desired to make Preparation for a Dinner for 135 Men to be ready at Five Clock Afternoon on the Morrow, & another Meal for the next Morning at Sunrise.  They are Prisoners & their Guard, order’d to Boston.  per Order of the Com’tee of Safety [illegible] Wright Chairman”. [7]  

It's not clear to me who these prisoners were, as much of the date on the document is missing, other than what appears to be a fragment of the year 1777 at the bottom.  Their relatively small number suggests that they may have been taken at the Battle of Bennington in August, Colonel John Brown's raid on Fort Ticonderoga in September, or in the fighting prior to the surrender at Saratoga, rather than a part of the Convention Army.

Cliff also shared with me a transcribed section of the diary of Doctor Estes Howe of Belchertown, who served as a surgeon with the Continental Army first in Colonel David Brewer's Regiment from April 24th through August 1st, 1775, and then with the 5th Massachusetts Regiment of the Continental Line from January 1, 1777, until May 1, 1779. [8]  

Doctor Howe noted in his diary that he received a furlough on October 29, 1777, to return home for two months and left Albany, New York, on October 30th, the same day that Bartlett, Private David How and the prisoners he was guarding passed through Belchertown.  Howe recorded that on the 30th: “Set out for home Lay at Nobletown at the Pools in Company with Majr Allen”.  Howe traveled over thirty miles in one day, and reached Nobletown two days after Lieutenant-General John Burgoyne, and six days after the German column.  The following day, October 31st, Howe left Nobletown, and traveled to Chesterfield, Massachusetts, by way Pittsfield, noting: “Come to Mr Allens at Pittsfield and dind and we Lay at Millers in Chesterfield”.  It's not clear why Howe would have traveled northeast to Pittsfield from Nobletown, rather than to east to Springfield and then up to Belchertown, but what must have been a journey of over forty miles in a single day brought him to Chesterfield two days after the 47th stopped in that town, four days after Bartlett passed through, and five days after Private David How. [9] 

Howe, who was traveling faster than the Convention Army could march, arrived home on November 1st, the same day as the element which included some or all of the 47th Regiment of Foot reached the town.  Though he was present in town when at least some of the Convention Army stopped there, he doesn't mention it.  Instead he noted another arrival, likely much more important to him, as he wrote in his diary on November 1st: “got to Belchertown  found Mrs How Poorly had sent for Granny Hannum”. [10]  It's likely that "Granny" Hannum was a midwife.  While Howe was a physician, female midwives rather than male doctors were generally called upon at that time to assist in the birthing process.   

The following day, as the British left, Howe would note with apparent relief that his wife was a new mother, writing: “Mrs Howe was Putt to Bed with a Boy Very Comfortable and I cauld [called] his Name Horatio” [11]  The American victory at Saratoga not only brought British prisoners to Belchertown, but motivated the Howes to name their son Horatio Gates Howe, after the commander of the Northern Army, Major-General Horatio Gates.  Sadly, young Horatio would not live to see the United States secure its independence, as he died on August 20, 1781, two months before the final victory of the Revolutionary War at Yorktown, Virginia.  The diminutive gravestone, seen above, still marks where he was buried in the town's South Cemetery. [12]

[1] Josiah Gilbert Holland, History of Western Massachusetts (Springfield, MA: Samuel Bowles and Company, 1855), 2:179.

[2] Holland, History of Western Massachusetts, 1:216.  Anburey, Travels Through the Interior Parts of America, 2:44-45.

[3] Rev. Payson W. Lyman, 150th Anniversary of the Incorporation of the Town of Belchertown (Belchertown, MA: Press of Lewis H. Blackman, 1912). 18-22.

[4] How, p. 50.

[5] Bartlett, p. 402.

[6] 47th Regiment Journal, p. 157.

[7] Archival Holdings of the Belchertown Historical Association, Box 35A Military - Revolutionary War, Folder 09.  

[8] Francis Heitman, Historical Register of the Officers of the Continental Army (Washington, DC: The Rare Book Shop Publishing Company, Inc., 1914), 303.

[9] Doctor Estes Howe, diary entry, October 29, 1777, transcription courtesy of the Belchertown Historical Association.  Colonel Jeduthan Baldwin of nearby Brookfield, Massachusetts, made two similar trips, but passed through Springfield on each, rather than Pittsfield.  In December of 1776 he left Albany on the evening of  December 16, 1776, and stopped in Greenbush after crossing the Hudson River, and arrived in Brookfield on the 20th (four full days of travel).  Baldwin made another trip in November of 1777, two weeks after Howe, noting in his diary that he left Albany on November 13th, and stayed in Nobletown on the 14th, but continued on to "Lowdontown" (now Otis) on the 15th, then Springfield on the 16th, and arrived in Brookfield on the 17th, a five day trip. (Baldwin, 89 and 127.)

[10] Doctor Estes Howe, diary entry, November 1, 1777, transcription courtesy of the Belchertown Historical Association.  

[11] Doctor Estes Howe, diary entry, November 2, 1777, transcription courtesy of the Belchertown Historical Association.  

[12] Belchertown Historical Association Genealogical Records, accessed May 13, 2024 at: http://stonehousemuseum.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/BtownGenIndx-06-16.pdf  

Next Week: The British Continue On - "March Through ... Ware"

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

 Annotated Bibliography