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Middletown RI

Six Sears Houses

In the early part of the 20^th century, you could buy Sears houses for the price of a good pair of shoes today.

Times certainly changed. In 2005, a high-end Sears home sold for $900,000.

Sears, Roebuck and Co. sold about 100,000 kit houses from catalogs between 1908 and 1942. They were shipped by rail, with pre-cut lumber stamped for assembly. The company promised a man of average abilities that he could finish the house within 90 days — if he followed the 75-page instruction book.

Sears Houses

Sears got into the business of catalog homes because its building products division was losing money. Frank W. Kushel, who managed the company’s china department, was given the task of turning around building products. He suggested the company sell entire houses in 22 styles and ship them from the factory.

Sears copied the popular housing styles of the day, which included colonial revival features taken from historic New England homes. There’s even one model called The Puritan.

Sears marketed the houses as ‘machine made’ with already cut lumber. “No waste, no mistakes, no big labor bills,” read the catalog copy.

The kits came with nails, shingles, shellac, windows, doors, trim hardware, paint and downspouts. They did not include cement, bricks or plaster. Materials for indoor plumbing, electricity and central heating had to be bought separately.

By 1920, Sears was shipping an average of 125 houses a month. Nine years later, Sears sent 250 houses each month from just one of its four plants. The company boasted it was the world’s largest home builder.

Sears also financed home purchases, and half its homes were tied up in mortgage loans by the time of the Great Depression. The company lost $11 million on defaulted mortgages in 1934, and by 1940 it was out of the house business.

Hamden, Conn.

The C225

Realtors say a Sears house can sell for more because of the enduring quality of the materials and construction.

Sears homes were built throughout Connecticut. In Hartford alone there are dozens, but they are also in Putnam, Hamden, Canton, Shelton, Bethel, Plainville and Torrington.

The 1916 Sears catalog featured testimonials from two men who bought Sears houses in Connecticut.

D.G. Arnold wrote he was ‘well pleased’ with his home, Modern Home No. 119, in Putnam, Conn.

“All the rough lumber, doors, windows, clapboards, flooring, moldings and stairs, in fact everything required to finish a first class house, came from Sears, Roebuck and Co. at a savings of about $500, as compared with local prices,” he wrote. “My builder says he never used better finish and he has had fifty years’ experience.”

L.S. Chapman from Shelton wrote to say he saved several hundred dollars and found the materials better than expected. “Our house, No. C225, is beautiful.

The cottage at Lockwood Farm in Hamden is a Sears house. So are the Cello House, the Viola House and the Second Fiddle House at the Music Mountain in Falls Village, Canaan.

Sears didn’t make all pre-cut houses. There were actually six large companies that made kit houses, but none had the marketing clout of Sears and its famous catalog. Another company, Aladdin, sold enough homes to the Bristol Brass. Co. in 1916 to fill four blocks near the factory in Bristol, Conn.

Bucksport, Maine

The entrance to the Sears Belfast was modeled on the doorway of the Perkins House in Castine, Maine.

Identifying Sears houses has become a cottage industry for fanatics who produce books, blogs, documentaries and even bus tours by the Smithsonian Associates.

Sears enthusiasts argue whether Bucksport, Maine, has a neighborhood full of identical Sears houses – Belfasts, to be precise. Writer Scott Sowers says yes. Rose Thornton, who has made a career of identifying Sears houses, says no.

“The Sears Belfast and the Bucksport Houses are wildly different from one another,” wrote Thornton after examining a photo of a Bucksport house.

(Tangentially, the front doorway of the real Belfast was modeled on the doorway of the historic Perkins House, built in 1769 in Castine, Maine.)

People authenticate Sears houses by comparing them to the models in the Sears archives. That’s usually not enough, since houses are often altered over the years. They must also look for stamped lumber in the basement or attic, shipping labels on moldings or the characteristic ‘SR’ stamped on bathroom fixtures. (For other clues, click here.)

We did track down a Sears house on Lindsay Road in York, Maine.

A Sears house in York, Maine

Longmeadow, Mass.

A Sears Verona, catalog illustration

Sears houses arrived in two railroad box cars in a variety of styles and prices. At the high end was the Magnolia, a four-bedroom, high-ceilinged colonial modeled after Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s house in Cambridge, Mass. It sold for $5,972. (See featured image.)

At the low end was the Natoma, a three-room house that sold for $191. It had no bathroom, but you could buy the outhouse separately.

The Natoma

The Verona was another ‘high-class home,’ according to the catalog, ‘of the Dutch type of colonial architecture.’ An authenticated Sears Verona has been identified at 115 Belleclaire Ave., in Longmeadow, Mass.

A house on Medway St. in Norfolk, Mass., is in contention for being a Sears house. Authentic Sears houses were also assembled in Newton, Easthampton, Boston, Woburn, Springfield, Wrentham, Cohasset and Pittsfield.

Claremont, N.H.

The Castleton, catalog illustration

Two small New England companies also sold kit houses.

The Thayer Portable House Co. operated in Keene, N.H., from about 1920 to 1940. It had grown from the Springfield Portable House Co. in Massachusetts. There was also the Robinson’s-Money-Saving-Mill-Made Cut-to-Fit Houses of Providence, R.I.

Still, Sears was king in New England, shipping homes from its factory in Philadelphia.

Two Sears houses have been identified on Mulberry Street in Claremont, N.H. One was a Castleton; the other, a Lorain. (Click here to read more about these houses.)

The Castleton was promoted as ‘dignified and substantial,’ ‘a well-designed house that will make a pleasant home.’ The Lorain was marketed as a charming six-room colonial with dark shutters, snowy walls and window boxes. You can watch a documentary about restoring a Lorain here.

Middletown, R.I.

The Parkside, an economical Sears house

The Parkside was a cute, economical four-room house sold from 1934 to 1940. There’s an authenticated Parkside at 43 Beacon St. in Middletown, R.I. The current owner did considerable research into the house’s history and put up a website about it. (Check it out here.)

In 1938, the Middletown Parkside sold for $1,372. In 2006, it sold for $222,000. Bob Wolfenden, a military veteran, built the house in 1940 and lived in it for the rest of his life. He was a professional carpenter who became superintendent of the Newport, R.I., Water Department. He and his wife Mildred had no children.

John Little bought the house and enlarged it after his friend Bob died. The Parkside then changed hands several times, became a rental and went into foreclosure. It needed repair by the time the current owner bought it in 2006. You can see pictures of the house over the years here.

Burlington, Vt.

An Alhambra, from the catalog

Burlington, Vt., has so many catalog houses there’s a field guide to them called A Guide to the Catalog Houses of Burlington, Vermont.

Burlington was an ideal market for kits of Sears houses as well as for those of its competitors, Aladdin and Gordon Van Tine. The city’s population grew by 10 percent every decade while growing richer. The expansion of the streetcar network opened up cheap empty land. Burlington could also be reached by two major railroads, making it easy to ship kit houses.

Kit houses cluster in Burlington’s South End, the Five Sisters neighborhood, south of the University of Vermont campus, the New North End and Lakeview Terrace. Of the 30 kit houses identified in the Burlington field guide, 14 came from Sears.

A cluster of Sears houses in Burlington shows the range of styles: A four-square Fullerton and a Westly bungalow were identified on N. Prospect Street. Also:

- A Dutch colonial Lucerne on Catherine Street,
- A colonial revival bungalow called a Crescent on St. Paul Street
- A Spanish Colonial Alhambra on South Winooski Avenue
- A Tudor Revival Barrington at Marian Street.

Images: Perkins House By S437885 – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=35346344; Sears Catalog House, by InAweofGod’s Creation, Creative Commons license. This story about Sears houses was updated in 2022.

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Six Irish Landmarks in New England

There’s more to Irish-American history than the Great Hunger, the Kennedys and ‘No Irish Need Apply.’ Irish Catholics came to New England along with the Puritans, who encouraged the Scots-Irish to settle along the frontier. You’ll find some of the earliest Irish landmarks radiating out from Boston — in Southern Maine and across the New Hampshire border, for example.

The Irish fished off the New England coast when New Hampshire and Maine belonged to Massachusetts. They built Catholic churches when Paul Revere was making bells, and they carved canals when John Quincy Adams was president. They ran the gamut of social class, from household servants to one of Ireland’s greatest philosophers, who lived in Rhode Island.

Then between 1815 and 1845, as many as 1 million Irish immigrants came to ‘Amerikay,’ looking for opportunity.

Today Irish-Americans concentrate in the Northeast, where one in five New Englanders claims Irish ancestry. Boston is the most Irish city in the country. Nearly half the residents of Scituate, Mass., along Boston’s South Shore, are of Irish descent.

Here, then, are six Irish landmarks, one for each New England state. If you know of an interesting Irish landmark, please note it in the comments section.

1. Isles of Shoals, N.H.

Detail from Isles of Shoals painting by Childe Hassam

Before England destroyed Ireland’s merchant marine, Irish merchants traded with the American colonies as early as the 1630s. Irish fishermen from Galway and Waterford settled the Isles of Shoals, an archipelago of tiny islands nine miles from the Maine and New Hampshire coast.

By 1653 Europeans built a permanent settlement on the Isles of Shoals, a thriving entrepot where they caught fish, salted it and sold it on the world market. Fishermen named Kelley, Haley and McKenna lived on the islands with their families.

By 1645 as many as 600 residents lived on Hog (now Appledore) and Smuttynose Islands in Maine. When Massachusetts annexed Maine and tried to tax the Shoalers, most of them floated their homes over to Star Island in New Hampshire.

“For many years the Islands were a little kingdom and government of themselves and had a constantly increasing prosperity,” according to Michael J. O’Brien in the Journal of the American Irish Historical Society. They were a hard-drinking lot, and John Winthrop took a dim view of them.

By 1680, Roger Kelley was chief magistrate and described as “King of the Isles” and “Captain of the Isles.” Andrew Haley was described in 1680 as “King of the Shoals.”

The islanders abandoned their home during the American Revolution, and the islands developed into a summer colony for artists and writers. Childe Hassam frequently painted them.

No manmade Irish structures remain on the islands, but on a summer’s day a trip to the Isles of Shoals is a rare delight that evokes the fishermen’s past. The Isles of Shoals Steamship Co. offers several kinds of tours of the island.

2. Whitehall, Middletown, R.I.

Whitehall today

Bishop George Berkeley had achieved celebrity as an Anglo-Irish philosopher by the time he stepped onto dry land in Newport, R.I., on Jan. 23, 1729. He came to America because he intended to open a college in Bermuda. He believed the Protestant religion had lost ground, and America was the likeliest place to make up for what went missing in Europe.

Berkeley was born in his family castle in County Kilkenny. By the time he arrived in Rhode Island, he had already established a lasting reputation as a philosopher, taken holy orders in the Church of Ireland and risen to Dean of Derry.

Berkeley and his new wife bought a farmhouse in what is now Middletown, R.I. When he enlarged the home he called Whitehall, he remodeled the door case in Palladian style, introducing Palladianism to America.

In addition to Whitehall, Berkeley left several Irish landmarks. While Berkeley awaited funds for his college to arrive, his wife gave birth to a son, who survived, and a daughter, who didn’t. They buried Lucia Berkeley in the Trinity Church yard in Newport.

Berkeley also wrote a book in America, preached at nearby churches and founded the Philosophical Society, which became the Redwood Library. Fittingly, he also wrote the poem, Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way.

Back to England

The money for his college never arrived, so he departed for England in September 1731. He gave his library and Whitehall to Yale College, stipulating the income from the property support three Yale scholars.

Yale then rented the building as an inn for many years. The portrait painter Gilbert Stuart’s grandfather ran it, once hosting Dr. Alexander Hamilton.

Whitehall was long neglected until 1899, when the Colonial Dames of America got a 999-year lease on it. They then commissioned Norman Isham to restore two rooms. Today it functions as the Whitehall Museum House, at 311 Berkeley Ave.

For information about visiting hours in the summer, call 401 846-3116 or email [email protected].

And yes, Berkeley, Calif., took its name from Rhode Island’s prominent visitor.

3. Lockwood-Mathews Mansion, Norwalk, Conn.

Lockwood-Mathews Mansion

Irish were scattered throughout Connecticut well before the Great Hunger and even before the American Revolution. Some came as convicts or redemptioners — indentured servants. Amos Richardson, an early settler of Stonington, Conn., in 1653 wrote that a ship bringing Irish servants to Connecticut arrived in Boston. He bought four.

Irish women outnumbered Irish men. With few skills and little money, many of them became domestic servants. The money was better than in the mills, preferred by native Protestant girls who didn’t want to work in other people’s homes.

There were thousands of Irish servants in Connecticut. In 1880, the census showed 4,789 Irish-born women domestics in Connecticut; that grew to 5,571 in 1900. Almost half were younger than 25.

In 1876, a wealthy New York family named Mathews was looking for a country retreat in Connecticut. They bought a 48,000-square-foot mansion in Norwalk because they knew they could find enough servants to maintain the home. That’s because Norwalk had a Catholic Church, St. Mary’s, which attracted many Irish parishioners. St. Mary’s had been burned by Know Nothings in 1854.

The Mathews family had 10 Irish servants by 1880. They worked 10-hour days with only Sunday mornings and an afternoon off. They cleaned the floors and walls, polished silver, lit gaslights, tended the fireplaces.

The Lockwood-Mathews Mansion is now a house museum that includes renovated servants’ quarters.

The Lockwood-Mathews Mansion is at 295 West Ave., in Mathews Park, near the Stepping Stones Museum for Children.

4. Millville, Mass.

The Millville lock, one of many Irish landmarks in the town

Irish stonemasons first came to the Blackstone River Valley around 1825 to build the Blackstone Canal, which linked Worcester with Providence. The last of the big New England canals, it had 49 locks along 45 miles long. By 1827, 1,000 Irish canal builders cut granite for locks, dug the trench and built the tow path.

Joseph Banigan created Millville’s Irish identity. Banigan fled the Irish potato famine and arrived in Rhode Island in 1847 at the age of eight. He left school at the age of nine, and before he turned 30 he raised enough money to found the Woonsocket Rubber Co., which made boots and shoes.

In 1877, he bought some rundown mills and water rights in Millville across the border in Massachusetts. He turned the complex into a state-of-the art mill, adding 80 new houses for workers and a schoolhouse – known as Banigan City and Banigan City School.

98 Percent Irish

Banigan hired hundreds of Irishmen to work at the mill. By some estimates, Millville was 98 percent Irish from the late 19^th century to the 1980s.

By 1893 Joseph Banigan was the leading importer of rubber in the United States – and Rhode Island’s first Irish-Catholic millionaire. He sold his rubber company to the U.S. Rubber Co. cartel and became president, but didn’t last long. He started the Banigan Rubber Co. in Millville.

Banigan was ruthless toward his mostly Irish labor unions, but donated millions to orphanages, hospitals, nursing homes, schools and churches. He built Providence’s first skyscraper, the Banigan Building. Banigan died unexpectedly in 1898.

Shortly after his eldest son was born in 1900, an Irish worker named Fred Hartnett moved from Woonsocket to Millville to work at the Banigan mill. The son, Charles Leo, grew up to become a Hall of Fame catcher for the Chicago Cubs. He was better known as Gabby Hartnett.

Today, some of Millville’s worker housing can be found in the Main Street Historic District of Millville, which encompasses the village center of the town. You can hike and cross country ski to the Millville Lock along the 3.7 mile Blackstone River Greenway. A section of Rte. 122 from Millville to Blackstone is dedicated to Charles Leo “Gabby” Hartnett.

5. Arthur Birthplace, Fairfield, Vt.

Chester A. Arthur’s birthplace.

Many Irish came to the United States via Canada. They’re called two boaters, and they inspired the first presidential birther controversy.

Britain had imposed tariffs to the United States, but not to Canada, to encourage immigrants to populate the commonwealth. So empty boats that brought lumber to Britain from Canada offered cheap fares on the return trip. But Canada had few jobs and business boomed in America.

The Irish came from St. Jeans by steamboat to the Vermont communities of Burlington, Plattsburg and Whitehall. Some then moved on to Fairfield, Underhill, Moretown, Middlebury and Castleton.

Nathaniel Hawthorne described the Irish in Burlington in a travel sketch in 1835. He found them everywhere lounging around the wharves, he wrote, “swarming in huts and mean dwellings near the lake,’ and ‘elbow[ing] the native citizens’ out of work.

Fairfield, Vt., a farming community, had an unusually large Irish population.

After the War of 1812, Fairfield lost its Yankee farmers to Genesee or Ohio ‘fever.’ They gave up their rocky, hilly farms for the flat, rich land of western New York and the upper Midwest. They left behind cheap land, which the Irish had craved since the English had made it nearly impossible for Catholics to own land in Ireland. Fairfield was also near Catholic churches in southern Quebec, only two towns away.

By 1840, Fairfield’s population rose to 11.5 percent Irish. Chester A. Arthur’s Irish father came to Fairfield. The future president was then born in Fairfield in 1829. That aroused the suspicion of his political enemies. Opponents accused him of being secretly Canadian.

Click here for visiting hours to the Chester A. Arthur birthplace.

6. Neal Dow House, Portland, Maine

Neal Dow house, not one of the favorite Irish landmarks

The waves of Irish who fled the Great Hunger in the mid-19^th century faced poverty, disease and discrimination. In Portland, Maine, Mayor Neal Dow didn’t just discriminate, he attacked. Dow warred against the Irish with his temperance crusade. He had, after all, called them ‘rum-swilling foreigners.’

Dow famously feuded with an Irish bootlegger and brothel owner named Mrs. Margaret Landrigan. She called herself Kitty Kentuck. A two-boater from County Cork, she arrived in Portland in the 1840s. Her husband then left her with two sons, and she began selling liquor illegally.

Kitty Kentuck bought property in Portland, but went to jail for repeated liquor offenses from 1846-1851. Neal Dow’s estranged cousin John Neal defended her, and the two men attacked each other in the newspaper. Neal called her ‘a poor, but generous, kind-hearted Irish woman.’ Dow then countered she kept ‘a notorious groggery’ that caused police more trouble than any other.

Many Irish Landmarks in Portland

Kitty remarried, continued to bootleg and ran a sailor’s boardinghouse and brothel. Every deep-sea sailor supposedly knew the lyrics to a song about the pleasures one could find at Kitty’s. She spent time in the county jail for prostitution, and her building burned in the Portland fire of 1866. She then built a shanty where she died, presumably murdered. Police suspected Kitty’s son Michael of killing her, but never charged him.

Neal Dow’s house belongs to the Portland Irish Heritage Trail at 714 Congress St. Now a house museum (click here), it’s one of 58 Irish landmarks along the trail.

Images: Whitehall PD-US, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21354546; modern Whitehall, By JERRYE & ROY KLOTZ MD – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=23611134; Lockwood Mathews Mansion By Noroton at the English language Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6199774; Millville Lock courtesy Library of Congress. Arthur birthplace By Gerald L. Hann – camera, Attribution, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=37860210 This story about Irish landmarks was updated in 2023.

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William Barton Goes From Rhode Island Hero to Vermont Deadbeat and Back

Rhode Island’s Col. William Barton seized his place in history in July of 1777 when he slipped into Middletown, R.I. He passed more than 1,000 occupying British troops and kidnapped British General Richard Prescott from the house he occupied.

Portrait of William Barton by James Louis Sullivan now at Brown University in the Rhode Island Historical Society collection.

The news undoubtedly made an impression on the young Marquis de Lafayette, who had just arrived on his first visit to America hoping to join the Revolution. Years later, Lafayette would try to help Barton out.

Barton’s fortunes would take a bitter turn following his daring escapade. He spent more than a decade in a Vermont prison for nonpayment of a small debt to a town named after him.

William Barton

William Barton was born on May 26, 1748, in Warren, R.I. He took up the trade of hatter, which may explain his later mad behavior.

He married Rhoda Carver in 1771, and they eventually had four children. When he learned about the Battle of Bunker Hill, he joined a Rhode Island regiment as an adjutant in August 1775.

By 1777, the British occupied Newport, R.I. Sir Henry Clinton had commanded the occupation, but returned to England and left the high-handed Gen. Richard Prescott in charge.

Maj. General Richard Prescott was a thorn in the side of Rhode Islanders during the British occupation of Newport.

Prescott had already earned a bad reputation for his harsh treatment of American prisoners, including Ethan Allen. In Newport he allowed his men to cut down nearly every tree and use wooden grave markers for firewood. He ordered crops destroyed and people thrown in jail. And when people failed to doff their hats at him, he struck them with his cane, shouting, “Disperse, ye rebels.”

His men hated him as much as the Rhode Islanders did, which would prove his undoing.

In June 1777, William Barton, now a lieutenant colonel, had his headquarters in Tiverton, R.I. An American named Coffin escaped British captivity and made his way to the American lines. He told Barton that Prescott was living on an isolated farm belonging to Henry Overing, and he had forced his attentions on Mrs. Overing. Only a sentry and a few soldiers guarded the house.

The Kidnapping

Coffin convinced William Barton he could capture Prescott. So Barton took five whaleboats and 40 men who knew how to use them, muffled the oars with lambs’ wool and set out for Portsmouth. It took them 26 hours to travel 10 miles in pouring rain. The men had no idea what they were about to do.

Replica of a traditional whaleboat at Mystic Seaport.

They halted at Hog Island near the mouth of the harbor. The rain stopped, and at midnight Barton revealed the plan. After a day of rest, they slipped past the British warships guarding the harbor at night. The men put ashore opposite the Overing property and hiked through rough terrain to the house.

A sentry challenged them, but they quickly overpowered him. The sentry told them Prescott was asleep on the second floor. They found Prescott, though whether Mrs. Overing was with him is lost to history. “You are my prisoner,” said Barton.

“I acknowledge it, sir,” replied Prescott.

Barton ordered him out of bed and hustled him in his nightclothes toward the whaleboats. Thus Prescott earned the nickname ‘The Barefoot General.’

The Overing house, where Barton captured Prescott

Not long after he landed, a boat arrived under a flag of truce carrying the general’s clothing, wigs and perfumes. Eventually the Americans exchanged him for captured Continental Army general Charles Lee.

Vermont

William Barton received a painful leg injury in fighting in 1778 and never fully recovered. He did, however, continue to serve in the Continental Army throughout the Revolution.

But Barton’s orneriness, an asset during his war service, soon became a detriment. To honor his military achievements, the Congress awarded him a French-made decorative gold sword.

He bought land in northern Vermont in a town that now bears his name – Barton. He soon got embroiled in a bitter lawsuit over land that he had sold to two people. The court ordered him to pay $320 in damages.

Stubborn and difficult, William Barton refused to pay – though he could have. For 14 years he stayed in the prison in Danville, Vt., rather than settle his debt.

He had to live in a yard surrounded by chains, where people came to visit him and hear how he captured Prescott. Barton happily obliged.

Lafayette

The Marquis de Lafayette seldom forgot a friend, as he showed when he visited Vermont in 1825 on his final celebratory tour of America.

He had gone to Barton’s home in Providence, where Rhoda Barton told him he hadn’t visited her in 30 years.

Lafayette in 1825

The French hero of the American Revolution then saw Barton during his travels through Vermont. He offered to pay Barton’s debt, but Barton refused. Lafayette then quietly paid it himself.

After emerging from jail at age 77, William Barton found his capture of the British general had became a cause for celebration, commemorated annually. He would die six years later, his reputation restored, and be buried back in Rhode Island.

This story about William Barton was updated in 2022.

Images: Whaleboat By Stan Shebs, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=115479.

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Six Revolutionary War Battlefields in New England

Revolutionary War battlefields abound in New England, where, after all, the whole thing began. The patriots fought the British in every colony before and during the war, and many of the sites remain undeveloped.

Here is our choice for the best six Revolutionary War battlefields in New England, with one in each state.

Fort Griswold, Connecticut

Fort Griswold, one of the most infamous Revolutionary War battlefields.

Named after Deputy Gov. Matthew Griswold, the Connecticut Colony built the fort in 1775 in Groton to defend the supply depot at the mouth of the Thames River. The fort also protected privateers operating out of the harbor.

In 1781, the traitor Benedict Arnold led a company of British soldiers in an attack on New London. Meanwhile, another British commander, Edmund Eyre, attacked the fort. The British had the advantage. Arnold knew the angle to attack so the American gun positions couldn’t fire effective shots.

The British forces infamously massacred the American soldiers. After Col. William Ledyard surrendered his sword to the British, they ran him through with it. At the time of surrender, six Americans were dead and 20 wounded. When it was all over, 83 Americans were dead and 36 wounded. Arnold went on to burn New London.

The earthen walls of the fort still stand. The Ebenezer Avery House, which sheltered the wounded after the battle, has been restored on the grounds. A Revolutionary War museum also depicts the era.

For directions to Fort Griswold Battlefield State Park, click here. For information from the Friends of Fort Griswold Battlefield State Park, click here.

Fort George, Maine

Fort George, the Revolutionary War battlefield where the Penobscot Expedition ended in ignominy.

Castine, located in Downeast Maine, is one of the oldest European communities in North America. Since the early 1600s, French, Dutch and English colonists have built trading posts, forts, missions and permanent settlements there.

In 1779, the British sent troops to occupy Castine with the hope of establishing a colony called New Ireland. They built a fort and named it after King George III.

Massachusetts, alarmed by the British occupation, sent a combined naval and military expedition to capture the fort that summer. Known as the Penobscot Expedition, it had 19 warships and 24 transports. Though the patriots outnumbered the British, they failed to take Fort George and suffered the worst U.S. naval defeat until Pearl Harbor. Paul Revere, in charge of ordnance, ended up court martialed for cowardice and insubordination. He fought the charges and won his acquittal.

Some of Fort George still remains, as does the British canal built in 1779, gravesites of Revolutionary War soldiers and historic houses, taverns and churches. Castine has marked its many historic sites with signs. (Click here for a map.)

Minute Man State Park, Massachusetts

North Bridge, the granddaddy of all Revolutionary War battlefields.

It doesn’t get much better than Minute Man National Historic Park in Lexington, Lincoln and Concord.

The 970-acre park memorializes the opening battles of the American Revolution – and then some.

Lexington Battle Green, site of the shot heard round the world, belongs to the Town of Lexington. The Buckman Tavern sits on the green, which leads to the five-mile-long Battle Road Trail. Patriot militia skirmished with the British regulars along the trail, now a restored colonial landscape that includes the Hartwell Tavern.

In Concord, Daniel Chester French’s famous Minute Man statue stands by the North Bridge, where the colonial militia shot back at British soldiers in the second battle of the day.

The Wayside also belongs to the park. Authors Amos Bronson Alcott and his daughter Louisa May Alcott, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Margaret Sidney lived there (not all at the same time).

The Town of Lexington owns and maintains Lexington Battle Green, site of the shot heard round the world.

Fort Constitution, N.H.

Fort Constitution and the Portsmouth Harbor Light.

An important skirmish before the war took place in New Castle, N.H. A handful of British soldiers manned Fort William and Mary there in 1774, when tensions rose between the colonies and England. The stone fort stood at the mouth of the Piscataqua River, guarding access to the harbor and to Kittery, Maine (then Massachusetts).

Paul Revere rode to Portsmouth in December to warn patriots that British troops might seize powder and guns at the fort. A raiding party of 400 men then stormed the fort. They subdued the six soldiers inside and took the gunpowder, muskets and cannon.

The fort, renamed Fort Constitution, now belongs to the State of New Hampshire. The Portsmouth Harbor Lighthouse stands inside the fort.

Fort Constitution Historic Site is a great spot for a picnic. For more information click here.

Quaker Hill, R.I.

The most famous Rhode Island battle of the American Revolution is called the Battle of Rhode Island or the Battle of Quaker Hill. By August 1778, the British had occupied Newport, on Aquidneck Island, for almost two years. That month, Continental Army troops led by Gen. John Sullivan sailed from Tiverton to Portsmouth and set up a siege on Aquidneck. They planned to drive the British soldiers back to Newport and then recapture the town with the help of French naval forces.

But a hurricane prevented the French naval commander, Count d’Estaing, from attacking the 6,000 entrenched British soldiers. D’Estaing instead sailed his fleet to Boston for repairs. The patriots then tried to withdraw, but the British attacked them in Portsmouth in a valley among three hills. The Americans retreated to Tiverton without a single soldier killed. The 1^st Rhode Island Regiment, comprised of African- and Native-American soldiers, took part in the action.

The 365 acres of the battlefield had no structures on them at the time of the conflict, but since then 36 houses and a barn have been built.

At the intersection of Route 2 and West Main, the state chapter of the NAACP put up a marker to commemorate the 1st Rhode Island’s role in the battle. And a granite memorial stone marks the Battle of Rhode Island on the corner of Union Street and Route 138 in Portsmouth.

A site of another skirmish is nearby. On the night of July 11, 1777, Col. William Barton and about three dozen infantrymen sailed from Tiverton to Middletown and captured British general Richard Prescott in his bed.

Prescott was occupying a farm owned by a Loyalist, despite warnings of inadequate security. That farm, now known as Prescott Farm, was restored with the help of heiress Doris Duke. The public can now visit. Visitors can tour the house where Barton captured Prescott, a windmill, a country store, a guardhouse and a historical vegetable garden. For more information, click here.

Hubbardton Battlefield, Vermont

Vermont’s only Revolutionary War battlefield, in Hubbardton.

The Hubbardton Battlefield in Hubbardton is the site of the only Revolutionary War battle fought entirely in Vermont (or what would become Vermont). (The Battle of Bennington was actually fought in New York state.) It’s also one of the best preserved battlefields in America.

The battle started on July 7, 1777, when British forces caught up with the American rear guard of the forces retreating after they withdrew from Fort Ticonderoga. The Americans, led by Seth Warner, fought with discipline and inflicted heavy casualties on the British. Though they lost the battle, they halted the British and prevented them from pursuing the main American army.

The battlefield itself and the small museum that explains it lie off the beaten path, but they feature stunning views of the Vermont landscape. It’s off Exit 5 on Route 4, between Rutland and New York state.

Click here for more information.

Photos: Portsmouth Harbor Lighthouse and Fort Constitution By Kenneth Dupont – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=62728239. Fort Griswold Battlefield State Park by By Staxringold via English Wikipedia. Fort George earthworks and cannon by Jerrye and Roy Klotz via Wikipedia. Old North Bridge By Daderot at en.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5942756. This story about Revolutionary War battlefields was updated in 2022.

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British General Richard Prescott Gets Kidnapped from his R.I. Summer Home

In July of 1777, British general Richard Prescott was in charge of the troops occupying Newport, R.I. But unsatisfied with his house in the city, he also took over a farm in Middletown, R.I.

Prescott Farm in Middletown, R.I.

Richard Prescott

Prescott had no use for the rebels who had risen up against Britain, and perhaps too little respect for their abilities. He only took a tiny contingent of sentries with him to the farm. He stayed there with just a light guard — a practice that would earn him criticism back home very soon.

The Rhode Island militia’s major William Barton, stationed in Tiverton, learned about Richard Prescott’s lightly guarded summer home. An American soldier held by the British had managed to escape, and he revealed Prescott’s whereabouts. A deserter confirmed the intelligence.

An idea began taking shape in Barton’s mind. With Newport firmly under British control and the waters surrounding the peninsula thick with British ships, it would have been foolhardy to attempt to steal Prescott from the city. But his farm residence was a different matter.

Tit for Tat?

The British had embarrassed the patriots earlier that year when they captured Gen. Charles Lee upstairs at a tavern in New Jersey. Apparently his captors discovered him in dubious circumstances. The thought of returning the favor by swiping Prescott appealed to William Barton.

William Barton

Barton recruited a band of more than 30 men. The skills he needed most were a knowledge of the Newport peninsula and experience rowing in small boats. With his men selected, he began discreetly training, drilling them in small boats until he knew he had an able crew. On July 5, the small group left Tiverton. Two days later, the long boats proceeded to Warwick.

The details of the mission had only been completely explained to the men two days earlier. On the night of July 9, the weather conditions were right for their launch.

Causing barely a ripple, the party rowed their boats down the bay and landed near the farm where Richard Prescott stayed. None of the ships in the bay spotted them. After only a minor scuffle with a sentry, the men confronted Richard Prescott in his bedroom. Then they stole back into the night, bringing the general with them.

Richard Prescott, Captive

By the time British sentries raised an alarm, the boats had returned to the water. The trip back to Warwick Neck took more than six hours. Barton, in telling the story, recalled that Prescott had concerns about his treatment. The party that captured him included a man who the general had sentenced to 300 lashes for failing to assist the British in moving a cannon.

Barton assured him, however, that he would be treated well, according to the custom of the times. Though Prescott had been hustled onto the boat with only slippers and limited clothing, it wasn’t long after he landed that a boat arrived under a flag of truce carrying the general’s clothing, wigs and perfumes.

As news of the capture spread, crowds gathered to gawp as Prescott was brought by coach to Providence and from there to Connecticut. He was eventually exchanged for General Lee, still cooling his heels in British custody.

This story was updated in 2021.

Images: Prescott Farm By The original uploader was Swampyank at English Wikipedia. – Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons by Kurpfalzbilder.de using CommonsHelper., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6189760.

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