The 1777 March of the Saratoga Convention Army

Weston, Massachusetts, was the last stopping point on the road to Cambridge and Charlestown for some of Lieutenant-General John Burgoyne's British and German troops.  The Convention Army arrived there after three weeks on the march, following their  surrender at Saratoga  on October 17, 1777.   Weston (not to be confused with what was the town of " Western " in 1777, and is Warren, Massachusetts, today) was ten miles from the barracks assigned to the troops of the Convention Army on Prospect Hill and Winter Hill in Charlestown.  Weston was a part of Watertown until it was separately incorporated in 1713.  The town's first European settlers arrived in 1642.  In 1765 the town's population was 768 residents.  A decade earlier there were nineteen enslaved persons. [1]  In 1777 it was home to several taverns, including the one pictured below run by Josiah Smith, which is home to the town's Historical Commission and Historical Society, a...

Some British soldiers from the Convention Army, Lieutenant-General John Burgoyne's troops who had surrendered at Saratoga  on October 17, 1777, reached the town on Sudbury, Massachusetts, a bit sooner than they were expected to.  Massachusetts Militia Lieutenant Israel Bartlett noted in his diary:  “[Nov.] 4 Tuesday - Marched from Northborough to Marlborough , 8 miles and halted - we are mustered and obliged to march, occasioned by the Artillery’s advancing beyond the lines set - we marched 5 miles and halted at Sudbury.”   Private David How was also among those who arrived on the 4th. “This Day we march’d Through Marlborough .  At Night we Staid at Sutton [sic].  I have ben on Guard this Night.”   How's entry reminds us that the march was a military operation that tasked tired soldiers to be on duty at all hours; and that historical research using primary sources requires thoughtful analysis, as it was clearly the town of Sudbury where he stopped o...

On November 4, 1777, many of the British troops who had surrendered at Saratoga reached the Middlesex County town of Marlborough, Massachusetts.  Some, including British Lieutenant Francis (Lord) Napier of the 31st Regiment of Foot, stopped for the night.  Others, it was noted by Massachusetts Militia Lieutenant Israel Bartlett and Private David How, continued on to Sudbury. [1] The following day German troops arrived.  The usually loquacious German sources offer little detail on their stay, one writing: "November 5th, we marched through Shrewsbury and Northborough to Marlborough, sixteen miles." ; and another: "We marched through Shrewsbury and through Northborough up to Marlborough, where we received quarters.  We had marched 16 Engl. miles altogether.  The roads were good." [2]    Marlborough resident Alpheus Woods was able to sum up the coming and going with one entry (although he struggled with the spelling of the name of captured Britis...

When most of Lieutenant-General John Burgoyne's British and German troops who surrendered at Saratoga left Northborough, Massachusetts in November of 1777, they left Worcester County as well, and entered Middlesex County.  Middlesex County was one of the four original counties created in Massachusetts in 1643.  Several of its towns which the Convention Army would pass through or stop in on their 1777 march had been incorporated in the seventeenth century, including Charlestown (1630),  Watertown (1630), Cambridge (1636), Sudbury (1639), and Marlborough (1660). [1]   The German troops of the Convention Army marched through Middlesex County again in November of 1778, on their way to Virginia.  One wrote home about the differences between Germany and New England.  In describing their march, inspired perhaps by views like that pictured here of what is now the "Wayside Inn" in Sudbury, he noted:  "The troops marched through the towns of Cambridge, Wa...