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Why Glenn Miller Has a Memorial Stone in a New Haven Cemetery

Swing bandleader Glenn Miller was born in Iowa, grew up in the Midwest, got famous in New York City, lived in New Jersey and went missing in a plane somewhere over the English Channel during World War Ii.

So why is there a memorial stone to Miller in New Haven’s Grove Street Cemetery?

The short answer: I Sustain the Wings.

The longer answer: From March 27, 1943 to June 19, 1944, Glenn Miller and his musicians were ubiquitous in New Haven. They were there to put a spring in the steps of Air Force cadets on the Yale campus — and to lift the spirits of a country gone to war.

The Glenn Miller Story

In 1942, swing bandleader Glenn Miller dominated the radio waves as the most famous and the best paid musician in the country.

He was born March 1, 1904 in Clarinda, Iowa, but his parents moved around the Midwest during his childhood. He dropped out of the University of Colorado at Boulder to pursue a music career – playing the clarinet and the trombone.

For many years he struggled until he realized his strength lay in arranging and composing. He finally found success in 1938 with a big band that had a unique sound. The lead clarinet played the melody along with a tenor saxophone, and three other saxophones harmonized. People called it ‘sweet’ swing.

Swing was king, and Glenn Miller had the most lucrative swing band in America. It pumped out a string of hits – In the Mood, Pennsylvania 6-5000, Moonlight Serenade and Little Brown Jug. His Chattanooga Choo-Choo earned the first gold record ever. Miller appeared in Hollywood films, played at Carnegie Hall and made as much as $20,000 a week.

You’re In the Army Now

Glenn Miller sacrificed a great deal when he decided to join the war effort. He gave up millions to lift the morale of young men facing suffering and death far away from home.

“I, like every patriotic American, have an obligation to fulfill,” he said when he enlisted as an army captain (later a major) in 1942.

Historian Lawrence Erenberg wrote that Glenn Miller not only created a model of patriotic duty, but infused Depression-era swing music with a national purpose.

“His story highlights the powerful role that swing played in World War II and helps explain what American soldiers were fighting for,” wrote Erenberg.

Miller reported to the Army Specialist Corps, but transferred to the new Army Air Forces. There, the military brass accepted his proposal to run ‘a modernized Army band.’

Many talented musicians had joined the Army Air Corps. They included 19-year-old Henry Mancini, along with musicians from the Cleveland Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, the Boston Symphony and the NBC Symphony. Miller managed to snatch them up quickly by cutting through red tape and improvising procedures.

When he started with a marching band in Alabama, senior officers resisted Captain Miller’s innovation.

A scene in The Glenn Miller Story actually happened in New Haven. An officer reprimanded Miller for playing the St. Louis Blues March for a cadet drill.

Miller, played by Jimmy Stewart, replied, “Tell me, Major, are you still flying the same planes you flew in the last war?”

I Sustain the Wings

In the aftermath of Pearl Harbor the U.S. military had to quickly recruit, train and mobilize millions of civilians for war. Colleges turned their campuses over to the Army and Navy to train young men in a multitude of skills, from repairing airplanes to operating radar.

Air Force cadets marching past a statue of Nathan Hale at Yale.

At Yale 3,000 cadets moved into half the residential halls, sandbagged in case of attack. In late March 1943, Glenn Miller and the 418^th Army Air Force band joined them.

Why Yale? Because the Air Corps wanted a crack unit to produce national radio broadcasts. Yale offered the closest location to Manhattan for a radio production unit big enough for shows featuring Miller’s band. Called I Sustain the Wings, the show made its first national broadcast on Sept. 18, 1943. (Listen to five minutes of it here.) The show, which played Saturdays, included narration, radio skits, swing music and vocal numbers.

The Yale Band

Months before the first radio broadcast, Glenn Miller and his musicians made their presence known in New Haven. People stood on the sidewalks outside the rehearsal hall on Temple Street to listen to the music. Or they’d watch the band march to New Haven Green.

Miller didn’t just have a band. He had a 42-man marching band, a 19-man dance unit, jazz combo, radio unit and a string ensemble. And they played everywhere — East Hartford, Hartford, Meriden, Middletown, New London, Norwalk, Stamford, Wallingford and Westville.

On the morning of April 1, 1943, the band marched on New Haven Green for review formations. It continued to do so four mornings a week. On May 20, 1943, Miller activated the orchestra, which played its first concert nine days later.

In July 1943, the first of six I Sustain the Wings broadcasts from Woolsey Hall began, narrated by Sgt. Broderick Crawford.

Miller’s musicians played at enlisted men’s dances at Yale, war bond drives in Woolsey Hall and at New Haven Airport. They played at a recruiting show at the Shubert Theater, and a wedding in a Yale chapel. They played at the New Haven Arena, the Yale Drama School Theater, the Yale Bowl, the Roger Sherman Theater and the Loew’s Pole theaters. People started calling the musicians ‘the Yale Band.’

Opera singer Eileen Farrell was there, and remembers Glenn Miller and his band playing for the officers every day at lunch. She once took the train from New York with Rose Marie and Zero Mostel to perform at a bond rally on the football field. When they got there, she wrote, “Glenn Miller and his band were being driven around the field in jeeps, playing American Patrol as the soldiers performed a marching drill.”

Death in Europe

In 1944, Glenn Miller took his musicians overseas to entertain the troops. Gen. Jimmy Doolittle said, “next to a letter from home, that organization was the greatest morale builder in the European Theater of Operations.”

On Dec. 15, 1944, his small plane went down somewhere over the English Channel. His death sealed his music in the national consciousness as the soundtrack for World War II.

In 1993, local resident and Glenn Miller devotee Peter Cofrancesco held a memorial service for Glenn Miller in Grove Street Cemetery, the final resting place of Eli Whitney, Noah Webster and Walter Camp.

He spent his own money to buy a plot and granite memorial stone. Chiseled into the granite are the words “I Sustain the Wings – Sustineo Alas.”

Yale bands continue to play Glenn Miller’s music at concerts commemorating special events.

To see a video of Air Force cadets at Yale – to a Glenn Miller soundtrack – click here.

With thanks to Can’t Help Singing: The Life of Eileen Farrell By Eileen Farrell, Brian Kellow. And Swing Goes to War: Glenn Miller and the Popular Music of World War II by Lawrence Erenberg, Society and Consciousness During World War II. Images: Memorial stone By Noroton (talk) – Own work by the original uploader, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4670053; cadets at Yale, National Archives; Glenn Miller military photos, National Museum of the USAF. Grove Street Cemetery by Carol Highsmith, courtesy Library of Congress. This story was updated in 2023.

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The Double Life of Railroad King Robert Schuyler

Robert Schuyler was one of the most respected men of his era, the last person likely to pull off one of the greatest swindles in Wall Street history. But in 1853, that’s exactly what Robert Schuyler did.

Robert Schuyler

He came from an illustrious family, grandson of Gen. Philip Schuyler, hero of the Battle of Saratoga, and nephew of Alexander Hamilton. His relatives included the landowning Beekmans and Van Rensselaers, New York nobility.

When the organizers of the new New York & New Haven Railroad went to look for a president, they chose Robert Schuyler because he represented the last word in respectability and financial responsibility.

Years later all hell broke loose when it turned out that he sold thousands of shares of bogus stock, kept three sets of books and stole $137,527.98.

“If Robert Schuyler is capable of such a wrong,” editorialized a newspaper, “then no one is to be trusted.”

But he was capable of such a wrong, one that ranked with the Bernie Madoff scandal.

Robert Schuyler

Robert Schuyler was born on Sept. 16, 1798 in Rhinebeck, N.Y., to an aristocratic family with vast semi-feudal landholdings in the Hudson Valley. A man of culture and refinement, he cofounded New York’s Union Club.

After graduating from Harvard, Robert Schuyler made the successful transition into commerce, starting his career with steamboats. By 1846 he and his brother George formed R. & G. L. Schuyler, an investment firm specializing in railroads.

At one time, Robert Schuyler served as president of five railroads, including the New York & New Haven Railroad, the Harlem, the Illinois Central, the Rensselaer & Saratoga and the Sangamon & Morgan Railroads. People called him the Railroad King.

The directors of the New York & New Haven completely entrusted the railroad’s financial affairs to him as president and sole transfer agent.

Disasters

In May of 1853, the New York & New Haven Railroad train plunged into Norwalk Harbor and killed about 50 people. The dramatic railroad derailment was by far the country’s worst.

Sketch of the Norwalk Railroad accident

President Robert Schuyler took a little bit of the blame for the disaster. The Connecticut Legislature, assuming Schuyler spread himself too thin, passed a law forbidding anyone to hold more than one railroad presidency at a time. He resigned several of his presidencies, putting his brother in charge of one.

Despite the tremendous loss of life, the Norwalk tragedy didn’t cause the railroad undue financial harm.

Then one year later, a second disaster struck the New York & New Haven when the stock prices began to plunge. In less than five weeks it dropped from $93 to $73.5, suggesting some insiders knew about the stock manipulation going on.

The railroad board tried to contact Robert Schuyler, who claimed he had fallen ill with a bad hemorrhage of the lungs. The New York Herald, though, on July 6, 1854 reported, “Mr. Schuyler has not been confined to his house by sickness lately….He has gone to Canada or some other cool place. New York was too hot to hold him.”

Robert Schuyler had, in fact, fled to France.

Swindler

Schuyler’s lawyer had already handed the railroad directors a letter of resignation. “Your attention to the stock ledgers of your Company is essential as you will find there is much that is wrong,” wrote Schuyler.

It turned out that Robert Schuyler, as sole transfer agent, had sold 19,540 shares in unauthorized stock certificates worth about $54 million today.

At first, the board thought Robert Schuyler had started selling bogus stock after the Norwalk accident. But then the directors learned he’d been doing it much earlier.

He had also maintained three sets of books kept by three different clerks, none of whom knew what the others were doing. He paid damage claims from the Norwalk accident by taking money from railroad accounts in cash and giving out notes signed by him as president.

Allston (New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad station)

Confusion reigned upon the discovery of the swindle because it was so hard to tell who held the bogus stock and who held genuine shares.

The first official meeting after the discovery of the fraud lapsed into chaos. Anyone who tried to be heard got shouted down by those demanding how many shares he held and where they came from. The meeting adjourned.

Stockholders did manage to elect a new slate of officers. And after 10 years of litigation, the court finally ruled that the railroad had to cover all losses.

Trouble Signs

How had people missed the signs of Robert Schuyler’s misdeeds? In hindsight, warning signs abounded.

The New York Herald had received an anonymous letter asking it to demand the board investigate Schuyler. But the paper ignored the letter because of its anonymous author.

And then there was Schuyler’s personal life. He had lived as a bachelor, but he had a family of six children by a woman he hadn’t married and who lived in a separate household. Then a minister proposed to his oldest daughter. To his horror, he discovered she was illegitimate. Robert Schuyler acceded to the minister’s demands and married the mother of his children.

Soon after the news broke about Schuyler’s swindle, the American Railroad Journal carried an editorial claiming not to be surprised. “His reputation for possessing business qualities of a high order, the influential circle in which he moved, and the unlimited confidence which he enjoyed, gave him a paramount voice in the management of numerous schemes, wrote the Journal.” But, it continued, ‘a blight always seemed to rest on everything he touched.’

In conclusion, the Journal had advised investors to stay away from railroad schemes in which Schuyler was involved. “…we took it for granted that he would rob any project of which he had control of whatever vitality he possessed.”

Death in Paris

Robert Schuyler supposedly died in France on Nov. 15, 1855, a little more than a year after the revelations about his mammoth swindle. But mystery surrounded his death as well. A classmate in 1857 wrote to the Harvard Librarian doubting that he had died. A coffin had arrived from France, and a funeral took place in New York, “but I could not find that anybody saw the body or identified it. It may have been a sham.”

With thanks to The Great Schuyler Stock Fraud by Robert B. Shaw and The Strange Case of Robert Schuyler by Sidney Withington.

Images: Allston station by Adam Moss via Flickr, CC By-SA 2.0.

This story was updated in 2022.

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Six Revolutionary Forts

Scattered throughout New England are dozens of revolutionary forts. Some, like Fort Halifax in Maine, date to the French and Indian wars. Others, like Fort Washington in Massachusetts, rose during the American Revolution.

Revolutionary forts range from the extensive remains of Mount Independence in Vermont to mere traces of earthworks in Rhode Island. All are sited along waterways and harbors, making them pleasant summer destinations today.

Here are six revolutionary forts, one for each state. If you know of another revolutionary fort worth visiting, please mention it in the comments section.

Black Rock Fort

Black Rock Fort, one of the revolutionary forts captured by the British.

In early 1776, Connecticut built a three-gun log fort and blockhouse on a rocky point in New Haven Harbor. Called Black Rock Fort, it stood on the site of an old fort built around 1657.

In 1779, British general William Tryon and 2,600 troops ravaged New Haven, Fairfield and Norwalk in Connecticut. They captured Black Rock Fort after its 19 defenders ran out of ammunition. Then, when the British forces withdrew, they burned the fort’s barracks. They’d already torched manor houses, barns, ships and supply houses.

In 1807, the abandoned fort was rebuilt and named after Connecticut hero Nathan Hale. Fort Nathan Hale II was built during the Civil War, but saw no action. Named a historic site in 1921, it grew neglected and overgrown after World War II.

But then came the nation’s bicentennial and the reconstruction of Black Rock Fort and Fort Nathan Hale. Today they belong to Fort Hale Park, and they include a drawbridge, moat, ramparts, earthworks, powder magazines and bunker.

Fort Nathan Hale Park has a sandy beach, picnic tables and spectacular views of the harbor.

Connecticut is also home to Fort Griswold in Groton and Fort Trumbull in New London.

Fort Nathan Hale Park and Black Rock Park, 36 Woodward Ave., New Haven, Conn.

Fort Halifax

Benedict Arnold and his troops occupied this abandoned fort on the way to Canada.

At the outset of the French and Indian War, Maj. Gen. John Winslow built Fort Halifax where the Sebasticook River flows into the Kennebec. Winslow’s great-grandfather, Edward Winslow, came to Plimoth Plantation on the Mayflower.

The British built Fort Halifax as a series of fortifications along the rivers to prevent the French and Indians from attacking English settlements. (Other significant pre-revolutionary forts from that era: Fort Pownall in Stockton Springs, Maine, and Fort Frederick in Saint John, New Brunswick.)

Like so many revolutionary forts, the American rebels took over Fort Halifax from the British. They decommissioned it, but then Benedict Arnold used it as a way station for his troops on his failed expedition to Quebec.

revolutionary forts-inside-halifax-blockhouse

Inside the blockhouse at Fort Halifax.

A single blockhouse survives, the oldest blockhouse in the United States. The fort was gradually dismantled to build the Town of Winslow, Maine, which grew up around it. The townspeople used it as a boathouse, a storehouse, a cow barn and a chicken coop.

In 1987, the Kennebec River flooded and washed the blockhouse downriver. Searchers found 22 original pine timbers, and they were used to rebuild the blockhouse. Hundreds of people came to the rededication ceremony in 1988.

Today Fort Halifax belongs to a municipal park, open to visitors in the summer.

70-98 Bay St., Winslow, Maine

Fort Washington

Washington fortified here.

Fort Washington Park in Cambridge, Mass., contains the remains of the only surviving fortification built by Gen. George Washington during the Siege of Boston. It’s also the oldest surviving fortification from the American Revolution.

Diagram of Washington’s battery, courtesy Library of Congress.

In November 1775, Washington wrote to Joseph Reed, “I have caused two three gun half moon batteries to be thrown up for occasional use.” About 50 or 60 men could find protection behind the earthworks.

Washington had quickly realized his soldiers needed training to fend off the professional British forces. He ordered his men to build the small batteries as a way of training them to build larger fortifications. They later built a battery at Dorchester Heights in Boston, fortified them with captured cannons and forced the British to evacuate.

After the war, seven people held the property in common. They deeded it to the City of Cambridge in 1857 on the condition that it ‘shall forever remain open for light, air, and adornment.’ Today the fort belongs to a park, and it includes three cannon and grassy embankments.

95 Waverly St., Cambridge, Mass.

Fort Constitution

Fort Constitution saw action just before the Revolution.

Before 1632, the British built a stone fort, then called the Castle, in New Castle, N.H. It stood at the mouth of the Piscataqua River. The Castle protected Portsmouth Harbor and stored the colony’s munitions. Then the colonists renamed it Fort William and Mary around 1692.

In 1774, a rumor spread in Boston that the redcoats were on their way to seize powder from Fort William and Mary. Only a handful of troops manned the fort, and they reported to the royal governor, John Wentworth.

Paul Revere then rode 60 miles to Portsmouth in a less-famous ride to warn the patriots of New Hampshire.

Four hundred men mustered to attack the fort, guarded by six troops. They broke open the powder house and captured the British soldiers. They also took 100 barrels of gunpowder later used in the Siege of Boston.

Fort William and Mary was the only manned fort in New Hampshire during the American Revolution, but saw no action.

When it was rebuilt in 1808, it was renamed Fort Constitution. It’s the ruins of the 1808 fort that are still in evidence at the state historic site, open year-round. Fort Constitution is a great spot for picnics, though it is unstaffed and not pet friendly.

During the Revolutionary War, Fort No. 4 in Charlestown no longer existed, but General John Stark gathered New Hampshire militia at its site en route to the Battle of Bennington in 1777.

25 Wentworth Road, Off NH Route 1B at US Coast Guard Station, New Castle, N.H.

Fort Conanicut

Edward Bannister painted this landscape of Fort Conanicut.

Fort Conanicut, first built as Dumpling Rock Battery in 1776 near Jamestown, R.I., had eight 18-pound guns.

The British captured the battery in late 1776 after they landed at Newport. They then expanded it, building Beaver Tail Fort, Beaver Head Fort and Fort Conanicut. As the French drew near, the British spiked the guns and destroyed the battery. Then they retreated to Newport.

The French occupied Fort Conanicut until 1778, when the British fleet appeared. A hurricane damaged both fleets and the French abandoned the fort. They didn’t return until 1780, but then left for Yorktown in 1781.

In 1790, a tower was built on the site and called Fort Dumpling. The military abandoned the fort in 1824 and then dynamited it in 1898 to make way for Fort Wetherill. Rhode Island now runs the site as a state park.

Some remains of the earthworks still exist, and an interpretive sign explains the fort’s history. The park sits atop 100-foot granite cliffs, a favorite spot for viewing Tall Ship events and the America’s Cup races.

Fort Wetherill State Park, Fort Wetherill Road
Jamestown, R.I.

Mount Independence

One of the most extensive of the revolutionary forts, Mount Independence.

Mount Independence in Orwell, Vt., is one of the largest and least disturbed Revolutionary sites in America. After the abandonment of the fort, livestock grazed on land that held unmarked soldiers’ graves.

Fort Ticonderoga stands across from it on the other side of Lake Champlain.

Rebel soldiers built the fort on a mountaintop to prevent the British from invading from Canada. They began building in July 1776, a week after the return of the disastrous Arnold Expedition to Canada. They called it East Point or Rattlesnake Hill until July 28, 1776. On that day Col. Arthur St. Clair read the Declaration of Independence to the soldiers and then renamed the fort Independence.

A year later, the Americans retreated. British and German then occupied the fort until November 1777.

Today Mount Independence has a museum and six miles of hiking trails. The museum includes exhibits about the fort and artifacts such as timbers, a cannon and a powder horn.

Hiking trails pass the remnants of blockhouses, soldiers’ huts and a general hospital. Trails lead to the remains of the fort, the Great Battery and the Horseshoe Battery. Re-enactors also stage encampments and the Seth Warner Mount Independence Fife and Drum Corps performs at civic events.

6 miles west of State Route 22A, Orwell, Vt.

Images: Black Rock Fort by 2112guy – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3319905. Fort Halifax, blockhouse interior By Magicpiano – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=28017965. Mount Independence By Zeph77 – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=27483591. Revolutionary Re-enactors, By Zeph77 – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=27521852. Fort Washington By Daderot – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5275220. Fort Conanicut By Swampyank at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20434654.

This story about revolutionary forts was updated in 2021.

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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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The Mad Hatters of Danbury, Conn.

The 19^th-century hat factories of Danbury, Conn., made physical wrecks of thousands of workers. They turned them into mad hatters with symptoms known as the Danbury shakes.

A Danbury hatter binding a hat.

Hat makers used mercuric nitrate to make hats. Many developed mercury poisoning, manifested as drooling, pathological shyness, irritability and tremor. Mercury poisoning looked a lot like drunkenness, a handy misconception for employers to exploit.

Hat History

Danbury’s hat-making history goes back to the late 18^th century. According to local legend, a man named Zadoc Benedict plugged a hole in his shoe with fur. He found sweat and friction turned it into felt.

Benedict began making felted fur hats on his bedpost and eventually opened a hat shop on Main Street. Others followed, setting up small hat shops in Danbury. By 1800, Danbury made more hats than any other U.S. city.

By the 1880s, industrialization and consumer demand fueled the growth of Danbury’s hat factories, which produced 5 million hats a year. People called Danbury ‘Hat City’ and formed baseball teams called the Danbury Hatters. A lighted sign proclaimed ‘Danbury Crowns Them All,’ and the city put a derby hat on its seal.

Danbury Mad Hatters

Working in the factories was awful. By the outbreak of the Civil War, doctors knew the symptoms of mercury poisoning. But no one did anything about it for almost a century.

To make hats, workers matted together rabbit or beaver skins and smoothed them with an orange solution containing mercuric nitrate. Hatters then shaped the resulting felt into large cones, shrank them in boiling water and then dried them.

mad hatters city seal

In 1851, the workers formed the hatter’s union. That year they reported on working conditions in an effort to improve them. One worker said:

So much steam, you didn’t only want to wear a rubber apron in front of you, but also over your head; there wasn’t any ceiling; the steam rising to the rafters, condensed and came down like rain.

According to the report, “Unknown to the workers it was a rain of death from the fumes of nitrate of mercury.”

Another worker said hatters hid the Danbury shakes:

I suspect I had it too, but I wouldn’t go to the doctor. If a worker claimed compensation, he got on the blacklist of the manufacturers — he couldn’t get another job unless he’d sign a waiver against future claims.

Danbury hatters sizing a hat

Diagnosis

The first clinical description of the problem was published in 1860. However, the U.S. Public Health Service didn’t study it until 1937 after prodding by the hatters’ union.

A British Journal of Industrial Medicine article described the mad hatters’ symptoms in 1946:

The man affected is easily upset and embarrassed, loses all joy in life and lives in constant fear of being dismissed from his job. He has a sense of timidity and may lose self control before visitors. Thus, if one stops to watch such a man in a factory, he will sometimes throw down his tools and turn in anger on the intruder, saying he cannot work if watched. Occasionally a man is obliged to give up work because he can no longer take orders without losing his temper or, if he is a foreman, because he has no patience with men under him. Drowsiness, depression, loss of memory and insomnia may occur, but hallucinations, delusions and mania are rare.

The most characteristic symptom, though it is seldom the first to appear, is mercurial tremor…It may be interrupted every few minutes by coarse jerky movements. It usually begins in the fingers, but the eyelids, lips and tongue are affected early. As it progresses it passes to the arms and legs, so that it becomes very difficult for a man to walk about the workshop, and he may have to be guided to his bench.

View of a Danbury hat factory, 1911

Better a Mad Hatter…

Hatters in the 19^th century faced a more lethal health problem than mercury poisoning: tuberculosis, then the leading cause of death in the United States. In the close, steamy hat workrooms, hatters easily caught the disease.

The hatter’s union fought for safer working conditions. Employers dismissed their complaints. They said the mad hatter symptoms — tremors and hallucinations — resulted from drunkenness and tobacco use.

After the turn of the century, court decisions that favored anti-union employers weakened the hatters’ unions.

In 1901 the United Hatters of North America went on strike against the Danbury hatmaking factory of D.E. Loewe & Co. Dietrich Loewe brought in scabs, and the unions successfully boycotted his hats, damaging him financially. Loewe sued the American Federation of Labor (AFL), the officers of the local hatters’ union and 250 rank-and-file members of the hatters’ union who lived in Danbury and Norwalk.

The case twice went all the way to the Supreme Court, which held the union unlawfully restrained trade. Loewe was awarded about $250,000, and the individual defendants had to pay his judgment. The company attached their paychecks and they faced losing their homes.

The AFL held a Hatter’s Day, in which union members throughout the United States donated an hour’s pay to the hatters. The judgment was paid and the workers kept their houses.

Alice Hamilton

During the 15 years the Danbury Hatters case moved through the courts, a socially prominent doctor who lived in Hadlyme, Conn., took up the cause of workers who got sick on the job.

Alice Hamilton

Alice Hamilton with her sister Edith Hamilton, the classicist, had attended Miss Porter’s School in Farmington, Conn., about 50 miles from Danbury. She earned a medical degree and joined Jane Addams’ settlement house, Hull House, in Chicago. Living with poor workers, she got interested in the injuries and illnesses they suffered on the job.

Alice Hamilton pioneered the fields of industrial hygiene and occupational epidemiology. In 1919 Harvard Medical School appointed her an assistant professor in the new Department of Industrial Medicine– its first woman faculty member. Hamilton investigated mercury poisoning and in 1922 produced a report.

Three years later, the Workers’ Health Bureau of America and the United Hatters of America promoted Hamilton’s findings. They reported on the Danbury shakes:

…[of] 100 union hatters of Danbury, Conn., examined by experts, 43 had mercury poisoning… Boys 20 and 21 years old are already so badly poisoned that their hands shake continually, while many of the men who have served longer at the trade cannot even feed themselves.

The report also concluded the symptoms did not result from alcohol and tobacco use, as employers had claimed.

Dec. 1, 1941

Finally, on Dec. 1, 1941, Connecticut banned the use of mercury in hat making. Hat makers instead used hydrochloric acid, a safe alternative. For years thereafter, they celebrated the December 1 anniversary.

But it was almost too late. The hat industry had declined, and by 1923 only six hat factories remained in Danbury. The city’s last hat factory, Stetson, closed its doors in 1965.

Though the hat industry vanished from Danbury, the mercury hasn’t.

The Environmental Protection Agency declared the land on which the hat factories stood a Superfund clean-up site. The sediment of the Still and Housatonic Rivers contains traces of mercury to this day.

In 2003, the state of Connecticut planted on a hat factory site Eastern cottonwood trees genetically engineered to absorb mercury. The trees, however, emit mercury into the air.

This story was updated in 2022.

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Six Military Routes Used During the American Revolution

You could do worse than look at fall foliage along old military routes in New England. Some of them, originally Indian trails, pass through landscapes that aren’t all that different than they were in the 18^th century. Some military routes were partially drowned by reservoirs, some paved over by interstate highways.

New Hampshire fall foliage

Today the old military routes still pass by historic taverns and cemeteries. Stone markers describe the long-ago events that transpired among colonial militiamen, French cavalry, British redcoats, Continental regulars and all their camp followers.

Here are six military routes used during the American Revolution. In some cases they pass through several states, but we confine our description to just one.

The Road to the Battle of Ridgefield

On April 25, 1777, 26 ships carrying 2,000 British troops landed at Cedar Point in Westport, Conn.

They were commanded by British New York Gov. William Tryon, who planned to destroy military supplies 20 miles north in Danbury.

The British marched north on what is now Rte. 58, ravaging the land. They set fire to provisions in the streets on their way to the supply depot in Danbury. Along a stretch of South Street just beyond Coal Pit Hill Road they destroyed an enormous cache of supplies, including 5,000 shoes, 2,000 bushels of grain and 1,600 tents. When they found barrels of rum, they drank them.

Gen. David Wooster and Benedict Arnold, who happened to be staying with family in New Haven, responded with 700 militiamen and Continental Army soldiers under their command. The British got wind the local militia was coming and retreated south from Danbury along Rte. 33, burning down houses along the way.

On April 27, Benedict Arnold barricaded the center of Ridgefield. He received reinforcements from Col. Henry Ludington, whose 16-year-old daughter Sybil had raised them during a horseback ride twice as long a Paul Revere’s. The British drove them off in a running battle down Main Street, shooting Arnold’s horse out from under him. Eight Americans and 16 British were killed during the battle. Near the sign stands a stone tablet marking their graves. (Click here for a map.)

Wooster was mortally wounded while attacking the British rearguard at the intersection of the Post Road (Route 1) and Patriots Bank. A small Masonic stone memorial marks the place where Wooster fell. It’s an evocative spot as the countryside and two-lane road haven’t changed all that much since the Redcoats marched through.

The British retreated to Westport and never tried another inland raid again. They suffered many casualties, and their harsh treatment of the colonists sentiment against them.

There are three monuments in Westport commemorating the final skirmishes. A boulder bears a plaque at the intersection of Compo Road South and Post Road East. Further down Compo Road, Westport’s Minuteman monument kneels atop a traffic circle. On Compo Beach, two cannons commemorate the fighting on and near the beach as the British returned to their ships.

The Americans camped overnight in Putnam Memorial State Park to prevent another raid on Danbury; the park has several historic features.

In Danbury there is a Sybil Ludington marker.

Click here for a map of the 61.5-mile military routes taken by the British through Westport, Redding, Danbury, Ridgefield and Norwalk

The Arnold Expedition

Detail of 1795 map overlaid with Arnold’s expedition route. A Cambridge; B Newburyport; C Fort Western; D Fort Halifax; E Great Carrying Place; F Height of Land; G Lake Megantic. Courtesy Boston Public Library.

Benedict Arnold, before he decided to switch sides, led a force of 1,100 Continental Army regulars from Massachusetts to Quebec City in the early days of the American Revolution. He hoped to bottle up the British and prevent an invasion of New England from the north.

The Arnold Expedition was a disaster. Arnold’s men traveled 350 miles – twice as far as they planned — through poorly charted wilderness in what is now Maine. The men endured grueling portages up the Kennebec River. The boats leaked, ruining precious gunpowder and food supplies. By the time Arnold reached the French settlements above the St. Lawrence River, he had only 600 starving men. The siege of Quebec failed.

The expedition began inauspiciously when fog and headwinds delayed transport ships from leaving Newburyport, Mass., in the fall of 1775.

They landed on Swan Island in what was once Perkins Township. They traveled through what are now Dresden and Pittston, where Arnold and his men stayed on property belonging to Maj. Reuben Colburn as bateaux were built for the expedition. The house now has a street address, 33 Arnold Rd., and is the headquarters of the Arnold Expedition Historical Society.

Some of Arnold’s men took bateaux up the Kennebec River, while others marched on to Fort Western, whose main house is now a National Historic Landmark in Augusta.

Then on to Fort Halifax (now Winslow), where a blockhouse also survives as a National Historic Landmark.

Parts of the route they took today – from Augusta to the Canadian border — make up US 201, now a National Scenic Byway. Along the way they camped in what is now Solon on the left side of Route 201A at what is now the Evergreen Campground and Restaurant. Two markers in Skowhegan show where they marched: at the picnic area on Rte. 2 heading to Canaan and another on the island in town.

Past the Norridgewock Falls, Arnold’s men reached a section of the Dead River they couldn’t navigate. By then they were starving and drenched with rain. They had to portage their bateaux over 12 miles of ‘The Great Carrying Place,’ which included ponds named after the expedition: East Carry Pond, Middle Carry Pond and West Carry Pond. The last pond is called Arnold Pond, and there is actually a township called Great Carrying Place Town. The Arnold Historical Society has restored the route Arnold’s men took along the Great Carrying Place as a hiking trail

Click here for a map of Arnold’s military route.

The Battle Road

On April 18, 1775, British Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith and Major John Pitcairn led a force of 700 British soldiers from Boston to Concord, Mass. to seize weapons. Before the troops even left on their mission, at about 11 p.m., they already knew they had lost the element of surprise. Word was spreading that the British were coming.

The soldiers would march through the night, before touching off the American Revolution at Lexington and Concord. It was on the Lexington Green that Col. John Parker assembled his 80 militia men on April 19, planning to be a protest force, not a fighting one. British troops decided not to pass quietly by, but entered the green to confront the militia.

When a shot was touched off, chaos erupted and eight militia men were killed before they fled the field and the British passed on to Concord.

The Lexington Historical Society maintains three unique sites that provided the setting for the Battle of Lexington. The Hancock-Clarke House is open to visitors. It was the home of the Rev. Jonas Clarke, who was hosting John Hancock and Samuel Adams when they were awakened by Paul Revere, warning them of the coming soldiers.

The Buckman Tavern was the site where the local militia gathered in the early morning hours of April 19, 1775, to wait for the British troops. The Munroe Tavern is also preserved. This was where British troops stopped when making their return from the fighting. All the sites are open for visitors during the warm weather months.

Visitors can also tour the Lexington Green, where the actual fighting broke out. Near the edge of the Green, visitors can walk the five-and-a-half mile battle road leading to the path to Concord that British soldiers took in 1775. The Battle Road is the centerpiece of Minuteman National Park, which includes 11 “witness houses” where occupants would have seen the troops passing by on their mission to search Concord. Also in the park is the North Bridge, where the shot heard round the world was fired.

Also of note, beginning in 2016 Concord’s First Parish Church in conjunction with the Concord Museum will be opening the Wright Tavern for occasional open houses and school visits. It was at this tavern where militiamen gathered before the fighting. It also served as the British headquarters while they search the town for munitions.

As British troops returned to Cambridge, they were harassed by militia in Lexington, Lincoln and Arlington, then called Menotomy. The British soldiers ransacked much of the village of Menotomy, clearing the buildings of snipers. Jason Russell, a local man, was trying to escape to the safety of his house when soldiers bayonetted him.

Following other militia members into Russell’s house, soldiers and militia engaged in a close range shootout, signs of which still remain in the historic building. The Arlington Historical Society maintains the house today and opens it during the summer for visitors.

Crown Point Road

Col. John Stark and his colonial militia began work on the Crown Point Road in 1759 during the French and Indian War. They cut down trees and removed stumps, built bridges and causeways and corduroy sections along swampy sections.

The road was ordered by Lord Jeffrey Amherst after the British captured Fort Ticonderoga. Amherst was determined to keep control of the southern end of Lake Champlain, so he commanded his troops to build Fort Crown Point (now a National Historic Site) at a narrows on the lake. He also ordered a road to be built from Crown Point to the Fort at Number 4, now an open air museum in Charlestown, N.H.

Colonial troops carried supplies, munitions, cattle and sheep along the Crown Point Road to support the British army at Crown Point during the French and Indian War. During the American Revolution, they brought supplies and reinforcements to Fort Ticonderoga.

Between the wars, the Crown Point military route became a road by which people moved west to settle Vermont. Better roads were built, and Crown Point fell into disuse. Starting in the 19^th century, the route was commemorated with markers. (Click here for a map of the markers.) At the road’s beginning in New Hampshire, a stone tablet a half-mile north of the Cheshire Bridge over the Connecticut River marks the site of the ferry and block house.

Today, the Crown Point Road Association describes the old road this way:

Some sections of the road are marked and can be followed as trails, while other sections are barely discernible paths through the woods, marked only by the lilac-fringed cellar holes and stone walls of abandoned farms. A few short stretches of the old military road are still in use as town roads.

Part of the old road is an eight-mile hiking trail marked with blaze orange paint from Fort Number 4 to the North Springfield Lake Flood Control Reservoir. Hikers can walk along pastures, orchards and old logging roads through thick forest, sometimes treading on logs used for corduroy sections. For a guide to that section of the road, click here.

The entire, nearly 100-mile route starts in the center of Charlestown and crosses the river near Beaver Brook. It then goes north-northwest to Springfield and Weathersfield and turns west across Cavendish. The old military route bends north again in Cavendish, then turns west between Plymouth and Ludlow toward Shrewsbury. At Otter Creek in Clarendon it turns north again through Rutland, Proctor, and Pittsford, then bears northwest across the hills south of Brandon.

In northern Sudbury, a spur heads west toward Fort Ticonderoga, while the main road goes north through Whiting, Shoreham, and Bridport before reaching Lake Champlain opposite Fort Crown Point in Addison.

Washington-Rochambeau National Historic Trail

A black and white engraving by artist David Leonard, class of 1792. First published view of the campus, "A S.W. view of the College in Providence together with the President's House and Gardens." Providence, 1792.

An engraving of the President’s House, which lies along one of the military routes used by Rochambeau.

In 1780, Gen. Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, Comte de Rochambeau was put in charge of the Expédition Particulière, French land forces sent to America to support the Continental Army under Washington.

Rochambeau arrived in Newport, R.I., in July 1780 with seven ships of the line, four frigates and 30-odd transports with nearly 7,000 French regulars.

Then he sat for the next year.

Finally, in May 1781, Rochambeau met with Washington in Wethersfield, Conn., to map out the plan for the war. Rochambeau and his army finally left Newport for Yorktown, Va., on June 19, 1781.

Today, the Washington Rochambeau National Historic Trail runs over 680 miles of land and water from Massachusetts to Washington, D.C.

In Rhode Island, the trail begins at the campground in Newport between Broad and Plane streets. It then heads north through Middletown, Portsmouth, Bristol and Providence, then west through Coventry to Connecticut.

One regiment was left in Providence to guard the baggage and munitions stored in the Old Market House and to support the surgeons and attendants at the hospital in University Hall. University Hall now houses the office of the president of Brown University.

The trail passes the Joy Homestead in Cranston, where on June 18, 1781 Job Joy and his family watched Rochambeau lead his army down the road.

The route between Providence and Coventry generally followed Broadway in Providence to Olneyville, then Rte. 14 to the Scituate Reservoir. The reservoir submerged the original road but picks up as Old Plainfield Pike in Scituate. West of Rte. 102 in Foster, the march follows Rte. 14 into Coventry. There the army camped outside of Waterman’s Tavern, now on the National Register of Historic Places at 283 Maple Valley Ave.

The next day Rochambeau’s army marched from Coventry, through Sterling, Connecticut via Route 14A (Plainfield Pike) to the third camp in Plainfield opposite Plainfield Cemetery, arriving on June 19. A 3.6-mile portion of the march route that winds between the second and third camps is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

For a map of the Rhode Island portion of the trail, click here.

Bayley Hazen Military Road

The Elkins Tavern lies along one of New England’s Revolutionary military routes

In Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom, the Bayley Hazen Military Road runs 80 miles from Newbury, Vt., to Hazen’s Notch near the U.S.-Canada border. During Benedict Arnold’s difficult expedition to Quebec, some revolutionary leaders pressed George Washington for a new, shorter military road to bring supplies and reinforcements to the army.

Two proponents of the road were Joseph Bayley and Col. Moses Hazen, among the founders of Newbury and Haverhill, N.H., across the Connecticut River.

In the spring of 1776, Washington asked a local landowner to blaze a trail to St. John’s near Montreal. Jacob Bayley and 60 men built about six miles from Newbury to Peacham until the summer of 1776. Worked stopped and then started again in 1779.

Hazen, Col. Timothy Bedel and their regiments built the rest of the military rout, extending it to Cabot, Walden, Hardwick, Greensboro, Craftsbury, Albany and Lowell. When the road approached Hazen’s Notch, the Continentals heard a rumor that the British planned to attack. They stopped work.

The Americans never used the road to invade Quebec. The British did use it to raid the colonists.

The 80-mile road from Newbury, Vt., is a mix of paved and unpaved – mostly unpaved – former military routes dotted with historical markers, grave sites and monuments.

By Caspian Lake, a monument marks the spot where Indians killed Constant Bliss and Moses Sleeper: The Elkins Tavern in Peacham.

For a guide to the Bayley-Hazen Military Road, click here.

This story about Revolutionary military routes was updated in 2018.

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