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Benedict Arnold

Six Gravesites of Military Heroes

Military heroes who sacrificed for their country certainly deserve to be remembered on Memorial Day weekend. Some people remember them with parades and speeches, others with flowers on their graves.

The New England Historical Society honors them with this story about the place where each state’s greatest military heroes rest, we hope, in peace.

Wooster Cemetery

David Wooster

Connecticut produced many military heroes, including Benedict Arnold, a hero at least for a while.

Nathan Hale is the first among all Connecticut’s military heroes, having given his life for his country. But no one ever found his body.

And you might get into an argument if you called Revolutionary War Gen. Israel Putnam a hero.

But Gen. David Wooster definitely qualifies as a military hero from Connecticut, albeit a largely forgotten one. He gave his life for his country in the Battle of Ridgefield, chasing British troops back to New York after they burned Danbury.

As Wooster lay dying, he said, “I am dying, but with a strong hope and persuasion that my country will gain her independence.”

He was buried in Wooster Cemetery on Mount Moriah in Danbury. And yes, Wooster Square in New Haven was named for him.

Monument to David Wooster in Wooster Cemetery.

Wooster Cemetery, Ellsworth Ave., Danbury, Conn.

Pine Grove Cemetery

Of all of Maine’s military heroes, Joshua Chamberlain stands as the greatest.

Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, by Matthew Brady

When the Civil War broke out, Chamberlain left his job as a Bowdoin College professor to command the storied 20^th Maine Regiment.

On the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg, the 20th Maine held off three savage charges by Confederate regiments. By evening, the 20th Maine ran low on ammunition. He could either hold the hill and face certain destruction, or retreat and allow the Confederates to overrun the Army of the Potomac.

Instead, the men fixed their bayonets and charged down the hill. The shocked rebels broke and ran.

Chamberlain suffered grievous wounds during the Second Battle of Petersburg. He then received a promotion to brigadier general on what was thought to be his deathbed. He lived to the age of 85 and received the Medal of Honor for his gallantry at Gettysburg.

A simple headstone marks Joshua Chamberlain’s grave in historic Pine Grove Cemetery near Bowdoin College, where he returned after the war.

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Pine Grove Cemetery, image courtesy Google Maps

Pine Grove Cemetery, Brunswick, Maine

Old Burial Hill

The Americans might have lost the Revolution if it weren’t for one of Massachusetts’ great military heroes, John Glover.

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John Glover

Glover raised a regiment of Marblehead fishermen and sailors known for their discipline and teamwork. The regiment, which, included African-Americans and Indians, ferried George Washington and 2,400 men across the Delaware on Christmas night in 1776.

The Battle of Trenton, which followed, gave the American cause a boost in morale when it badly needed one.

Glover had already saved Washington’s Army. When the British defeated the Continental Army on Long Island, Washington ordered Glover’s Regiment to evacuate the troops to Manhattan. They safely landed 9,500 men, along with all their baggage, nearly all their artillery, stores, horses and provisions. Had the evacuation failed, Washington’s army—and probably the war—would have been lost.

John Glover is buried in Marblehead in the picturesque Old Burial Hill cemetery.

Old Burial Hill

Marblehead, Mass.

Stark Cemetery

John Stark

John Stark, , the most famous of New Hampshire’s military heroes, was also a quote machine. During the Battle of Bennington, Stark rallied his men with the words:

There are your enemies, the Red Coats and the Tories. They are ours, or this night Molly Stark sleeps a widow!

Stark’s performance earned him the nickname Hero of the Battle of Bennington:

He may have been the one who said, “Don’t fire until you see the whites of their eyes!” at the Battle of Bunker Hill. And he most certainly coined New Hampshire’s motto, Live Free or Die.

Stark fought with distinction during the entire war, then went back to his farm in New Hampshire. He is buried with his wife in Stark Cemetery in Manchester, N.H. It’s in the back of Stark Park.

Stark Cemetery

Stark Cemetery, River Road, Manchester, N.H.

Common Burying Ground

You would expect Rhode Island’s greatest military heroes to be mariners and you would be correct.

But Rhode Island’s Oliver Hazard Perry wasn’t just a military hero. He defeated a British squadron in the Battle of Lake Erie during the War of 1812. His victory turned the tide of the war in the West, and he became a national hero as well as a military hero.

Perry didn’t have long to enjoy his fame. He died of yellow fever in 1819 at the age of 34.

Perry joins many of Newport’s most prominent citizens at the Common Burying Ground in Newport. His neighbors include Ida Lewis, Ann Smith Franklin and William Ellery.

The Common Burying Ground has a large number of colonial era headstones, including the largest number of colonial African American headstones in the United States.

military-heroes-perry-common-burying-ground

The Common Burying Ground

Farewell St & Warner Street, Newport, R.I.

St. Joseph’s Cemetery

Capt. John Lonergan

John Lonergan realized his men were under heavy fire from a house in front of them. Lonergan ordered his men to charge it. They surrounded the house and Lonergan knocked in the front door, bellowing, ‘’Surrender! Fall out here, every damned one of you!’ The Confederates tumbled out of the house, and Lonergan’s company took 83 of them captive.

Lonergan later headed the Vermont branch of the Fenian Brotherhood and organized two failed raids into Canada from St. Albans. His aim was to pressure Britain to leave Ireland. He died in 1902. In 2013 his great-granddaughter unveiled a memorial marker to honor him in Burlington’s City Hall Park. He is buried, however, in St. Joseph Cemetery in Burlington.

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St. Joseph’s Cemetery

206 Auburn St. Burlington, Vt.

End Notes

Images: David Wooster’s monument, By Kensphotos – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4064498. Common Burying Ground By Swampyank at en.wikipedia, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17984252. Oliver Hazard Perry, By Gilbert Stuart(Life time: 1755-1828) – Original publication: Portrait by Gilbert Stuart Immediate source: http://www.toledomuseum.org/2013/08/08/artwork-of-the-week-august-9/, PD-US, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=40572296. Stark Cemetery By AlexiusHoratius – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=26455478. Google images by Google Maps. Image of Oliver Hazard Perry courtesy Toledo Museum of Art.Old Burial Hill By Newenglandhistory1 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=114115853.

This story was updated in 2022.

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The Revolutionary Holidays You May or May Not Celebrate

Revolutionary holidays didn’t start and end with Independence Day.

When the Revolutionary War ended, Trumbull, Conn., celebrated with A Great Jubilee Day on May 26, 1783. The grand event featured militia maneuvers, feasting, prayer, speeches and toasts. The town was then called Stratford, and the holiday is now called Memorial Day.

Historic reenactment at Mount Independence

Holidays used to be local affairs, and they often moved around the calendar. For many years, the entire United States celebrated only two annual holidays: Washington’s Birthday and the Fourth of July. Much of New England, of course, didn’t celebrate Christmas.

Early Thanksgivings happened when state or local officials decided it happened. In 1816, for example, Massachusetts celebrated Thanksgiving on November 28, while New Hampshire observed it on November 14. It wasn’t until 1941 that Congress passed a federal law making Thanksgiving the fourth Thursday in November.

New Englanders continue to celebrate Revolutionary holidays that commemorate events in the war with Britain. They tend to happen in the summer, often to attract tourists to their craft fairs, parades and reenactments.

Revolutionary Holidays in RI and Vermont

The Burning of the Gaspee by Charles deWolf Brownell, c1892

Since 1965, Pawtuxet Village in Warwick and Cranston, R.I., has celebrated Gaspee Days around Memorial Day. The festival commemorates Rhode Island’s version of the Boston Tea Party, when patriots burned a British customs schooner in 1772.

Celebrations of the Gaspee Affair in 2018 include a road race, parade, party, fireworks and reenactment of the ship burning. In 2018, Gaspee Days was scheduled to start on May 26.

In Vermont, Bennington Battle Day is celebrated every August 16. Vermont is perhaps the only state to commemorate an event that happened in another state. The Battle of Bennington, an important victory in the American Revolution, took place in 1777 in New York.

Bennington Battle Day happens every year with a battle reenactment, but the local historical society holds events throughout the summer. The 2018 Bennington Battle Celebration includes a road race, a ceremony at the memorial and a fashion show of historic costumes.

Powder House Day

New Haven celebrates Powder House Day every year to commemorate the events of April 22, 1775. Then Capt. Benedict Arnold and his Governor’s Foot Guard were eager to help out during the Siege of Boston. So they demanded the keys to the powder house so they could actually use their weapons.

Benedict Arnold celebrated in one of Connecticut’s revolutionary holidays.

Town Meeting had voted against sending help, but the Foot Guard ignored the vote.

Arnold sent a message to the selectmen that if he didn’t get the keys in five minutes, his men would break into the power house. He got the keys.

In 2018, New Haven celebrated Powder House Day on April 21 with a memorial service at the Center Church on the Green. Then a re-enactor playing Arnold marched across the Green and demands a key from the mayor. (Click here for the script.)

The day also featured carriage rides, a parade and tours of the new trees planted on the Green.

Margaretta Days

The first naval battle of the American Revolution took place in Machias, Maine (then Massachusetts). Today Margaretta Days is still one of Machias’ Revolutionary holidays.

During the Siege of Boston, British authorities asked Ichabod Jones, a Loyalist merchant in Machias, to help obtain supplies for the army. In June 1775, two of Jones’ vessels and the Margaretta, an armed British sloop, arrived in the harbor. The townspeople tried to arrest Jones on June 11 and went after the Margaretta’s commander, who escaped. The townspeople then seized one of Jones’ ships, armed a second and chased after the Margaretta. A short battle resulted in the death of the commander and several others, as well as the capture of the Margaretta.

In 2018, Machias celebrates Margaretta Days on June 16 with a reenactment, children’s activities, period foods and artisan demonstrations.

Hack Holidays

The Massachusetts Statehouse

Eighty years ago a state law gave two holidays to state and municipal workers in Boston and the rest of Suffolk County, but not to anyone else. Government workers could take off March 17, Evacuation Day, which commemorates the day British troops and Loyalist sympathizers began to leave Boston. They can also take off June 17 to observe the anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill.

Critics say the Revolutionary holidays reflect Massachusetts’, shall we say, overdeveloped government bureaucracy. They ridicule the ‘hack holidays’ that occur once a month except for August, when government employees take long vacations anyway.

Massachusetts hack holidays include New Year’s Day and Martin Luther King Day in January, Presidents Day in February, Evacuation Day in March, Patriots Day in April, Memorial Day in May, Bunker Hill Day in June, Independence Day in July, Labor Day in September, Columbus Day in October, Veterans Day and Thanksgiving in November and Christmas in December.

Revolutionary Holidays That Disappeared

One of the Revolutionary holidays that disappeared was Boston’s Massacre Day.

Patriots celebrated the holiday every March 5 from 1771 to 1783 to commemorate the 1770 Boston Massacre. Each year a prominent patriot delivered a speech, which would then be printed. When 1783 brought the end of the American Revolution, Boston officials decided to replace Massacre Day with Independence Day.

Fast Day wasn’t one of the Revolutionary holidays until it became one.

Since at least 1670, New Englanders regularly set aside fast days to, well, fast, attend church and ask God for blessings.

Massachusetts celebrated Fast Day until 1894, when the Legislature changed it to Patriots’ Day to commemorate the Battles of Lexington and Concord. Maine jumped on the Revolutionary holidays bandwagon and did the same in 1897. New Hampshire clung to the Fast Day tradition until 1991, when it became Civil Rights Day in January.

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Jacataqua, the Indian Sachem Who Bore Aaron Burr’s Love Child

Jacataqua, the story goes, fell in love with Aaron Burr when she first laid eyes on him in 1775. She was the young Franco-American sachem of a small Abenaki tribe on Swan Island in the Kennebec River. Not only was she beautiful, but she possessed unusual intelligence, self-reliance and winsomeness.

Aaron Burr, 19, had volunteered for duty during Benedict Arnold’s disastrous march through the Maine wilderness and failed capture of Quebec. As Arnold’s forces made their way up the Kennebec River, they halted at Fort Western, where most of the citizens sided with the patriots. They held a lively feast, and Burr met, and fell, for Jacataqua. Or at least he got her pregnant, and she followed Arnold’s men to Quebec.

An Abenaki couple

To what extent the story of Jacataqua is true and to what extent is myth will probably never be known.

A feast did take place at Fort Western during Arnold’s expedition to Quebec. And Aaron Burr, described as one of history’s ‘great wench lovers,’ sired several illegitimate children he never acknowledged.

So falling in love with an Indian sachem wouldn’t be out of character for the man who served as Thomas Jefferson’s vice president, killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel and then raised an army of mercenaries to conquer Mexico.

Jacataqua

Before everything went terribly wrong on the expedition, Arnold’s expedition held an al fresco banquet at Fort Western. The revelers enjoyed barbecued bear, green corn and rum. According to one version of the Jacataqua story, a young Continental Army officer had captured her at Swan Island. Burr then paid her captor for her release.

According to another version of the story, Burr and Jacataqua shot the bears for the barbecue and brought a cub back to the fort on a leash.

A third version has Burr and his party stopping by a Kennebec Indian party. Burr’s men carried plenty of rum, and they partied with the Indians. There, Jacataqua was instantly attracted to young Burr.

The March

Aaron Burr

However they met, the stories agree that Burr got Jacataqua pregnant. They also agree she followed Burr to Quebec, where her knowledge of the woods and hunting skill endeared her to the soldiers. When the soldiers no longer had food, they began to shoot their dogs. But Burr’s regiment liked Jacataqua so much they spared her pooch.

Before the Americans began their ill-fated siege on Quebec, the story goes, Burr roamed the woods near camp. He saw a brook and realized he was thirsty, so he kneeled down and started to drink water from a brook. Coincidentally, across the brook stood an enemy British officer. The two men saluted each other and the British officer loaned Burr his cup.

Burr and the officer met up a few times before the Siege of Quebec, and the British officer pledged to take care of Jacataqua and her child if the Americans lost at Quebec.

The British easily defeated the Americans, and the British officer placed Jacataqua in a convent to have her child.

Chestnutiana

One version of the story has Jacataqua giving birth to a baby girl named Chestnutiana. Her name came from Jacataqua’s toast to Burr at the Fort Western feast: “A Burr full of chestnuts.”

The soldier took the baby with him to Scotland, adopted her and gave her a good education. She married a well-to-do man named Webb, who squandered his fortune.

Burr took Jacataqua back to New York, where she lived in a cabin on Long Island for several years. He married Theodosia Bartow Prevost, a widow with five children. After she died he married Eliza Jumel, a rich widow who divorced him.

The story of Jacataqua picks up again at the close of Aaron Burr’s life. He suffered a stroke, which left him paralyzed, and lived out his days in a Staten Island boardinghouse. Chestnutiana Webb, who had emigrated to New York, appeared and took care of him until he died.

Jacataqua inspired a character in Kenneth Roberts’ novel Arundel, and the essay Jacataqua by William Carlos Williams.

This story was updated in 2022.

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The Oldest Lighthouse in Each New England State

TThe oldest lighthouse in the country would have been in New England had the British not blown it up during the American Revolution. Today, Boston Light is the second oldest lighthouse in the country — and the oldest in Massachusetts.

Lighthouses and history go together like — well, ‘New’ and ‘England.’ Many of the coastal beacons predated the United States itself, but, like Boston Light, were replaced with newer, better versions.

Each New England state has multiple lighthouses. Maine, with its long coastline, has 57, while New Hampshire has only two along its 18 mile coast. Vermont actually has six.

But which are the oldest? Here, then, is a list of the oldest lighthouse in each New England state.

New London Harbor Light

Built in 1801, the New London Harbor Light is not only Connecticut’s oldest lighthouse, it is the tallest.

New London Harbor Light

The colonial Connecticut legislature in 1760 decided to build the first lighthouse at New London, then one of the busiest whaling ports in the colonies. The government sold lottery tickets to raise 500 pounds to pay for building it. In 1781, Benedict Arnold led a British raid on New London and burned the town, but the stone lighthouse and keeper’s cottage survived the attack.

Connecticut ceded New London Harbor Light to the United States in 1789, and 11 years later Congress voted money to rebuild it.

Abisha Woodward, a New Londoner, built the 80-foot-tall octagonal stone tower.

Lighthouse keepers were political appointees, and Martin van Buren appointed John Munn at New London Harbor Light. Munn lost his job in 1841 after van Buren lost reelection, and before he left he blackened the reflector and trashed the lamps. His successor, a popular fisherman named John Mason, took weeks to repair Munn’s vandalism. But after Mason served only four months as keeper, Munn wrangled his job back, outraging the locals. The controversy died down when Munn passed away and Mason took his place.

The Bureau of Lighthouses automated the New London Harbor Light in 1912, and auctioned the property. Today the lighthouse remains in private hands, but New London has others. Today, you can see five lighthouses from Pequot Avenue — and learn more about lighthouses at the Coast Guard Museum.

U.S. Coast Guard Museum, 15 Mohegan Ave., New London, Conn.

Portland Head Light

You may know the Portland Head Light as the Cape Elizabeth Lighthouse. The General Court of Massachusetts appropriated $750 to build it on the shores of Cape Elizabeth in 1787. Three years later, the U.S. government took responsibility for lighthouses and provided $1,500 to finish the job. President George Washington reminded the contractors the government didn’t have much money, so they should take building materials from the fields and shores.

Portland Head Light, the oldest lighthouse in Maine

Sixteen whale oil lamps first lit Portland Head Light on Jan 10, 1791.

One of the strangest shipwrecks in history took place at Portland Head Light on Christmas Eve, 1886. The three-masted bark Annie C. Maguire rammed right into the ledge by the lighthouse, though the crew plainly saw the light before the disaster. The keeper, Joshua Strout, along with his family and volunteers used a ladder as a gangplank to rescue all 14 aboard.

The U.S. Coast Guard decommissioned Maine’s oldest lighthouse in 1989. Today Portland Head Light, which sits next to 90-acre Fort Williams Park, has a museum within the former keeper’s quarters and a seasonal gift shop.

1000 Shore Rd., Cape Elizabeth, Maine

Boston Light

One would almost think Boston Light was cursed, given the trouble that befell the people who associated with it and the number of attacks it sustained from fire, lightning and warring armies.

Boston Light

There had been beacons on Brewster Island before to signal the approach of enemies and ships. The Boston merchant who petitioned the General Court to build Boston Light died before construction began. The first lighthouse keeper drowned. So did the second. The third lighthouse keeper had to clear his name after he was unfairly blamed for a fire in the light.

Fire broke out again and lightning struck the lighthouse several times. During the American Revolution, the Americans burned the wooden parts after the British captured it. When the British evacuated Boston, they left a time charge in Boston Light and blew it up.

A second Boston Light was built in 1783, and it is now the second oldest lighthouse in the United States. (The oldest is in Sandy Hook, N.J.)

Massachusetts gave Boston light to the federal government in 1790. In 1813, lighthouse keeper Jonathan Bruce and his wife watched the battle between the USS Chesapeake and the HMS Shannon. Just before dying, the wounded Chesapeake captain told his men, “Don’t give up the ship.” The crew gave up the ship anyway nine minutes later.

The military extinguished the light during World War II as a security precaution, and relit it on July 2, 1945. The Coast Guard decommissioned Boston Light in 1998, but it remains staffed by a keeper who acts mostly as a tour guide.

The National Park Service conducts tours of Boston Light twice daily on summer weekends.

Little Brewster Island, Boston, Mass.

White Island Light

The oldest of New Hampshire’s two lighthouses: White Island Light.

White Island Light, also known as Isles of Shoals Light, was built in 1859, though the New Hampshire light station had been around since 1821.

Thomas Laighton famously took the job as lighthouse keeper after losing the election for New Hampshire governor in 1839. He sold his business in Portsmouth, moved his family to the small archipelago known as the Isles of Shoals and vowed he’d never set foot on the mainland again.

Laighton bought four of the nine islands and wrangled the federal appointment as lighthouse keeper. His daughter Celia wrote a poem about the island’s sandpipers, which the Atlantic magazine published. Laighton later built a summer resort on another island in the Isles of Shoals, and Celia Laighton Thaxter became one of America’s most popular writers. She maintained a salon on the Isles, hosting such luminaries as Childe Hassam, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Ralph Waldo Emerson.

New Hampshire’s oldest lighthouse was built of brick with a cast iron lantern.

The island is closed to the public, but you can get close to White Island Light in an excursion boat.

White Island, Rye, N.H.

Poplar Point Light

Built in 1831 in North Kingstown, R.I., Poplar Point Light is not only Rhode Island oldest lighthouse, it’s the oldest with a wooden tower in the United States.

Wickford, R.I.’s, protected harbor off Narragansett Bay allowed the village to develop as a shipping point for trade between local plantation and international ports.

Poplar Point Lighthouse

Congress agreed to spend $3,000 for a light at the entrance to Wickford Harbor, and local contractors finished it by the end of 1831. The Poplar Point Light guided sloops and schooners in and out of the harbor’s wharves.

By 1838, a Coast Guard survey concluded the light wasn’t needed, but Poplar Point Light stayed lit. By 1870, the government decided to build a new lighthouse at Old Gay Rock to guide the burgeoning ferryboat traffic. Albert Sherman bought Poplar Point Lighthouse at auction for $3,944.67. By 1932, Edith Grant owned the lighthouse and built a large house around it. The Shippee family bought the building in 1962, and has lived there since.

Poplar Point Light is not open to the public, but Rhode Island Bay Cruises and Save the Bay offer lighthouse cruises that may go near. They usually run between May and October.

Juniper Island Light

The oldest lighthouse in Vermont: Juniper Island Light in Lake Champlain.

Juniper Island Light is not only the oldest lighthouse in Vermont, it’s the oldest cast iron lighthouse left in the United States. Originally a lantern on a post on Juniper Island marked the entrance to Burlington Harbor until a 30-foot-tall brick tower, the first on Lake Champlain, replaced it. That fell to a tower of cast iron in 1846. The lighthouse guided thousands of ships into Burlington Harbor, for many years the second busiest lumber port in the United States.

After 108 years of service, an automatic light on a tower replaced the Juniper Island Light. A state senator named Fred Fayette bought the island and the lighthouse in 1956. Careless campers started a fire that destroyed the lighthouse keeper’s house in 1962. Fayette’s 11 children inherited the island after his death and in 2001 began to reconstruct the keeper’s house with reclaimed bricks. They later restored and painted the tower.

Juniper Island, Burlington, Vt.

Images: Portland Head Light, By Rapidfire – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7161757; Boston Light By Dpbsmith at the English language Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1663166. This story was updated in 2023.

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The Fort Griswold Massacre: Benedict Arnold’s Final Treachery?

Benedict Arnold committed his final act of treason against his fellow Connecticut countrymen during the little-remembered Fort Griswold massacre. He also ordered New London plundered and burned across the river, just a few miles from his hometown of Norwich.

In September 1781 the Continental Army under George Washington intended to trap English general Charles Cornwallis and his army at Yorktown, Va. That would set the stage for the decisive victory that ended the American Revolution.

The commander of English forces for the colonies, Henry Clinton, was in New York. Upon realizing Washington’s strategy, he wanted to distract the American army from its pursuit of Cornwallis in Virginia.

Henry Clinton

Benedict Arnold

Clinton turned to Gen. Benedict Arnold. Almost exactly a year earlier, Arnold, a one-time officer in the Connecticut militia, had joined the British side.

Clinton ordered Arnold to attack Connecticut forces at New London and capture the city. He hoped the port could become a useful base of operations for the British. New London also had warehouses full of military supplies for the patriot cause.

Arnold then transported 1,700 British regulars, Hessians and Loyalists from New York.

Benedict Arnold before turning traitor

On Sept. 6, 1781, Rufus Avery stood the night watch at Fort Griswold. He saw the enemy fleet in the harbor at about 3 a.m., as soon as daylight appeared. Avery counted 32 in all — ships, brigs, schooners and sloops. He felt a “thrill of dread.”

The Burning of New London

Arnold landed half his men on the New London side of the Thames River under his own command. The rest he directed to land on the other side at Groton under the command of Col. Edmund Eyre.

New London, 1813

On the New London side, the army marched to Fort Trumbull at the river mouth and then split up. Half proceeded to New London, where they plundered and burned the town from both ends. They destroyed more than 140 homes, warehouses and shops as well as the ships at the wharves.

Capt. Adam Shapley had only 24 Continental soldiers holding down Fort Trumbull. He spiked the cannon, and then he and his men tried to board vessels waiting to take them to safety up the river. But the British were too quick, and badly wounded seven of them.

Battle of Groton Heights

On the Groton side of the river, it took longer for the British forces to climb the heights through tangled underbrush. The fort’s commander, Col. William Ledyard, had only about 165 men, militia and volunteers, to face down 800 of the enemy. He sent messengers to the local militias to ask for help, but none came.

1781 map showing British military movements

The two sides exchanged fire for about an hour. Then the British commander, Eyre, sent a flag of truce to demand surrender. Ledyard refused. Eyre again sent the flag. His message: What they did not kill by ball, they should put to death by sword and bayonet.

Ledyard replied they would not give up the fort, “let the consequences be what they would.”

The British then advanced on the fort, despite a barrage of artillery fire that caused heavy casualties. Eyre suffered wounds that may have been mortal (accounts differ) and his second-in-command was killed.

The loss of their officers didn’t deter the bloodthirsty British soldiers, wrote Avery. He described hard fighting, shocking slaughter and much blood spilled. Finally, several British regulars reached the gate and opened it. The British then marched in.

Fort Griswold Massacre

Ledyard ordered the American flag struck and stepped onto the parade ground to parley. His British counterpart asked him who commanded the fort. Ledyard said, “I did, but you do now.”

Ledyard offered his sword, expecting the officer to either keep it or give it back. Instead, he took Ledyard’s sword and stabbed him to death with it. Some claim the Americans then stabbed the British officer. Others say they did not.

Over the next two minutes the British killed every American they could, wrote Avery. “We trod in blood!” he wrote. “We trampled under feet the limbs of our Countrymen, our neighbors and dear kindred. Our ears were filled with the groans of the dying.”

Estimates of the American dead vary from as few as 30 to more than 80.

Lower battery of Fort Griswold

Avery thought the British grew tired of human butchery, and so let the rest of them live. They then marched their prisoners down to a sloop. After days of hardship at sea, the British exchanged prisoners, and Avery returned home.

Aftermath

The day after the carnage, 16-year-old Jonathan Rathbun arrived in New London with his militia company from Colchester, Conn.

“[W]e witnessed a scene of suffering and horror which surpasses description,” he wrote. “The enemy were not to be found, but they had left behind them the marks of their barbarism and cruelty. The city was in ashes.”

Memorial plaque to those who died defending Fort Griswold. It also depicts the surrender of William Ledyard.

He saw more than 130 naked chimneys standing in the midst of smoking ruins. New London, he wrote, had been destroyed but not deserted. The British had made 40 widows in New London the day before, and Rathbun saw them following the carts that bore their dead fathers, husbands or brothers,” he wrote. “Never can I forget the tears, the sobs, the shrieks of wo[e].”

Clinton praised Arnold for his success, but complained about the number of British casualties suffered during the fighting. He’d lost about a quarter of his men.

The battle marked the one of the last major British victories of the American Revolution. It was soon followed shortly by Cornwallis’ surrender at Yorktown to French and American forces.

According to legend, the Marquis de Lafayette shouted, “Remember Fort Griswold,” as the allies stormed the British redoubts.

This story updated in 2023.

With thanks to Narrative of Jonathan Rathbun, With Accurate Accounts of the Capture of Groton Fort, the Massacre that Followed, and the Sacking and Burning of New London, September 6, 1781, by the British Forces Under the Command of the Traitor Benedict Arnold By Jonathan Rathbun, Rufus Avery, Stephen Hempstead

Images: Lower battery of Fort Griswold By It'sOnlyMakeBelieve – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=101275905. Memorial plaque By It'sOnlyMakeBelieve – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=101276156.

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Six Places Where a Revolutionary Hero Lived

You didn’t have to show courage in battle to be a revolutionary hero. But if you were, it probably took more than a century for historians and builders to restore your house and turn it into a museum.

Benjamin Edes and his partner, John Gill, did more to stir up revolutionary fervor in the American colonies than any other publisher. On the night of Dec. 16, 1771, Sons of Liberty secretly assembled at Edes’ home in Boston. They disguised themselves as Indians and walked down to the wharves. There a crowd gathered while they chopped open the tea chests on three ships and dumped all the tea into the harbor.

Today, you can visit Benjamin Edes’ old print shop, next to the Old North Church on the Freedom Trail.

Every New England state has a home or an office belonging to a hero of the American Revolution. Here are six of them, one for each state. All but one existed in obscurity for more than a century, their association with a revolutionary hero forgotten. The colonial revival stimulated interest in the old buildings, and historians transformed them into museums.

If you know of a landmark associated with a revolutionary hero, please share it in the comments section.

Nathan Hale Homestead

The Nathan Hale Homestead, which memorializes Connecticut’s most cherished revolutionary hero, in Coventry, Conn.

Every schoolchild knows the story of Nathan Hale, the young schoolmaster turned spy for George Washington. The famous Indian fighter Robert Rogers captured him on Long Island, and the British hanged him without a trial. The State of Connecticut considers him a revolutionary hero for his defiant last words, “I only regret that I have but one life to live for my country.”

When the Hale family hadn’t heard from Nathan in a while, his brother went to Old Saybrook, Conn., to track him down. He learned Nathan was killed and was given a trunk of his belongings.

The Hale family eventually sold the house and it passed through several hands. Then a Connecticut lawyer named George Dudley Seymour got caught up in the Nathan Hale story. He found out the house, sadly in need of repair, was for sale. Seymour bought it, restored it and filled it with Connecticut antiques, including Nathan’s trunk.

Nathan Hale never lived in the Nathan Hale Homestead, but he did live in a house on the same location. His family tore it down during the war to build the bigger house, which survived.

The Hale Homestead grounds are open year round from dawn to dusk, and the house itself is open for tours from May to October.

2299 South St., Coventry, Conn.

Wadsworth-Longfellow House

The Wadsworth-Longfellow House, home to a revolutionary hero and a poet.

Peleg Wadsworth, grandfather of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, served in the Continental Army as a brigadier general. His greatest moment in the war came during the disastrous Penobscot Expedition. As British warships drove American forces up the Penobscot River, Wadsworth saved his men by leading a retreat by land back to Boston.

The British later captured Wadsworth from his headquarters in Thomaston, Maine, and confined him at Fort George in Castine, Maine. He escaped by cutting a hole in the ceiling and crawling along the joists.

Wadsworth went home to Plymouth, Mass., but he returned to Maine and bought property in what is now Portland. He built the first brick house in the city, now known as the Wadsworth-Longfellow House. His son and wife lived in the house, where they raised their children.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s sister owned the house until her death in 1901, when she bequeathed it to the Maine Historical Society. The historical society runs it as a house museum – Maine’s first, as a matter of fact. It’s open May through October.

489 Congress St., Portland, Maine

Printing Office of Edes & Gill

Where Benjamin Edes published the Boston Gazette.

Benjamin Edes, along with his partner John Gill, didn’t fight in the war, but he was nonetheless a revolutionary hero. Edes, more than any other publisher, stoked public indignation over Parliament’s abuse of the American colonies.

Edes and Gill worked out of a print shop in Boston’s North End, near Paul Revere’s house and next to the Old North Church. The Old North Church now owns the building where Edes and Gill ran their printing press.

Edes escaped Boston during the siege and moved to Watertown, Mass., where he continued to publish the Boston Gazette until 1798. The British arrested his 17-year-old son Peter for 3-1/2 months, mostly because they hated his father.

The North End went from a fashionable neighborhood to a slum, then back to fashionable.The Printing Office of Edes & Gill opened as a museum in 2011. Interpreters show how colonial printers worked their trade on the museum’s historic equipment. They also explain how Boston’s patriot press incited the American colonies to rebellion.

21 Unity St., Boston, Mass.

Gen. John Stark House

The home of Indian fighter and revolutionary hero John Stark in Manchester, N.H.

Gen. John Stark gave New Hampshire its motto, which you’ve no doubt seen on its license plates: Live Free or Die.

The old Indian fighter marched his New Hampshire militia to Boston as soon as he heard about the Battles of Lexington and Concord. During the Battle of Bunker Hill, he led his men to a spot where he anticipated the British would attack. He may or may not have said, “Don’t fire until you see the whites of their eyes.” Someone did; it just isn’t clear who.

He was an unsung revolutionary hero of the Battle of Saratoga, where he and his men prevented the British from retreating north. His heroics at the Battle of Bennington are more widely remembered. Even today, many New Hampshirites can quote him: “There they are boys! We beat them today or Molly Stark sleeps a widow tonight!”

Stark famously went home to his farm in Derryfield (now Manchester) after the war and died at age 93. The Stark family sold his boyhood home in 1821, and then the Amoskeag Manufacturing Company bought it in 1835 to use as worker housing. In 1937, the company gave the building to the Daughters of the American Revolution, who restored it. They moved it to the original Stark farm in 1968 and turned it into a house museum.

2000 Elm St., Manchester, N.H.

Nathaniel Greene Homestead

The home of Nathanael Greene, revolutionary hero.

Nathanael Greene had asthma, walked with a pronounced limp and belonged to the pacifist Quaker religion.

None of that stopped him from becoming a revolutionary hero doing some of the toughest jobs of the war for independence.

When Americans despaired of ever evicting the British, Nathanael Greene lured Gen. Cornwallis away from his supply lines and into battles that inflicted heavy casualties. Greene took control of most of the South away from British forces and returned to his home in Rhode Island.

Nathanael Greene built the house in 1770, and his family lived there through the war. Greene moved his family to Newport at the war’s end in 1783, but then relocated to Georgia and died soon thereafter.

He had sold the Coventry house to his brother Jacob, and it remained in the Greene family until 1899. The family, though, rented it as a tenement house and neglected to keep it up.

In 1919, the Nathanael Greene Homestead Association formed to restore the former home of Rhode Island’s best known revolutionary hero. Today it’s a house museum, and part of the Anthony Village Historic District. Open for tours from April through October.

20 Taft St., Coventry, R.I.

Ethan Allen Homestead Museum

The Ethan Allen Homestead, home of Vermont’s greatest revolutionary hero.

Ethan Allen could claim stature as a revolutionary hero for capturing Fort Ticonderoga with Benedict Arnold in 1775. But he spent most of the war imprisoned by the British and then, after his release, ferreting out Loyalists in Vermont.

He spent the years after his imprisonment pursuing politics, writing books and speculating in land. He and his family moved to a new house overlooking the Winooski River in Burlington in 1787, but he only lived there until his death in 1789. His survivors sold the house, which passed through several hands. Local people always knew the house had belonged to Ethan Allen, but no one did much about it until a Burlington resident named William J. Van Patten bought it in 1902.

Van Patten donated 12 acres of the property to the Sons of the American Revolution on condition they maintain it as a park and build a tower to Vermont’s revolutionary hero. They did, and Van Patten lived in the house and ran the rest of the property as a dairy farm.

In the late 1980s, a surviving remnant of the farm was turned into The Ethan Allen Homestead Museum. It now functions as a house museum with living history events and lectures on Vermont’s history. Open May through October.

1 Ethan Allen Homestead, Burlington, Vt.

Images: By Sphilbrick – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11802250; Clough House By MLHalsey – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=23197901; Gen. John Stark House By User:Magicpiano – Own work, GFDL, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19357747; Nathanael Greene Homestead By Camanda at en.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18112163; Ethan Allen Homestead By Mfwills; cropped by Beyond My Ken (talk) 02:11, 24 October 2013 (UTC) – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=29160603

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