The 1777 March of the Saratoga Convention Army

The prisoners of the Convention Army traveled through a region most had likely heard about, but never seen.  Their march from the Saratoga battlefield in the fall of 1777 took them through Hudson Valley villages settled by Dutch and German farmers, isolated hamlets in the Berkshires which had sprung up beyond prosperous English settlements along the Connecticut River, and the towns of Worcester and Middlesex Counties which marked a century and a half of expansion from the settlement of Boston in 1630; all land occupied by a Native population for countless generations before the arrival of Europeans.   What did they see?  Most obvious was the terrain: two major rivers and two mountain ranges before reaching the hills of central Massachusetts, and then their barracks overlooking Boston Harbor.   A painting in the collection of the Worcester Art Museum, " Looking East From Denny Hill"  seen in an image © Worcester Art Museum , offers a glim...

A handful of markers commemorate the 1777 march of the Convention Army.  One is in Stillwater, New York, on the corner of Route 4 and Ferry Lane, a short distance from the west bank of the Hudson River.  Its location puts it at what might be considered the start of the march.  Some question if the crossing occurred there.  Regardless of the answer, it only notes the crossing of "Brunswick Troops", not British troops who began crossing the river on October 18th.  In an odd contrast, the  Stillwater town history website  notes only the crossing of British troops.   One of the Convention Army who crossed in 1777 noted that Stillwater was aptly named, as:  "In this region, the Hudson is unusually sluggish for 3 Engl.[ish] miles and you hardly notice the motion the very slight motion of the water." [1]  Today, an iron frame bridge spans the river about one-thousand feet below the ferry site, just north of where the Hudson is joined...