The 1777 March of the Saratoga Convention Army

I've walked short sections of the Convention Army's route of march from Saratoga to Cambridge in the past.  My favorite, so far, runs for a mile or so from the Joshua Spooner well marker on East Main Street in Brookfield, and then along Slab City Road in North Brookfield.  This year I decided to commemorate the Convention Army's 1777 journey  by, among other things, walking an entire day's march on its anniversary date.   In terms of selecting a section to march in its entirety, the German column's march on November 4, 1777,  from Leicester into Worcester , had a lot going for it.  Practically speaking, it begins a couple of miles from where I live; there are sidewalks along the entire length of this section of the route; and for the most part it is downhill.  As I hiked, I also realized that the anniversary of the day's march I'd chosen fell exactly one week before Veterans Day. It's also relatively short, about six miles, compared to more tha...

When most of Lieutenant-General John Burgoyne's British and German troops who surrendered at Saratoga left Northborough, Massachusetts in November of 1777, they left Worcester County as well, and entered Middlesex County.  Middlesex County was one of the four original counties created in Massachusetts in 1643.  Several of its towns which the Convention Army would pass through or stop in on their 1777 march had been incorporated in the seventeenth century, including Charlestown (1630),  Watertown (1630), Cambridge (1636), Sudbury (1639), and Marlborough (1660). [1]   The German troops of the Convention Army marched through Middlesex County again in November of 1778, on their way to Virginia.  One wrote home about the differences between Germany and New England.  In describing their march, inspired perhaps by views like that pictured here of what is now the "Wayside Inn" in Sudbury, he noted:  "The troops marched through the towns of Cambridge, Wa...

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...

The lead element of the re-united Convention Army marched through Leicester, Massachusetts, on November 2, 1777.  Massachusetts Militia Lieutenant Israel Bartlett, a guard with the British column, noted in his journal for that day:  "... marched thro' Leicester and halted at Worcester, 14 miles from our last quarters."  [1]  More British prisoners passed through on November 3rd.  The journal of an officer of the 47th Regiment of Foot notes they made a seventeen mile march from Brookfield to Worcester that day which would have taken them through Leicester, but makes no mention of that. [2] The Germans, who marched behind the British and stayed in town the night of November 3rd, were more descriptive:  "Our march went via Spencer to Leicester today [November 3] and came 14 Engl. miles.  The houses were close to each other and in part very beautiful; most of them were two stories high!"  [3]  As had been the case since Palmer, the road they took...

A goal of this blog is to find, see and share some of what the Convention Army saw on their 1777 march from Saratoga to Cambridge.  Milestones, markers set at one mile intervals along part of their route, are one such example, and a clue to which roads they took - especially where original sections of those roads have been replaced.  They also revealed to me that for years I had overlooked links to the past just miles from my home. The story of post road milestones in New England is traditionally linked to Benjamin Franklin, in his role as Deputy Postmaster General.  According to many accounts, in 1767 he personally placed red sandstone markers at one mile intervals along what is known as the Upper Post Road from Boston through Springfield, to New York City.  Typical is this one pictured, located in Brookfield, Massachusetts, 65 miles west of Boston. The problem with this legend is that in what I've read to date, no primary source is cited to link Franklin or the 176...