The Convention Army arrived in Western, Massachusetts, from two different directions. American Brigadier-General John Glover had ordered the captives to march in two separate columns after the surrender at Saratoga, "... one Division of the prisoners, Consisting of 2,442 British troops, by Northampton, the other by way of Springfield, Consisting of 2,198 foreign troops..." . [1] Two weeks later, after the British column reached Brookfield, and the German column left Palmer, a German officer would note: "November 2 We marched through Weston, a rather nice village, 15 Engl. miles to Brookfield. The Engl. corps crossed us today on our march and from now on had to march on the same road to Boston with us. As this corps had arrived in Brookfield before us and consequently taken possession of the houses, it was evident that our corps had to bivouac." [2]
Massachusetts militia private David How, who
crossed the Connecticut River on October 29th with the British column noted on October 30th:
“This morning we Set off [from Hadley] march Through Belcher[town] And Ware River. at Night We Staid at Westurn.” Lieutenant Israel Bartlett recorded much the same, writing in his diary:
“We marched thro’ Belcher[town, from Amherst] and Ware and put up at Weston, about 20 miles from Amherst.” on the 30th. [3]
Others from the British column followed at a slower pace and likely passed through Western as well, though they didn't say so. Lieutenant Francis (Lord) Napier of the 31st Regiment of Foot noted: "October … 30th. [Marched from Hadley to ] Weir - 17 M[iles]" and then: "October … 31st. Brookfield - 12 M[iles]". A trailing element of the column, which included some from the 47th Regiment of Foot who had crossed the Connecticut River October 31st, and stopped in Belchertown on November 1st, arrived in Brookfield on November 2nd - in time it appears to obtain what quarters could be had before the Germans reached the town. [4]
Western, not
"Weston" as Bartlett and the
Specht Journal indicate, or
"Westurn" as How spelled it, is the town of Warren today. The town changed its name in 1834 as it was often being confused with Weston, Massachusetts, forty-five miles to the east and home to what British Lieutenant Thomas Anburey described as
"the most convenient inn of any on the road". [5]
Three main roads entered Western from the west, as shown above on a section of a 1785 map
available online from the collection of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Two roads, the
"New Road from Hadley", and the
"Road from Springfield" came together in the center of town before continuing on to the east. The resulting road then merged with the
"Old Road from Hadley", which ran east from Ware into Brookfield, and dipped slightly into Western before continuing on again in Brookfield.
It's likely the British followed one of the two roads from Hadley into Western. Which one it was is uncertain though, as while Bartlett and How mention staying in Western, neither mentions passing through Palmer.
The Germans likely took the
"Road from Springfield", which enters Western below the Quaboag River. That road runs through a corner of Brimfield on the 1785 map, but Brimfield isn't mentioned in any of the accounts of the German column's march on November 2nd, or by one of their guards, Joshua Pillsbury, who noted after leaving Palmer:
"Lordsday Western and Brookfield 14 [miles]” [6] Brunswick dragoon company surgeon Julius Friedrich Wasmus, may well have met some there though, as he noted in his diary that on November 2nd:
"In pleasant weather, I rode to Brookfield this morning and on the road to Boston, I came upon a few stragglers from the Regiment von Riedesel...". [7]
Lieutenant-General John Burgoyne passed through Western as well. Brigadier-General William Whipple of the New Hampshire militia, one of his escorts, noted in his journal that on November 4th he: "set out from Bliss’s [in Palmer] early in the morning breakfasted at Brookfield - dined at [blank] arrived at Capt Curtis about 6 o'clock found the company had gone 4 miles farther on". Whipple had been waiting for Brigadier-General John Glover's baggage wagon to catch up when the remainder of the party set out on the 3rd, and as a result he had only made it as far as Palmer that day. Enos Hitchcock, a minister and chaplain with the Northern Army, traveling home on the same road, noted that on November 3rd: "Passed the [Connecticut] River 9 'clock dined at Bliss's Wilbraham, overtook Genl Burgoyne in Palmer; reached Brook field at Sunset". [8]
Western, now Warren, has changed in many ways since 1777, as a result of the building of mills and mill villages during the industrial revolution and the coming of the railroad in the nineteenth century, and the construction of an interstate highway, the Massachusetts Turnpike (I-90), in the twentieth century. Another change was the relocation of several of the five post road milestones in town from their original locations, including milestone 72, pictured above, which is now located on Main Street across from the Warren Town Common. It was near here though, perhaps in Ware or perhaps in Brookfield, where roads merged in 1777, that the two columns of the Convention Army took up a common route for the remainder of their journey.
[1] Gardner, Glover’s Marblehead Regiment, 12.
[2] Specht Journal, 108.
[3] How, 50. Bartlett, 402.
[4] Napier, p. 329. 47th Journal, 157.
[5] Anburey, 2:57.
[6] Pillsbury, 788.
[7] Wasmus, 90.
[8] Whipple,
Whipple Journal,
Annotated Transcription, 9. Enos Hitchcock, "Diary of Enos Hitchcock", Publications of the Rhode Island Historical Society, Vol. 8, 162-163. While Hitchcock indicates he dined at Bliss's in Wilbraham, others indicate it was in Palmer; see for example Ezra Stiles,
The Literary Diary of Ezra Stiles, 2:273.
For more on the Convention Army's 1777 march from Saratoga to Boston, see:
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