The 1777 March of the Saratoga Convention Army

Sixteen year old Ezra Ross of Ipswich, Massachusetts, likely feared he might die on several occasions before July 2, 1778.  On December 19, 1775, he had enlisted in Colonel Loammi Baldwin's 26th Continental Regiment.  In the year that followed, his regiment would take part in the Siege of Boston, Washington's unsuccessful attempt to defend New York City from a British invasion, and the Battle of Trenton before their enlistments expired on December 31, 1776.  In August of 1777, Ross would either volunteer or be drafted to serve again, one of the two-thousand Massachusetts militiamen called for to reinforce the Northern Army under the command of Major-General Horatio Gates. [1]    Eight months later, and just a few weeks before his seventeenth birthday, he faced certain death. [2]   Ross, along with Sergeant James Buchannon and Private William Brooks of the British 9th Regiment of Foot, and Bathsheba Spooner of Brookfield, Massachusetts , had been convi...