The 1777 March of the Saratoga Convention Army

On October 22, 1777,  "... after plodding fifteen miles..." from Greenbush , the German column of the Convention Army reached the town of Kinderhook, New York. [ 1]  The name, meaning "children's corner" in Dutch, may have been given to the area in the early 1600's by Dutch explorers who saw Native children on a river bluff watch them sail past - or maybe by Dutch traders, as a Swedish settler with numerous children lived there.  What makes up the town today is set on the Kinderhook Creek, seven miles northwest of the Hudson River, and twenty miles southeast of Albany, though the town's boundaries initially extended all the way to the river.   Kinderhook's first European residents were Dutch and Swedish settlers who arrived around 1650. [2]  The Dutch exploration and settlement of the Hudson River valley was more apparent to the Convention Army, in towns as far north as Stillwater, New York , and as east as Pownal, Vermont , than it is to many of us ...

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...

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...

By 1777 the central Massachusetts town of  Worcester, forty miles west of Boston, had a reputation as friendly to the patriot cause.  Residents had  shut down the courts  in September 1774, in what author Ray Raphael argues was the true start of the American Revolution.  Patriot printer Isaiah Thomas, who fled British controlled Boston in April of 1775 due to the political views expressed in his newspaper the  Massachusetts Spy , subtitled  "Or, American ORACLE Of Liberty" , published an account of the fighting on April 19th at Lexington and Concord in his  first Worcester issue  on May 3rd, 1775.  Worcester residents had served as militiamen and Continental soldiers in the Northern Army that had stopped British Lieutenant-General John Burgoyne and his army - and allegedly one of his messengers.  Like many Massachusetts towns though, it was also home, or   once home, to Loyalists  a s well.   On October 22, 1777,...