A Westborough Off-Shoot? - "West-bury - - - - - - - 12"
Did part of the Convention Army pass through Westborough, Massachusetts, on their way to Cambridge after the surrender at Saratoga on October 17, 1777? One primary source suggests that they did, as do several town histories written over one hundred years ago - but one hundred years or more after their 1777 march.
The majority of the accounts of the 1777 march of the Convention Army track their progress through Middlesex County from Northborough to Marlborough, then Sudbury, Weston, Waltham, and Watertown, before arriving in Cambridge. The journal of the 47th Regiment of Foot goes in a different direction on November 4th. As seen in the image below, from a scanned copy of the journal on the website of the Huntington Library, its author left Worcester on November 4th, and marched twelve miles to what appears to be "West-bury" but most likely was "Westborough", Massachusetts, given the distance involved. The following day they marched twenty miles to "West Town" (Weston), and then seven miles on November 6th to Cambridge. [1]
News of Lieutenant-General John Burgoyne's surrender reached Westborough on October 22, 1777. The Reverend Ebenezer Parkman, the town's Congregational minister since 1724, noted in his diary that day: “... N.B. The News of Gen. Burgoin and his Army’s surrendering to General Gates, is confirmed every where...". [2]
A wealth of information on Westborough in the eighteenth century, including the transcriptions of four thousand pages of Parkman's diaries from 1719 to 1782, is available online through the "Ebenezer Parkman Project", as a result of the work of Professor Ross W. Beales, Jr., who has dedicated much of his academic career to studying Parkman. Parkman's diary goes on to read: “1777 November 3 (Monday). ... N.B. Cattle killed yesterday, which are to be sent to Worcester for the Supply of the Army, with the other Necessarys of Life, as now at this time, General Burgoynes Army are expected to be on their road to Boston." [3]
On November 4th Parkman would record: "This was to have been private Meeting at Mr. Tainters, but it is put off to next week, by reason of many people going over to the Post-Road to see the Regulars in their moving towards Boston. Breck and Suse, Elias and Sophy ride there. Two Regular Ensigns here and lodge, viz. Messrs. Jonas Parker of London and Robert Mercy of Ireland." [4] While it would tempting to conclude that the two officers Parkman mentioned were part of the Convention Army, that doesn't seem to be the case. At least one of these, Jonas Parker of the 62nd Regiment of Foot, was captured in the fighting at Freeman’s Farm on September 19, 1777. [5]
The journal of the 47th Regiment indicates that the following day, November 5th, its author traveled twenty miles and stopped in Weston. What's missing is how they got there. A march of twenty miles likely took them through Southborough (perhaps on Route 30, which passes through the center of town), Framingham and Natick before they entered Weston.
A 1913 history of Weston by Daniel S. Lamson indicates that prisoners from the Convention Army passed through that town on two roads, one south of the center of town, its author noting: "General Burgoyne surrendered his army at Saratoga on the 17th of October, and General Brickett escorted one wing of the British prisoners over the Framingham turnpike, or our south road, through Newton to Winter Hill in Sommerville. General Glover escorted the other wing of prisoners over our Main Street to the same destination. General Glover's troops passed a night on our Main Street." [7] Unfortunately Lamson, like Forbes, does not provide any references to support his account, and is mistaken as to the destination of the British prisoners and the role of Brigadier-General John Glover.
Earlier in his work, Lamson offered a bit of explanation on the roads which passed through Weston, and a clue as to where that second group went when they left Weston, noting: "The Framingham turnpike runs through the southern part of the town, but was of less importance in point of travel. It was over the post-road, so called, in the centre of the town, and over the south (or Framingham) road, that the prisoners, after the surrender at Saratoga, passed on their way to Winter Hill, Somerville, and there still exists in West Newton the barroom at which the British and American officers stopped on their way, to take a drink. This tap-room room is still [in 1913] very much the same condition as at that period." [8]
Yet another author, Samuel Francis Smith in his 1880 History of Newton, Massachusetts, makes a brief but unsupported reference to part of Convention Army traveling separately from the well documented route which ran from Northborough through Marlborough and Sudbury, to Weston, noting as he described the early roads in Newton: "The Worcester road passed over Weston Bridge, and over a range-way* [footnote reads: 'This range-way was the main road for many years; - the one over and upon which Burgoyne's army passed from Weston Bridge to Cambridge; and is now a public road, called Woodlawn Avenue.'] now entirely disused by the public, by the house of Samuel Simpson and the Messrs. Dix and Fullers, to the First Parish meeting-house..." [9]
Did part of the Convention Army pass through Westborough, Massachusetts, on their way to Cambridge? It seems likely that they did, but exactly how many did so and what roads they took remains to be determined.
[2] Reverend Ebenezer Parkman, "Diary of Ebenezer Parkman, 1777", 40. Accessed online through the Ebenezer Parkman Project at: https://diary.ebenezerparkman.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/1777-PDF-13-footnotes.pdf
[3] Parkman, "Diary of Ebenezer Parkman, 1777", 42.
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