Middlesex County - "True And Loyal Subjects"

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, Watertown, Waltham, Weston to Sudberg [sic - Sudbury], ... The villages or town ships in New England are often 4 to 5 miles long. The houses on the road are placed at such a distance that all the ground belonging to one estate, surround the house. The houses are mostly well and regularly built, however, they are made of wood. Although there is hardly a country anywhere rockier than Massachusetts, very few stone houses are found. It seems to be easier, especially with such an abundance of wood, to build houses of wood. The rooms are big and well furnished."  [2]

Counties have served as an intermediary between the town and state levels of government in several ways.  In 1777 that included a good part of the judicial system, with each county having its own sheriff, court and jail.  It also included the militia, as while companies were formed in each town, and militia regulations were promulgated at the state level, militia regiments were organized by county.   

Counties also played a key role in fomenting rebellion in 1774.  On July 6th, in the westernmost part of the state:  "Sixty Gentlemen, Deputies of the several Towns in the County of Berkshire... met at Stockbridge...".  The result of their meeting was a series of resolves passed as a response to the "Intolerable Acts" (known as the Coercive Acts of 1774 in Britain), legislation which revoked the Royal charter of the colony of Massachusetts, altered the judicial process, and closed the port of Boston.  The first of their resolutions was to make it clear they considered themselves loyal still to Great Britain, as the group declared: "Resolved, That King George the Third is our rightful King, and that we will bear true Allegiance to him."  That was immediately followed though by resolutions that as inhabitants of the King's colonies they were entitled to the same rights as the inhabitants of Great Britain, including the right of not being taxed without their consent and trial by jury, and that they would not "purchase or consume the Manufactures of Great-Britain" until their rights were restored. [3]  

Representatives "from every Town and District in the County of Middlesex" met on August 30th and 31st of 1774 "to consult upon Measures proper to be taken at the present very important Day ... After having read the late Act of the British Parliament entitled "An Act for the better regulating the Government of the Province of Massachusetts Bay in New England"."  Like their Berkshire County counterparts to the west, they began their resolutions by describing themselves as "true and loyal Subjects of our gracious Sovereign, George the Third, King of Great Britain, &c.".  After stating their grievances, it was resolved that they would reject any attempts to take away the rights they had been granted under the colonial charter granted by King William and Queen Mary in 1691.  Furthermore, it was voted with "146 Yahs & 4 Nays" that each town in the county appoint delegates to attend a Provincial congress in Concord on October 2, 1774, and that a copy of their resolutions by sent to the Continental Congress, and each town clerk in the county." [4]

Less than a year later, Middlesex County would become the site of the first armed conflict in the American Revolution.  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow would create the legend in his poem Paul Revere's Ride, that his hero alone: "... spread the alarm through every Middlesex village and farm..." prior to the Battle of Lexington and Concord in April of 1775.  Charlestown, the site of the Battle of Bunker Hill on June 17, 1775, and several of the fortifications and barracks built by Americans during the Siege of Boston including those on Prospect Hill and Winter Hill where the Convention Army would be confined, was part of Middlesex County until annexed by Boston and became a part of Suffolk County in 1874. 

Three years later, once resistance to British rule had evolved from resolutions to armed conflict, the residents of Middlesex County would see the troops of their former king march through their county as prisoners, to their confinement in Cambridge and Charlestown.  A history of Middlesex County written a century after the Revolution by D. Hamilton Hurd includes an interesting comment on the route of march of the Convention Army.  In writing about the town of Weston, the author noted: "One wing, under General Brickett, was marched over the Framingham Turnpike through Newton; the other wing, under General Glover, passed over the main road of Weston to the same destination ." [5]  Hurd is mistaken here with regard to how the army was divided and what road it may have taken.  Major-General John Glover was escorting Lieutenant-General John Burgoyne, not leading "one wing", and the "Framingham Turnpike" was not constructed until after the war.  

There is one period reference which indicates that not all of Burgyone's troops marched from Northborough to Marlborough, and supports Hurd's claim that some of the Convention Army marched through Framingham.  It comes from the journal kept by an officer of the 47th Regiment of Foot, that lists what appears to be a stop in Westborough, Massachusetts (part of Worcester County), on November 4th. [6]  If they did, then part of the Convention Army may have traveled south of the main route through Framingham and Newton, before reaching Cambridge.  

[1] D. Hamilton Hurd, History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts (Philadelphia, PA: J.W. Lewis & Co., 1890), 1:x-xi.
[2] Du Roi the Elder, 130.
[3] "Boston Gazette", July 25, 1774, accessed online June 28, 2024 at https://www.masshist.org/dorr/volume/4/sequence/617.  That same day residents in the town of Leicester, Massachusetts, met and adopted a similar set of resolutions, "not tumultuously, riotously, or seditiously, but soberly and seriously, as men, as freemen, and as Christians...".  Leicester's resolves instructed its residents not purchase any goods imported from Great Britain until the port of Boston was reopened and the tax on tea was repealed, or do any business with merchants did, and not to submit to the jurisdiction of any court created outside the authority of the charter of the colony.  They began however with a much more radical proposition: "That any person, power, or state, that shall attempt or endeavor, by any means whatsoever, to destroy of nullify said charter... is an enemy to the Province, and thereby puts him, her, or them into a state of war with the Province and every inhabitant thereof; and ought to be so esteemed, and treated accordingly."  [Emory Washburn, Historical Sketches of the Town of Leicester, Massachusetts (Boston, MA: John Wilson and Son, 1860), 446-449.  My thanks to Joe Lennerton of the Leicester Historical Commission and Leicester Historical Society for an excellent presentation on the topic on June 28, 2024, at the Swan Tavern in Leicester.]

[4] "Supplement to the Boston Gazette", September 12, 1774, accessed online June 29, 2024 at: https://www.masshist.org/dorr/volume/4/sequence/657.

[5] Hurd, History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts, 1:491.

[6] 47th Regiment Journal, 157.

Next Week: Marlborough, Massachusetts - “General Burgoine Went By My House” 

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