The 1777 March of the Saratoga Convention Army

How well recognized was Henry Knox for his journey to Ticonderoga and return to Cambridge? On November 16, 1775, General George Washington tasked twenty-five-year-old Henry Knox (seen here in a 1778 painting by Charles Wilson Peale, from the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art ), a bookseller from Boston, Massachusetts, to travel to New York and bring back artillery, ammunition and gun flints for the Continental Army which surrounded British occupied Boston.   The story of Knox's return from Fort Ticonderoga with his "Noble Train of Artillery" is fairly well know today.  Two hundred and fifty years ago only a few seemed to have taken note of what he did.  Many still overlook the first two parts of his mission.   Washington's instructions first directed Knox  "... to examine into the state of the artillery of this army, and take an account of the cannon, mortars, shells, lead, and ammunition, that are wanting."   Next, Knox was "... t...

Where was Henry Knox between January 13 and January 18, 1776? On November 16, 1775, General George Washington tasked twenty-five year old Henry Knox, a bookseller from Boston, to travel to New York and bring back artillery, ammunition and gun flints for the Continental Army which surrounded British occupied Boston.  Knox's  "Noble Train of Artillery" , like the Convention Army, passed through dozens of towns and villages on its way south from Fort Ticonderoga in New York, and then east across Massachusetts. [1]  After crossing Lake George, and reaching Saratoga, it followed the route taken by British Lieutenant-General John Burgoyne after his surrender on October 17, 1777 , and the German column , once it reached Greenbush , for much of the way.  On January 5, 1776, Knox wrote to Washington from Albany that despite his having expected to reach Cambridge by January 2 or 3, he now hoped that:  In eight or nine days after the first severe frost [the artillery des...