USA > Connecticut > New London County > New London > History of New London, Connecticut, From the First Survey of the Coast in 1612 to 1852 > Part 52
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Amid the bustle of these scenes, when each one was laden with what was nearest at hand, or dearest to his heart, one man was seen hastening alone to the burial-ground, with a small coffin under his arm. His child had died the day before, and he could not leave it unburied. In haste and trepidation he threw up the mold, and de- posited his precious burden ; then covering it quickly, and setting up a stone to mark the place, he hurried away, to secure other beloved ones from a more cruel spoiler.
Such was the confusion of the scene, that families, in many cases, were scattered upon different roads ; and children, eight or ten years of age, were sent off alone into the country, their parents lingering perhaps to bury or conceal some of their effects. Yet no one was lost, no one was hurt. The farm-houses were full, and unbounded hospitality was shown by their occupants. At Gen. Miller's, a little off from the Norwich road, orders were given to open the dairy and the larder, to prepare food constantly, and to feed every body that came. When the house was overflowing, the servants carried out milk, cheese and bread, or porringers of corn-beans to the children, who sat under the trees and ate. This will serve as an example of the general hospitality. A number of families found shelter among
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friends and relatives in the North Parish. Groups of fugitives gath- ered on the high hills afar off, watching with intense interest the movements of the enemy, whose course might be traced by their gleaming arms and scarlet coats, until clouds of smoke hid them from their view.
Some sick persons were removed from town with great difficulty, and at the hazard of their lives ; others who could not be removed, were guarded with solicitous care by wife, daughter or mother, who resolved to remain with them, and depend on Providence to soften the heart of the foe, and protect them from danger.
Col. Ledyard, having visited the town and Fort Trumbull, and made the best disposition of what force he could find, and having dispatched expresses to Governor Trumbull at Lebanon, and to com- manders of militia in the neighborhood, returned to Fort Griswold.
As he stepped into the boat to cross the ferry, he said to some friends whose hands he pressed at parting, in a firm tone :
" If I must lose to-day, honor or life, you who know me, can tell which it will be."
The garrisons under Col. Ledyard were small; barely sufficient to keep the posts in order; and in cases of emergency they depended on volunteers from the neighborhood, or details of militia. These were now coming in, and the commander confidently anticipated the arrival of sufficient aid to warrant a defense.
In the mean time great efforts were made to secure the shipping in the harbor, by getting it up the river, but at first neither wind nor tide favored the attempt. Toward noon, however, before the enemy had got possession of the town, a favorable breeze came in from the water, and a considerable number of vessels escaped. The ware- houses were full of merchandise, only a small proportion of which could be sent off. Shaw's warehouse on Water Street, in particular, was packed with goods, and among them was the rich cargo of the Hannah. A sloop load of these were saved.1
Such confusion reigned in the town-every householder being en- gaged in the care of his family and effects-that it was difficult to
1 Mr. Shaw was himself absent from town at the time of the invasion. This was very much deplored at the time. He had gone out on a fishing excursion toward Montauk Point, and after discovering the fleet and its destination, could not get in be- fore them, but was obliged to run into Pequonnuck Creek to escape capture. Dr. Simon Wolcott was with him.
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form any concerted plan of action. But when the women and chil- dren had departed, the men began to gather in groups, and consult respecting the course to be pursued. They could muster but few ef- fective men, and flight and concealment seemed the only prudent course for them to adopt. But about one hundred, hastily armed, and indignant at the thought of abandoning their homesteads with- out a blow, collected on Town Hill, with a view of obstructing the course of the enemy. They were without a commander, and as the advancing files of regular soldiers, in firm array, with glistening steel, appeared in sight, they saw the rashness of their design, and scatter- ing into the fields, concealed themselves behind rocks and fences, and annoyed the troops whenever they could find a chance.
Arnold had debarked his forces a little west of the light-house, and came up in a straight course, through what is called Brown's Gate, into the Town Hill road. The division under his command, as already stated, consisted of the thirty-eighth British regiment,1 and the regiment of loyal Americans, (Col. Beverly Robinson's,) with several companies from other refugee regiments, among whom were one hundred and twenty New Jersey loyalists, under the com- mand of Lieut Col. Upham, and a band of sixty yagers, (Hessian light-infantry.)
" The armed vessels Association and Colonel Martin, went close into the shore, and covered the landing on the New London side." (Upham's Report.)
When the troops arrived at the cross-road, leading down to the shore, which Arnold says was at 11 o'clock, Capt. Millett, of the thirty-eighth, with four companies, was detached to march that way and attack the fort, and at the foot of this cross-road, he was joined by Capt. Frink with a company of refugees, who had marched up by a different route, nearer the shore.
Fort Trumbull was a work of very little strength ; a mere block of batteries facing the water on three sides ; open behind, and only designed to act against a naval force. Capt. Shapley had with him twenty-three men ; and his orders were in case of a direct attack, to retreat to Fort Griswold. He saluted the invaders with one volley, well discharged, and then, having spiked the guns, retreated to the shore, where he embarked his men in three boats to cross the river.
1 This was Sir Robert Pigot's regiment, but it is not known whether he was with the expedition. The uniform was red, faced with yellow.
2 These wore a dark uniform, with bright red trimmings.
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The enemy's fleet was so near, that they reached and over-shot them with their muskets ; seven men were wounded, and one of the boats captured.
In the mean time, Gen. Arnold, pressing forward with the main body of troops, arrived at the breastwork of earth and sods, whose insignificance had obtained for it the name of Fort Nonsense, but of which in his dispatch, he speaks with great exaggeration, as a redoubt that kept up a brisk fire upon them for some time, but was evacuated at their approach. "In it," he says, " we found six pieces of can- non mounted, and two dismounted."1 On this commanding height Arnold paused to survey the scene on which he was about to oper- ate-a scene familiar to his eyes in early life-with houses and shops compact, and sails spread in the offing, all indicative of thrift, enter- prise and comfort ; but which he was now, with sword and fire-brand, about to scathe and blacken. His thoughts, however, were intent on the present object, and not discoursing with the past or future. He observes in his report :
" I had the pleasure to see Capt. Millett march into Fort Trumbull, under a shower of grape-shot from a number of cannon which the enemy had turned upon him, and by the sudden attack and determined bravery of the troops, the fort was carried with only the loss of four or five men killed and wounded."
So well it sounds in official language, for five companies of fresh, well-armed British soldiers, to drive twenty-three Americans from an open, defenseless fortress !
It was from this point that Arnold despatched an order to Lieut. Col. Eyre, who had landed on the Groton side, to attack the fort as soon as possible, in order to prevent the escape of the shipping up the river. The general continues :
" No time on my part was lost in gaining the town of New London. Wo were opposed by a small body of the enemy with one field-piece, who were so hard pressed, that they were obliged to leave the piece, which being iron, was spiked and left."
This field-piece, which figures thus largely in the report, was a four or six-pounder, which stood on the common, upon Manwaring's Hill, where it had been used for rejoicings, trainings and alarms. It was not at this time manned, but some three or four resolute persons dis- charged it several times upon the advancing foe, as they came down
1 Iron pieces, four and six-pounders.
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Town Hill, and then fled. A detachment of the British was sent up Blackhall Street, to silence this solitary gun, which in truth they ef- fected, but were much annoyed by random shot from behind the rocks and fences. Manwaring's house was then the only dwelling in that quarter. This they ransacked, and having wantonly destroyed some of the furniture, set fire to it, by leaving heaps of burning brands and combustibles upon the floor. One of the town's people entering the house soon after they left it, extinguished the flames with a barrel of soap. When the owner returned to his house that night, he found lying on one of the beds a dying British soldier, piteously calling for water. He had been left for dead by his comrades on the road-side, and being found by some of the returning citizens, weltering in his blood, they had carried him into the house. He lived several hours, and was able to give his name, and to request that intelligence might be sent to his parents of his death. He was about eighteen years of age, a refugee, and the son of refugees then in Nova Scotia. He was interred in a corner of the lot on the opposite side of the street : two or three other soldiers found dead on the hill, were buried on the side of the road in Williams Street.
Lieut. Col. Upham, who commanded the New Jersey loyalists, says in his report to Gov. Franklin :
" We proceeded to the town of New London, constantly skirmishing with rebels, who fled from hill to hill, and stone-fences which intersected the coun- try at small distances. Having reached the southerly part of the town, the general requested me to take possession of the hill north of the meeting-house, where the rebels had collected, and which they seemned resolved to hold. We made a circle to the left, and soon gained the ground in contest. Here we had one man killed and one wounded. This height being the outpost, was left to us and the yagers. Here we remained exposed to a constant fire from the reb- els on the neighboring hills, and from the fort on the Groton side, until the last was carried by the British troops."
1
Col. Upham's party defiled through Cape Ann Street and Lewis. Lane, and a flanking-guard set fire to the house of Pickett Latimer,1 on the old Colchester road, now Vauxhall Street. This house was full of goods, hastily deposited there by the inhabitants for safe-keep- ing ; the distance from the town leading them to suppose that it would not be visited. It was, however, the first building consumed. The main body came on through Vauxhall Street, and at their ap- proach the group of half-armed citizens that had collected on the
1 Nearly opposite the residence of Thomas Fitch.
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beautiful height above the old burial-ground, after a few discharges retired, scattering to other hills and wood-lands, where unseen they could watch the motions of the enemy. It was about noon, when Col. Upham, with the refugees and Hessians, took possession of the hill, and planted the field-piece which they had brought from Fort Nonsense, directing its fire against the shipping, which had been obliged to anchor above the town. But a change of wind and tide operating in favor of the vessels, they spread their sails and escaped up the river. One of the cannon-balls sent after them, went through the front door of a house on the Norwich road, just above the mill, since known as Capt. Robert Hallam's.
Arnold made his arrangements to enter at both ends of the town, to follow the line of the water-side, and complete the work of des- truction at the center. He appears himself to have accompanied the party that gained the north end of the town, (probably through Hempstead Street,) under cover of Col. Upham's advanced post. He mentions in his report that he ascended a height of ground in the rear of the town, from whence he had a good prospect of Fort Griswold, and of the shipping that was endeavoring to escape up the river. Two or three persons, inhabitants of the town, who were secreted in the vicinity and who were well acquainted with the person of Arnold, saw him as he sat on horseback, above the meeting-house, with a small spy-glass in his hand surveying the scene, and pointing out objects to an officer by his side, probably Lord Dalrymple, who acted as his aid in this expedition. They turned their horses down Rich- ards Street, through which a part of their force had preceded them.
At the north end of the town the torch of destruction was first lighted at the printing-office, and the town mill. From thence a detachment of the enemy went on to Winthrop's Neck, and set fire to the Plumb house, scouring the whole point, destroying the battery, shipping, warehouses, and every species of combustible property on that side, except the Merrill house, which escaped. On Main Street south of the printing-office, a considerable number of old family homesteads were consumed. The most valuable was that of Gen. Gurdon Saltonstall. The house of Capt. Guy Richards at the foot of Richards Street was marked out for destruction, but a daughter of Capt. Richards lying ill at the time, the English officer listened to the supplications of those who attended upon her, and spared the. house. It was an act too barbarous, even for incursive hostility, the most barbarous kind of war, to set fire to a house over the heads of sick and helpless females.
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On the east side of the street several private houses, with the cus- tom-house and collector's dwelling near it, various shops of merchandise, mechanic shops and warehouses, with all the wharfing, boating and lumber, were involved in a long line of destruction. Below Hallam's corner in this street no buildings were burnt. At this point the main body of the enemy turned toward Beach or Water Street, where several noted warehouses and shops were situated, and a part of the shipping lay. It is said that Arnold himself with extended sword, pointed out the way to the troops with this emphatic command- " Soldiers ! do your duty."
Of course vengeance and destruction had no check : shops, stores, dwellings, piles of lumber, wharves, boats, rigging, and vessels, were soon enveloped in smoke and flame. Hogsheads were knocked in; sugar and coffee lay in heaps, and rum and Irish butter melted in the fire, trickled along the street, and filled the gutters. The prize ship Hannah, partly unladen, lay at Shaw's wharf. When burnt nearly to the water's edge she drifted away and sunk near the end of Win- throp's Neck.1
Bradley Street containing eight or ten houses, was left un- harmed. When the regulars came to this street, their guide, one of those " friends to government in the town," whom Arnold mentions as aiding and furnishing information, said to the leader of the party-" In this street there are no shops, no stores-it is the Wid- ow's Row." The words were literally true, and the humane officer commanded his men not to enter the street.
On the Parade all was destroyed. The market wharf, the old magazine and battery, the court-house, jail and jail-house, the Episcopal church, and several contiguous shops and dwelling-houses, were soon a heap of ashes. The western part of this street was left unhurt. The ancient, dilapidated building still extant near the corner of Green Street was then, as it since has been, a well-known tavern stand. The landlady, like many other American women in those disastrous times, had her nearest friends arrayed on opposite sides. Her husband as sergeant in the militia, was at his post in the field annoying the invaders, and her brother was one of those in- vaders-an officer under Arnold's command. Before mounting her horse to escape, she had her table spread, and furnished bountifully with provisions. Though fleeing with her patriot husband she could
1 The old hull of the Hannah was dragged out in 1815, by Amasa Miller, to whose ship-yard it was an obstruction.
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not refrain from leaving a dinner for her tory brother. That officer eagerly sought the threshold of his relative, and though he found her not, refreshed himself and his brother officers with the collation. After the close of the war, this refugee captain, being in declining health, obtained leave to return home, and died in the same house.
The enemy, however, did not in general spare the dwellings of their reputed friends. This, instead of being a favor, would have marked them out for patriot vengeance. Arnold himself took some refreshment that day at the house of an old acquaintance in Bank Street, but even before they rose from the table the building was in flames over them. It has been often stated that some whose proper- ty was destroyed, received in the end double compensation ; that is, from the British on account of their loyalty, and from Congress, in the grant of fire lands by which reparation was made to the suffer- ers. Arnold was born within fourteen miles of New London, and had lived so long in the vicinity that he had many old acquaintances in town; some of these it was well known had held secret inter- course with him, and officiated as counselors and guides in this ex- pedition.
At the south end of the town the ravage was coincident with the destruction at the north. All the boats and fishing craft around the coves were burnt. A house and shop belonging to a person who held a commission in the garrison of the fort, were singled out and burnt, showing that the guides of the enemy were familiar with the locality. An old fisherman ventured from his hiding-place and pathetically entreated them to leave him his boat ; but he was told that their orders allowed of no exceptions and must be obeyed. A woman living near the water on the point, (Shaw's Neck,) seeing a company of the red coats approaching, concealed her well-grown boys in the cellar, and gathering her little children around her went out to meet them. Dropping on her knees before the captain, she told him that her husband had been gone several long years, and she knew not what had become of him ; she had nothing left but a group of helpless children and yonder house with its simple furniture, which she entreated him not to destroy. The officer raised her from the ground, and brushing a tear from his eye, said, " Go in, good woman ! you and your property are safe ; none of my men shall dis- turb you."1
1 The story of this woman was literally true: we are tempted to continue the tale. Her husband was a sca-captain and trader, who being in Europe when the war broke
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Very little havoc was made in this part of the town until the enemy came to Bank Street. Here the work of destruction was commenced at the stone dwelling-house of the Shaw family, in dif- ferent parts of which ignited combustibles were placed, and left to do their work; but after the troops had passed on, a near neighbor who had remained 'concealed in the vicinity, entered the house and extinguished the fires. An ancient dwelling-house of wood, adjoin- ing the stone mansion, and used by Shaw as an office and store-house, was burnt to the ground, and in it a chest of valuable papers was consumed. The flame from this building caught the roof of the stone house, but was extinguished by the same adventurous neighbor that quenched the fires within the house. Finding a pipe of vinegar in the garret, he knocked in the head and dipping from this fountain poured the convenient liquid from the scuttle, down the roof, till the fire was subdued. By this timely exertion, not only this house but the houses below it, which would probably have been involved in its destruction, escaped.
In this part of the harbor were the spar and ship-yards and a con- siderable number of unemployed vessels, which were all given to the flames. Old hulls half sunk in the water, or grounded on the flats here and there, are remembered by persons who were then children, as having been left for years afterward lying about the shores. A privateer sloop, fitted for a cruise and in fine order, that lay swinging from a cable fastened to a ring in the projecting rock where is now Brown's wharf, was set on fire, and her cable burning off, she drifted across the harbor, a mass of flame. Through the whole of Bank Street, where were some of the best mercantile stands and the most valuable dwelling-houses in the town, the torch of vengeance made a clean sweep. No building of any importance was left on either side of the street ; all combustible property of every description was con- sumed. This entire devastation was in part owing to circumstances not entering into the plans of the enemy, though it might have been
out, and meeting with reverses and difficulties, had continued there, trading and wait- ing for an opportunity to return home. The very day Arnold was burning New Lon- don he arrived with his vessel in the Sound, and discovering the hostile fleet in season put back and lay close, till the next day. When the enemy had departed, he slipped into the harbor in the dusk of evening, and landing made his way through the smol- dering streets to his own threshold; where lifting the latch, he paused, and before speak- ing to wife or children, fixed his eyes on two ancient portraits of his ancestors, hang- ing upon the wall, and with a humor peculiar to his character, saluted them and ex- pressed his satisfaction at finding them still on duty, at their post.
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anticipated, as a natural consequence of their measures. Several of the stores in this and other parts of the town contained gunpowder in large quantities, which exploding, shook the whole country round, and scattered the flames in every direction.
The general says in his report : "The explosion of the powder and the change of wind, soon after the stores were fired, communica- ted the flames to part of the town, which was, notwithstanding cvery effort to prevent it, unfortunately destroyed." Sir Henry Clinton also, in his official letter to England, expresses his concern that the town was burnt, but says it was unavoidable, and occasioned by the explosion of gunpowder.
It ought to be stated as a general fact that Arnold's orders appear to have been given with some reference to humanity and the laws of civilized warfare. Private houses were to be spared, unless in some few instances where the owners were particularly obnoxious. It was afterward well understood that most of the spoil and havoc in private houses was the work of a few worthless vagrants of the town, who prowled in the wake of the invaders, hoping in the general con- fusion not to be detected. The English soldiers were expressly for- bidden to plunder, or to molest the helpless.1 In several cases where females courageously remained to protect their dwellings, they were treated with marked civility and respect. In one instance a soldier having entered a house and forcibly seized some clothing, the woman went to the door and complained to an officer on guard in the street, who not only restored the articles, but chastised the culprit on the spot, for disobeying his orders.
Instances of tender commiseration for the sufferers were also ex- hibited in various parts of the town. In one house a female had re- mained with an aged, decrepit father, too infirm to be removed. Seeing so many buildings in flames and expecting her own soon to be kindled, she dragged her parent in his arm-chair to the extremity of the garden, and there stood over him awaiting the result. The officer on guard observing her situation, went up and conversed with her, bidding her banish fear, for her house should not be entered ; he would himself watch over its safety.
Yet no one can be certain that an excited soldiery will not trans- cend their orders, and scenes of distress must be expected in the train
1 Arnold warmly commends the conduct of Capt. Stapleton who acted as major of brigade, "for his endeavors to prevent plundering and the destruction of private buildings."
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of a reckless invasion. An aged and infirm man, living alone, with no one to care for him and convey him to a place of safety, had crept to the back part of his little inclosure, and when the soldiers were marching by, he stood among the bushes, leaning upon his staff, a peaceable looker-on. One of the party, seeing perhaps only a hat and head, and supposing it might be an armed man lurking there to get a favorable aim, raised his musket and shot the old man dead in his garden.
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