USA > Connecticut > Litchfield County > Litchfield > Semi-centennial of the Litchfield historical and antiquarian society > Part 4
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At Ticonderoga, on the tenth of May, 1775, "in the name of the great Jehovah and the Continental Congress," the first captured British battle-flag of the Revolution fell into the hands of a Litchfield County man. And entering the fort at Ethan Allen's side was Lieutenant Crampton, also a native of Litchfield. The next day Colonel Seth Warner of Roxbury, in the same County, took Crown Point.
The First Connecticut Regiment, one of whose companies was made up largely of Litchfield County men, was sent to the Lake Champlain region, where it assisted in the reduction of St. Johns and then went on to Montreal. The Fourth Connecticut Regiment, under Colonel Hinman of Woodbury, recruited in Litchfield County, helped to guard Ticonderoga and Crown Point and took part in all the work of that district from June to December, 1775. Later, the regiment of Colonel Charles Burrall of Canaan, its men all from Litchfield County, went still further north and rein- forced the troops besieging Quebec under Wooster and Arnold. And here they must have met the Connecticut company which formed one of Arnold's brave body of 1, 100 men who had pushed their way through the wilds of Maine, over craggy precipices and morasses, through drifts of snow and icy streams, eating their dogs and boiling their moccasins for sustenance. Among them, serving as a private soldier, was Aaron Burr, who was visiting in Litch- field on the outbreak of the Revolution.
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For Litchfield County men had gone to the east as well as to the west and north; many of them fought at Bunker Hill with the troops of the Second and Third Connecticut Regiments, and it was from the army gathered around Boston, after Bunker Hill, that Arnold's expedition to Quebec was recruited. The Seventh Connecticut, with a Litchfield County company, took part in the siege of Boston and was in General Sullivan's Division on Winter Hill.
It was here that Washington's troubles over the short enlistments began. "It is not in the page of history," wrote Washington, "to furnish a case like ours; to maintain a post within musket-shot of the enemy without powder, and at the same time to disband an army and recruit another within that distance of twenty odd British regiments." The French and Indian wars had been conducted with Arcadian simplicity, and it had been customary to cease fighting in the winter and go home to feed the stock. And it was not an easy task to keep these liberty-loving youths in hand during the months of idle encampment.
Upon Howe's departure, the little American army was marched to New York. Six battalions were raised in Con- necticut, among them two companies from Litchfield County, and these joined the forces on Manhattan Island which were awaiting the coming of Howe's army from Halifax.
In August, 1776, Howe landed with 25,000 well-trained soldiers. Then, in quick succession came the battles of Long Island, Harlem Heights and White Plains, and in November the attack on Fort Washington. To the defense of Fort Washington went thirty-six picked men from Litch- field, under the command of Captain Beebe, a Litchfield patriot who was in active service throughout the war. The garrison of the fort, under Colonel Magraw, was forced to capitulate. You know of the cruel massacre watched by Washington, in tears, from Fort Lee, across the Hudson,
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and of the sufferings of the unfortunate prisoners. Crowded into the Sugar House in New York and in the prison-ships of the harbor, without water and for the first two days with- out food, sickness and death came upon them and few survived the ordeal. Only six of Captain Beebe's little band of thirty-six lived to breathe again the air of Litchfield Hill.
After the fall of Fort Washington and the capture of the flower of the American army, the remainder under Wash- ington escaped across New Jersey and over beyond the Delaware. The British pursued, but rested at Princeton and Trenton, while Cornwallis and Howe returned to New York for their Christmas plum pudding. Then came the historic crossing of the Delaware-on Christmas night of 1776, in a blizzard of sleet and snow, with the river full of floating ice. Fiske considers this the most critical point in the career of the American leader, for the terms of service of the greater part of his men expired on New Year's Day, and had not the attack on Trenton been successful it would have been almost impossible again to fill the ranks. In the little army of only 4,000 men which Washington had with him were some from Litchfield County, and in that dark hour New England did her duty and sent all the troops she could raise to create a diversion in the neighborhood of New York. Judge Tapping Reeve, afterward the founder of Litchfield's famous law school, whose wife was Aaron Burr's only sister, was one of those who went from this County and served as an officer until the news of the vic- tories of Trenton and Princeton brought assurance that Washington's army was safe for a time.
After a winter at Morristown, Washington moved south- ward and met the enemy at Brandywine Creek as they advanced from their landing at Chesapeake Bay toward the capital, Philadelphia. Defeat-and a fortnight later, at Germantown, again defeat. In vain did Major Tallmadge, for fifty years after the Revolution a resident of Litchfield,
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endeavor to hold the Germantown road with his dragoons. In the darkness of a mist, two American columns mistook each other for the enemy and there was confusion which ended in retreat. Our men were in both these battles, and they were also well represented at Bennington and Saratoga, fought at the same time by the Northern Army and with greater success. Oliver Wolcott was at Saratoga with his militia, and Captain Seymour of Litchfield was present at the dinner given by the American officers to their captives when Burgoyne, called upon for a toast, gave out the grace- ful sentiment, "America and Great Britain against the world."
Among the troops at Valley Forge, whither Washington's army retired after the defeat at Germantown, ragged, half- starved, and with hastily made huts their only protection from the winter storms, were many men whose descendants are in this audience to-day. Major Tallmadge was stationed near, scouring the country between the outposts on the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. In June, when the British moved toward New York, Washington caught them at Monmouth, and in that battle were several Connecticut regiments, among them many men from Litchfield County. After Monmouth, the most important battles of the Revo- lution were fought in the South, except for Stony Point, which the Fifth Connecticut, recruited in Fairfield and Litchfield Counties, helped to storm. Even in the Southern fields our County was represented, but most of the Connec- ticut regiments remained in the North, some of them protecting the coasts, others in camp at what was called "Connecticut Village," near West Point. It was there that the treason of Arnold occurred, Washington passing through Litchfield on his way from Hartford two days before he learned of the treachery of his trusted friend and general. At this time, too, came the mutiny among some of the Pennsylvanians, who suffered from lack of food and
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decent clothing. Washington immediately sounded the officers of other troops as to what might be expected from the forces under them. General Parsons, commanding the Connecticut Division, wrote to his chief of various patriotic incidents that had come under his observation, saying: "I am convinced the fullest confidence may be placed in the Connecticut troops."
When Cornwallis was forced to retreat toward the north, after his engagement at Guilford Court House, North Carolina, he took a position at Yorktown. LaFayette had been sent by Washington against him and he held the British in check while the grand coup of the war was accomplished. The commander-in-chief, with his army from the Highlands of the Hudson, including several Connecticut regiments, was making a feint as if to attack New York; his enemy's weak position on the York peninsula devel- oped-the French fleet was investing it on one side-and Washington, by a swift movement, marched southward, and, on the fourth anniversary of Burgoyne's surrender, our Litchfield County men heard the British bands play "The World Turned Upside Down," as the army of Cornwallis laid down its arms.
Thus, briefly, I have tried to sketch the part which our troops bore in the Revolution-the work of individuals will be more fully treated in an address which is to follow. But I have said enough, perhaps, to thrill with pride the hearts of those who are descended from these patriot sires, and more than enough to give the stranger within our gates the impression that the War of the Revolution was fought and won by Litchfield County heroes. This is an era of peace- we hope for it, we pray for peace throughout the world, but if ever there was a righteous war it was the War of the American Revolution. We were colonists, we had no repre- sentation in the councils of the nation that ruled us, we were made the victims of odious laws and taxes, we were
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struggling for a principle-the equal rights of man, announced in the Declaration of Colonial Rights, reiterated in the Declaration of Independence, recognized in the constitutions of all our States. Many of the best men of the mother country were convinced that our cause was just. Even the great Pitt withdrew his eldest son from the army that he might not be compelled to take up arms against those who were defending the common liberties of England.
Let me quote what Abraham Lincoln once said of the Revolution. It was in a speech made at Trenton, N. J., on his way to the inaugural. There on the banks of the Dela- ware, he referred to the famous crossing, to the hardships of the soldiers and to the victory of the great commander as he had read of it in Weems' "Life of Washington." "I recol- lect," he said, "thinking then, boy even though I was, that there must have been something more than common that these men struggled for. I am exceedingly anxious that that thing-that something even more than national inde- pendence ; that something that held out a great promise to all the people of the world for all time to come-I am exceedingly anxious that this Union, the Constitution, and the liberties of the people shall be perpetuated in accordance with the original idea for which that struggle was made. And I shall be most happy indeed if I shall be a humble instrument in the hands of the Almighty and of this His almost chosen people for perpetuating the object of that great struggle."
And he it was-Abraham Lincoln-a hundred years after the Revolution and in the midst of a still mightier conflict, he it was who struck off the shackles of the slave and carried to its full fruition the doctrine of the equal rights of man- kind, for which our Litchfield County fathers fought, inheriting their love of liberty from those who cut their way through the primeval wilderness to found in freedom the Colonies of Connecticut.
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In presenting Mr. Wolcott, Mrs. BUEL said :
Just outside of this window stands a tree planted by the hands of Oliver Wolcott, one of thirteen set out by him in honor of the thirteen struggling Colonies of the Revolu- tion, and each bearing the name of a Colony. All are gone save only this and one comrade-old "Connecticut"-on South Street. But more immortal than ever these mighty trees lives amongst us the memory of the man who planted them. Oliver Wolcott, general, governor and signer of the Declaration of Independence, stands foremost on our honor- roll of Litchfield patriots, and we are fortunate in having with us to-day one of his lineal descendants, a son of the late Governor Roger Wolcott of Massachusetts. He brings fitting tribute to our Revolutionary heroes, not only in his own behalf, but also in behalf of all the descendants of Litchfield County patriots and other donors who have generously assisted this Chapter in erecting this memorial in their honor. Connecticut rejoices in the possession of two noted Olivers,-Oliver Wolcott and Oliver Ellsworth- neither of whom would we give for any other country's Roland, and it is a memorable fact that this occasion is made distinguished by the presence here of descendants of both. The patriots of Litchfield County, to whose self-sacri- ficing services this window pays undying tribute, could not have worthier eulogist than him whom I now have the honor of introducing-Mr. Roger Wolcott, of Boston.
Mr. WOLCOTT, in responding, said :
Madam Regent, hereditary neighbors :- It is a pleasure, indeed, to be in Litchfield for my first visit to the home of three generations of my ancestors, and it is a privilege that I shall not soon forget to be allowed to say a few words to you on this most interesting occasion.
Connecticut played a leading part in the American Revo- lution. Her Colonial history is a story of self-restraint,
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notably different from that of her more impatient northern neighbor. Massachusetts had her Stamp Act riot and her Boston massacre; Connecticut had her bloodless preserva- tion of the charter and the secret debate in her Assembly on the right of Parliament to tax the American Colonies, a debate so secret that only the tradition thereof has come down to us. The men of Connecticut had always gone their way quietly, biding their time-but none the less surely win- ning in the end; and when the time came for an open revolt against the oppressions of the mother-country, Connecticut showed that no other State could send more of her sons to the front, and none could do more to keep the Continental Army supplied with food and the munitions of war. Massa- chusetts kindled the Revolution, Connecticut kept the Revolution aflame.
In the stirring deeds of the struggle, no County and no town had a larger share than Litchfield. Settled a scant sixty years before the Declaration of Independence, the town was still the home of pioneers. Only within their generation had the Indians ceased to be a haunting terror at their very thresholds. About 1750 the homesick Mrs. Davies wrote to a friend in England, "There is nothing here to associate with but Presbyterians and wolves," and bears and the fierce catamount menaced themselves and their cattle as late as the Revolution. All traffic was by horse- back until 1750, when the first wheeled wagon arrived in town, and it was during the war that the imprisoned Royal Mayor of New York first had a pleasure-carriage brought to Litchfield. And perhaps more terrifying to the modern mind than any of these things was the Puritan Sabbath. The service was in two parts, a morning session with a sermon often hours long, scarcely enlivened by the doleful psalmody of the day, and another session in the afternoon, with a short interim for dinner between the two. Trying as this was in the sultry days of summer, it must have been
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nothing else but torment in the icy cold of winter, for not until long after the Revolution did any Litchfield meeting- house possess a stove. The winter cold was for some mitigated by the "Sabbath-day house" close by, a house built for those who came from a distance and who wished to send forward a servant to start a blazing fire, in whose welcome glow the family might eat their dinner between services and warm themselves before the bleak ride home. The men and women who lived in Litchfield in 1775 must needs be of dauntless fiber, and so they proved themselves in the Revolution.
In 1774 Oliver Wolcott, as chairman of a Litchfield town-meeting, drew up resolutions on the Boston Port Bill, and a committee was at once formed to take up subscriptions for the assistance of the stricken town. In the same year a Committee of Inspection was appointed "to observe the conduct of all persons," and to publish the names of Tories so that the community might be warned against them. In January of 1776 Captain Bezaleel Beebe was ordered to raise a company of militia. When the news was known, recruits poured in, some coming to his house at a run, for fear the ranks should be full before their arrival. In six days it was armed and equipped and on its way to the defense of New York. In July Oliver Wolcott signed the Declaration of Independence at Philadelphia, and in August he was appointed a Brigadier General to command the regiment of Connecticut militia which were to be hurried to the defense of New York. After the British occupation of New York the next month, Litchfield at once jumped to a new prominence, being an important depot of supplies. directly on the line of overland communication between New England and the other States. At the age of nineteen. Oliver Wolcott, Jr., became a Quartermaster, with the tedious task of collecting and forwarding supplies for the army. Committees were formed for the purchase of horses,
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clothing and equipment, for the inspection of provisions and the examination of army surgeons. Bounties were voted to the Litchfield soldiers and relief given to their families and themselves, when they tottered home, broken by sick- ness and wounds and the inhuman brutalities of the British prisons. In 1777 Litchfield sent to the front ninety-two soldiers as her share of four battalions from the State. When the infamous Tryon descended with his Tories on the American stores at Danbury, Litchfield sent to meet him her last fourteen men capable of bearing arms, among them Oliver Wolcott, Jr., then seventeen years old, and Paul Peck. This veteran hunter, seventy-five years old, ensconced himself behind a stone wall, whence he fired upon the retreating marauders. At every shot of his great flint-lock a man dropped, until his little fortress was rushed and his brains were beaten out by the exasperated enemy with his own clubbed musket. During the first two years of the Revolution, many British prisoners of war were detained at Litchfield, of whom the most important were William Franklin, an illegitimate son of Benjamin Franklin and Royal Governor of New Jersey, and David Matthews, the Mayor of New York. The following years of the war were hard ones for the patriots. The women and the boys of Litchfield were sore put to it to harvest their crops and to keep their households supplied with the necessities of life. Every blanket not in use was sent to the army, and shirts, lint and bandages were made in every house. The taxes grew heavier as, the war dragged on, being in 1780 at the rate of one shilling in the pound. Two years later the town in its need of money reversed the ancient Scriptural phrase and visited the sins of the children upon the fathers, for three inhabitants of Litchfield were "assessed on examination agreeable to law for each a son gone to the enemy," although after a hearing one of them was released from his assessment. To add to their hardships smallpox broke out, brought home
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by some of the returning soldiers, and a number of the people took it, although the epidemic subsided without proving fatal in any case. In the spring of 1780 George Washington wrote from Newburgh to Governor Trumbull of Connecti- cut, asking him for supplies for his starving army. By this time the States were well-nigh exhausted of all that must be had to support troops in the field, and Washington's appeal to "Brother Jonathan" was almost a last resort. As on every occasion, he did not appeal in vain. Trumbull promptly replied, stating that a wagon-train of supplies from Hartford and Litchfield would be at Newburgh on a certain day at a certain time. When Washington at the appointed time and place saw the wagons of Connecticut slowly wind- ing into view, he exclaimed, "No other man than Governor Trumbull could have procured them, and no other State than Connecticut would have furnished them."
But enough of Revolutionary Litchfield at home. Let us turn to the deeds of her men on the firing-line, where we find that hardly an important battle of the war was fought, north or south, that some son of Litchfield was not there in an important place. In 1775 it was Ethan Allen, a native of Litchfield, who obtained the surrender of Ticonderoga. Crown Point fell to Seth Warner, born in the neighboring town of Roxbury. Ephraim Kirby and other Litchfield men fought at Bunker Hill, while Captain Archibald McNiel and Sergeant Bezaleel Beebe were at the capture of Mont- real under the ill-fated Montgomery. In the autumn of 1776, Bezaleel Beebe, now a Captain commanding a com- pany of thirty-six picked men from Litchfield County, was part of the garrison of Fort Washington, near New York, when it was attacked by the British and surrendered after a brave defense. The enlisted men were imprisoned in the notorious Sugar House and prison shops. Huddled together like rats in a trap, fed on scanty rations of wormy bread and stale pork, with brackish water for their only drink, one
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by one they succumbed to dysentery and the smallpox, and but six survived their imprisonment of less than two months. At Bennington the Americans were falling back when Seth Warner arrived and saved the day. At Brandywine and Germantown were Kirby, Tallmadge and Lieutenant James Morris, who, at Germantown, led one of the attacking columns and later guarded the rear. Colonel Kirby was left for dead on the field at Germantown, but was later dis- covered and revived. At Saratoga Oliver Wolcott com- manded a brigade, and Captain Moses Seymour headed a troop of cavalry, while Major Benjamin Tallmadge com- manded a detachment of Sheldon's famous dragoons on outpost duty during the terrible winter at Valley Forge. Kirby and Tallmadge helped turn the tide of victory at Mon- mouth, and Morris was again chosen to lead an attacking column in Alexander Hamilton's "forlorn hope" at York- town. When the unfortunate André was captured, it was Major Tallmadge whose keen eye penetrated his disguise and to whom André later admitted his identity. During the few days which followed a lively friendship was formed between the two, and when the time came for the English- man to die, he walked to the gallows escorted by Major Tall- madge, who there received his affectionate farewell.
But my time is nearly gone and this brief recital must suffice. I have named only a few of the deeds by which immortality has come to those whom we are proud to claim as our forefathers. Nothing we can say, no window we can dedicate, can add to the fame of the patriot soldiers of the Revolution, but also let us not forget their wives and daugh- ters, whose ungrudging performance of the tedious house- hold duties, day by day and year by year, made possible the achievements, often far from home, of every man in Litch- field capable of bearing arms. One hundred years before the Revolution, after the Great Swamp Fight in King Philip's War, the General Assembly of Connecticut spread
MEMORIAL WINDOW PRESENTED BY MARY FLOYD TALLMADGE CHAPTER, D. A. R.
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on its record these words: "There died many brave officers and soldiers, whose memory is blessed, and whose death redeemed our lives. The bitter cold, the tarled swamp, the tedious march, the strong fort, the numerous and stubborn enemy they contended with, for their God, king and country, be their trophies over death. Our mourners, all over the colony, witness for our men that they were not unfaithful in that day."
The men of the Revolution were worthy of their for- bears-let us strive to be equally worthy of them both.
Just before unveiling the window, Mrs. BUEL made the following address of unveiling and presentation :
Mr. President and Members of the Litchfield Historical Society :- It is my privilege to-day to be the bearer of greet- ings to your Society from the Mary Floyd Tallmadge Chap- ter, Daughters of the American Revolution, on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of your organization. As the Chapter's official representative, I congratulate you warmly upon this happy event, upon the acquisition of this beautiful new building through the patriotic generosity of one whose name graces the membership rolls of both our Societies, and upon the era of continued energy and usefulness which opens before you. But as a Chapter, we feel especially privileged in being more intimately associated with your semi-centennial than as a mere bearer of greetings. Our greetings are accompanied by a gift, and this gift which we bring to you to-day in memory of those Revolutionary patriots whose lives and deeds are our common heritage and glory, will, we hope, be ever a bond of fellowship and sympathy between the two Societies-a golden wedding gift, as it were, which may prove the token of true union in a common cause. Our aims are identical, or, at the least, supplementary the one to the other. You seek to preserve
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the relics and records of Litchfield's past; we also strive for this, and add thereto the stimulation of our too often luke- warm patriotism, the veneration of our country's heroes, the love of our American ideals of life and government. Macaulay has well said that a "people which takes no pride in the achievements of remote ancestors will never achieve anything worthy to be remembered by remote descendants." We are proud of the achievements of Litchfield County men in our fight for freedom. We have just heard the tale well told of their devotion and their patriotism, and we esteem it an honor to ourselves to come to you to-day with this tribute to their memory written, not in cold and lifeless marble, but in the warm and living colors of that art which we associate the most closely with our religion-the art of the stained- glass worker who has glorified with his creations the great cathedrals of the past. We have to-day fulfilled a sacred duty-unwritten, but none the less binding-made to our- selves soon after our organization nearly eight years ago. It was then that the Chapter undertook to collect from all sources, and rescue from oblivion, the names of Litchfield's Revolutionary soldiers. It was then that Miss Josephine Richards, chairman of the committee in charge, began that painstaking work which resulted in the cataloguing of nearly 450 names from the town of Litchfield alone. The work was enlarged to comprise the whole County in our Revolu- tionary rolls ; we enlisted the help of other County Chapters, whom I take this opportunity to thank for their hearty cooperation and valuable aid in compiling these records; our lists swelled to nearly 3,000 names, a veritable army ; and all the time, hidden away in our hearts, was the thought-a memorial must sometime, somewhere, be erected to these men who made the fame of Litchfield County in the Revolution. Two years ago the opportunity came. This building was given to your Society. It was to have a large north window of Colonial proportions and design. At the
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