Food On The March - “When We Came Up With Them They Were Eating Their Dinner”

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, many visitors will enjoy touring the British and American camps, and especially the various “camp kitchens” in which reenactors will prepare their meals.  

Watching soldiers and the women with the army cook and eat is not a new phenomenon.  When Nathaniel Goddard recalled years later how he and his brothers went to Watertown, Massachusetts, to see the Convention Army on the march, he noted: “They were sitting by the side of the road on the wall, the officers on horseback...  When we came up with them they were eating their dinner...” [1]  How closely though do the kitchens and meals at a reenactment compare to those of the Convention Army on the march?  Various accounts from the march and other sources may give us some clues.  

An eighteenth century engraving of a British army camp in England, "A Perspective View of an Encampment", printed for Bowles & Carver in London, is a good place to start.  In the section pictured here we see a simple scene: one woman stirs the cooking pot suspended over a fire as two others chat nearby; a soldier approaches with a pail and a kettle; a few branches are scattered about, likely for firewood; and a dog lies nearby, hoping perhaps for a spare or stray morsel.

We can't tell from this image what this woman is cooking, but several accounts from the march tell us what the prisoners and guards of the Convention Army typically ate.  It was not the meal that Burgoyne described in recounting his stay at the Schuyler mansion in Albany, where he dined at "... a table of more than twenty courses for me and my friends..." [2]  

An order issued by the German column while preparing to cross the Connecticut River suggests that that the Convention Army had a much simpler diet.  There, on October 30th: "Dragoon, Light Infantry and regiment Rhetz after crossing the river will accept, as fast as they can, enough bread and flour for 4 days and if there is meat that has not been cut and weighed, the regiment quartermaster will leave a provisioner and few observers behind to accept the meat and load it on the wagons and continue their march to the next quarters in Palmer.  ...  The same will take place tomorrow with the drinking water and the march to Palmer etc." [3] 

Lieutenant Abraham Fitts of the New Hampshire Militia, who appears to have marched with the British column, noted that column received similar provisions, writing: "Monday ye 27 march't from pearses to agars in worthenton and Draw'd some Salt meat ..." [4]  

It was possible to purchase items to eat from time to time along the way.  A German source notes that on October 23rd in Kinderhook, New York, "Curiosity drove them [local residents] here but in order not to make the whole trip in vain, they brought all sorts of victuals, which they did not see any too cheaply to our people." [5]  It's unfortunate the author doesn't detail what was being offered for sale, but even when traveling on his own, and having the opportunity and means to do so, Fitts fared a little better when he stopped to stay in a tavern, and noted there "...eat pork & cabbage ...". [6]

A document in the collection of the Belchertown Historical Society (which is also hosting a one day living history event at its Stone House Museum this weekend on Saturday, September 14th from 9:30 to 4:00), that is perhaps related to prisoners from Brown's raid though undated except to the year 1777, may tell us a bit about when they ate their meals.  Officials in that town were informed in a note that: “Gentlemen  By Order You are desired to make Preparation for a Dinner for 135 Men to be ready at Five Clock Afternoon on the Morrow, & another Meal for the next Morning at Sunrise.  they are Prisoners & their Guard, order’d to Boston.  per Order of the Com’tee of Safety”.  What's not entirely clear is whether this group of prisoners was being issued rations they would cook themselves, or meals which were prepared for them.  

In summary, armies in the field and the troops of the Convention Army cooked and ate in a simple manner.  What visitors see at a reenactment may reflect this (such as this photo taken in the British camp, taken during a recent reenactment at the Coggeshall Farm in Bristol, Rhode Island) or may not reflect this, but there are reenactors that do their best to present an accurate picture of what meals were like for an army of the time.

Next Week: An AI Assessment Of Brown’s Raid - “A Significant Impact On The American Revolutionary War[?]”  

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 

                                Burgoyne in Albany                    Annotated Bibliography 

[1] Henry Goddard Pickering, Nathaniel Goddard: A Boston Merchant, 1767-1853 (Riverside Press, 1906) 62-64.
[2] William L. Stone, Visits to the Saratoga Battle-Grounds (Albany: Joel Munsell’s Sons, 1895), 74-75n.
[3] Robert M. Webler, "Braunschweig and Hessen-Hanua Captives From Burgoyne's Army Marching Through New England to Prisons August-November 1777", Journal of the Johannes Schwalm Historical Association, Vol. 7, No. 3, 2003, 7 (Orderly Book of the Hesse-Hanau Regiment Erbprinz).

[4] Abraham Fitts, "Diary of Lieutenant Abraham Fitts, of Candia, N.H.; Copy by J.H. Fitts", in Isaac W. Hammond, ed., Rolls Of The Soldiers In The Revolutionary War (Concord, NH: Parson B. Cogswell,  1886), 3:937.

[5] Specht Journal, 104.

[6] Fitts, "Diary of Lieutenant Abraham Fitts", 3:937.