The 1777 March of the Saratoga Convention Army

Was Christmas celebrated in Revolutionary War era North America?  The Convention Army spent December 25, 1777, as prisoners  in Cambridge and Charlestown , Massachusetts.  Life in the barracks on Winter Hill and Prospect Hill was challenging for those who had surrendered at Saratoga, and any of their family members living with them.  British Sergeant Roger Lamb, of the 9th Regiment of Foot ,  recalled of their time there:  "It was not infrequent for thirty, or forty persons, men, women and children, to be indiscriminately crowded together in on small, miserable, open hut, their provisions and fire-wood on short allowance, and a scanty portion of straw their bed, their own blankets their only covering..." [1]   If the Convention Army celebrated Christmas of 1777 in any way, I haven't found it in what I've read to date.   Christmas Day 1777 fell on a Thursday.  Reverend Ezra Stiles, who left Newport, Rhode Island, after it was o...

On October 22, 1777, Brigadier-General John Glover notified state officials that the British force surrendered at Saratoga was on its way to Massachusetts.  Over 2,000 British troops would come by way of Northampton, and 2,198 "foreign troops" would come by way of Springfield. [1]  Those foreign troops  were German, and in an age before a unified Germany they were often referred to as "Hessians", though most were from the principality of Brunswick-Wolfenbuttel .  For four months they fought along side their British comrades, and after the surrender on October 17, 1777, they shared their fate as prisoners of the Convention Army. The commander of Burgoyne's German troops was Major-General Friedrich Adolph Riedesel, age 39.  Like Lieutenant-General John Burgoyne he was a cavalry officer, had fought in Europe during the Seven Years War, and had distinguished himself through his bravery in battle.   Riedesel, unlike Burgoyne, was with his troops f...

Bennington Battle Day, August 16th, is a state holiday in Vermont.  It commemorates the victory of American militia forces over a mostly German detachment from British Lieutenant-General John Burgoyne's army sent to Bennington, Vermont, to seize badly needed supplies.  The Vermont Division of Historic Preservation maintains the 306 foot tall Bennington Battle Monument , erected in 1891, to commemorate the victory.   Despite these strong Vermont connections, the battle was fought in New York .   American forces fought under the command of New Hampshire Brigadier-General John Stark, memorialized today in prints, paintings,  and sculpture, including in the Crypt of United States Capitol under the Rotunda, as pictured on the website of the Architect of the Capitol .  Much of the battlefield is a New York state park, near the Walloomsac River just outside the town of Hoosick .  The site is not far from the route the British element of the Convent...

On October 22, 1777, Brigadier-General John Glover alerted the Massachusetts Council that the Convention Army was on its way to Boston, including 2,198 "foreign troops".  By foreign troops Glover meant Germans, almost half of the total force surrendered at Saratoga.  Labeling them as such, Glover avoided designations often used such as "Hessian" or "mercenary", but reaction in Massachusetts was predictable.  Massachusetts residents had a dim view of the German troops fighting with the British to start with.  Their reaction was hardly new or unique to New England.  Indeed, among the grievances listed in the Declaration of Independence in 1776 was that King George III was  "... transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous of ages..."   In addition to British troops and Canadian, Provincial and N...