The 1777 March of the Saratoga Convention Army

Fort Ticonderoga is recreating a 1777 attack on the fort that has become known as  Brown’s Raid  on the weekend of September 14 and 15, 2024, and inviting visitors to  “Join Fort Ticonderoga for an  exciting two-day battle re-enactment  highlighting the epic 1777 Brown’s Raid! An attack led by patriot Colonel John Brown will take British troops garrisoning Fort Ticonderoga by surprise 247 years later during the upcoming real-life action adventure at Fort Ticonderoga.”    Those participating will include reenactors who are representing some of the British units which were with Lieutenant-General John Burgoyne during the “Saratoga Campaign” , and after the surrender took part in the 1777 march of the Convention Army.  On the American side, most units will portray New England militia troops, representative of the guards which escorted Burgoyne's captured British and German troops to from Saratoga to Cambridge.  While the schedule of events  focuses on inspections, parades and battles,

What was it like to have the Convention Army pass through your town after the surrender at Saratoga ?  It probably depended on who you were.  Officers and soldiers with the Northern Army wrote home and noted in their journals the immense pride they felt as they watched Lieutenant-General John Burgoyne's defeated British and German troops march by them at Saratoga on October 17, 1777.  One of these was Massachusetts Militia Colonel Ralph Cross, who noted it was:  “... a Grand Sight as ever was Beheld by Eye of man in America ... Their March was Supposed to bee Seven miles in Length with Baggage etc. Grand in Deed.”  [1] Local residents from Schaghticoke, New York , to Cambridge, Massachusetts, turned out in droves along the 1777 route of march of the Convention Army.  Some wrote about what they saw.  Hannah Winthrop watched the Germans arrive in Cambridge on November 7, 1777, and noted:  "... I never had the least Idea, that the Creation producd such a Sordid Set of Creatures

Waltham, Massachusetts, was one of the last towns on the 1777 route of march of the Convention Army from Saratoga to Cambridge, and the barracks in Charlestown on Prospect Hill and Winter Hill.  There wasn't a lot written about their passing through.  Several who must have done so didn't mention the town by name at all.  The one detail that I have found to date reflects poorly on the prisoners, that source claiming:  “Petty pilfering at the places they stopped and annoyances of one kind or another marked their march, as might be expected.  As an instance, the widow Eunice Dench advertises that a silver porringer and spoon were taken from her inn at Waltham, Mass…”  [1] The British column and its guards were the first to reach Waltham.  They did so on November 5th.  Some simply passed through.  Massachusetts Militia Lieutenant Israel Bartlett noted in his diary: "Marched to Watertown [from Sudbury ], 5 miles from Cambridge.”  [2]  Brigadier-General William Whipple, who al