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The Revolutionary Holidays You May or May Not Celebrate

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

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

Historic reenactment at Mount Independence

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

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

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

Revolutionary Holidays in RI and Vermont

The Burning of the Gaspee by Charles deWolf Brownell, c1892

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

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

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

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

Powder House Day

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

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

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

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

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

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

Margaretta Days

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

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

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

Hack Holidays

The Massachusetts Statehouse

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

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

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

Revolutionary Holidays That Disappeared

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

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

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

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

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

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Stockbridge Steps Into a Norman Rockwell Christmas Painting

Every year for two hours at Christmastime, the town of Stockbridge, Mass., turns itself into a Norman Rockwell Christmas painting.

The Town of Stockbridge, Mass., has reenacted Rockwell’s 8-foot-long painting, Stockbridge Main Street at Christmas, for nearly three decades as part of its annual holiday celebration.

For two hours, the street is closed to traffic. As in the painting, vintage automobiles line up across from the red brick Town Hall, Williams and Son Country Store and the 240-year-old Red Lion Inn.

Local Models

norman-rockwell-christmas-painting-santa

An iconic Norman Rockwell Christmas painting, ‘The Truth about Santa.’

Some of the people in the living Norman Rockwell Christmas painting once modeled for him. Recently retired police Chief Rick Wilcox posed as a Boy Scout for Rockwell when he was a kid. He didn’t make it into a painting, but his brother did. His grandfather posed for the clerk in Marriage License, but Rockwell went with someone else (Jason Braman, who owned the town’s department store).

Young Scotty Ingram posed as the boy devastated by the discovery of a Santa suit in his father’s drawer. The Truth About Santa appeared on a Saturday Evening Post cover in December, 1956. Ingram’s whole family posed for Rockwell.

The painter found his iconic Santa while on vacation in upstate New York. John Malone hosted Rockwell while he swam, fished and relaxed on his porch. Malone became a father figure to Rockwell and a perennial model as Santa.

Stockbridge

https://newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/norman-rockwell-christmas-painting-malone.jpg

Rockwell’s iconic Santa

Stockbridge’s Main Street hasn’t changed much since Rockwell moved there from Vermont in 1953. He was 59 years old, a well-established artist with the Four Freedoms, Rosie the Riveter and dozens of Boy Scout calendars and Saturday Evening Post covers behind him. He would live in Stockbridge for the next 25 years until he died in 1978 at 84.

Upon his arrival in Stockbridge, he set up his studio above the meat market. He knocked out the window and replaced it with a $5,000 picture window that gave him a steady northern light. In Stockbridge Main Street, there’s a Christmas tree in that window.

The modern recreation isn’t exactly the same as the scene in the Norman Rockwell Christmas painting. He painted a nightscape, and the reenactment takes place in the afternoon. The Red Lion Inn was closed; in real life, it’s open in the winter now.

Two Eras

The cars aren’t exactly the same – but then again, Rockwell painted cars from two different eras. He started the painting in 1956, but stopped work on it for a while. When he took it up again in the ‘60s, he put two small late-model cars next to the ‘50s models he’d already painted. He didn’t finish Stockbridge Main Street at Christmas until 1967.

That was the year WBAI-FM first played Arlo Guthrie’s recording of Alice’s Restaurant – which mentions the real restaurant Alice Brock ran in Stockbridge. The police officer in the song, Chief William J. Obanheim, had actually posed for Rockwell for his painting The Jury and a small pencil illustration for an insurance advertisement.

The painting now hangs in the Norman Rockwell Museum just a few miles outside of town.

In 2020, the town didn’t gather for the Stockbridge Main Street at Christmas event because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The town did gather during the first week in December 2021 and again in 2022.

Norman Rockwell, Stockbridge Main Street at Christmas, on view at the Norman Rockwell Museum.

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The Christmas holiday actually began in ancient Rome — and so did Italian cookies. The New England Historical Society’s new book, 24 Historic Italian Christmas Cookie Recipes, tells you how to make those delicious treats. It also bring you the history of the Italian immigrants who brought them to New England. Available now on Amazon; just click here.

This story about the Norman Rockwell Christmas painting was updated in 2022.

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How To Use a Bayonet in Five Easy Motions

A bayonet charge. Photo courtesy the Webb-Deane-Stevens Museum.

Baron Friedrich von Steuben is credited with professionalizing the Continental Army, teaching the troops, among other things, how to use the bayonet. Bayonets would help win the war, but the troops had little use for them until they were trained by von Steuben.

Von Steuben wrote the first manual for the U.S. Army during the American Revolution. Congress approved publication of the manual, nicknamed the Blue Book, in March 1779. For the rest of the war, Continental Army soldiers used that edition, which was in use until the War of 1812, 18 years after von Steuben’s death.

Here are the instructions for fixing and charging a bayonet according to Regulations for the Order and Discipline of the Troops of the United States, Part I,

Bayonets were to be fixed with three motions:

Fix – Bayonets! Three motions:

1st and 2d motions the same as the two first motions of the secure. (Those are:

1st. Bring up the right hand briskly, and place it under the cock.

2d. Quit the but with the left hand, and seize the firelock at the swell, bringing the arm close down upon the lock, the right hand being kept fast in this motion, and the piece upright.)

3d. Quitting the piece with your right hand, sink it with your left down the left side, as far as may be without constraint, at the same time seize the baonet with the right hand, draw and fix it, immediately flipping the hand down to the stock, and pressing in the piece to the hollow of the shoulder.

They were to be charged with two:

Charge – Bayonets! Two motions:

1st. The same as the first motion of the secure.

2d. Bring the but of the firelock under the right ar, letting the piece fall down strong on the palm of the left hand, which receives it at the swell, the muzzle pointing directly to the front, the but pressed with the arm against the side; the front rank holding their pieces horizontally, and the rear rank the muzzles of their so high as to clear the heads of the front ranking, both ranks keeping their feet fast.

Here’s how to charge the enemy with bayonets:

Of the Charge with Bayonets.

The line marching, the commanding officer, on approaching the enemy, commands,

March! March!

On which the whole advance by the quick step.

Charge — Bayonet!

The line charge their bayonets, and quicken their step; the drums beat the long roll; and the officers and man must take care to dress to the centre, and not crowd or open their files.

On Saturday, May 23, the Webb-Deane-Stevens Museum in Wethersfield, Conn., will host a Revolutionary War encapment that will include a demonstration of the proper use of the bayonet at 10:30 am. Sal Carmosino, Webb-Deane-Stevens Museum guide and organizer of the 5th Connecticut Regiment, will lead the demonstration. The Webb-Deane-Stevens Museum Revolutionary War Encampment is from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at 211 Main St., Wethersfield, Conn. Admission to the event is free; regular admission is charged for optional tours of the museum. The encampment is underwritten, in part, by a grant from the Society of the Cincinnati in the State of Connecticut.

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Eunice Williams, The Unredeemed Captive

In 1704, Mohawk Indians raided the frontier town of Deerfield, Mass. They captured local pastor John Williams, along with his family. Most of the family (those who didn’t die in the attack or aftermath) would be ransomed – all but a seven-year-old girl the Mohawks refused to free.

A 1913 reenactment of the abduction of Eunice Williams.

Eunice Williams, born Sept. 17, 1696, would spend the rest of her life with the Mohawks. She converted to Catholicism and married a Mohawk Catholic. Her family never gave up trying to bring her home, but when they finally reached her as an adult it was too late. She refused to return, and her Puritan family never got over the loss.

In Deerfield, John Williams was a prominent Puritan minister, married to Eunice Mather, the daughter of Eleazer Mather and first cousin to Cotton Mather.

War on the Frontier

In 1704 Queen Anne’s War raged along the frontier. The French and English fought for control of North America, and the Mohawk and Abenaki people allied with the French against England.

Historian John Demos believes the raid on Deerfield was masterminded by Marquis de Vaudreuil, governor of New France (Canada). He very much wanted the return of the mysterious pirate known as Capt. Pierre Maisonnat dit Baptiste. Baptiste had wrought havoc with English shipping on the Atlantic Coast on behalf of the French until t British captured him. Vaudreuil wanted the pirate returned, and the best way to do that was to capture an important English prisoner and offer him for exchange.

Vaudreuil quietly approached the Indians with his offer and they accepted, writes Demos in his award-winning book, The Unredeemed Captive.

An illustration of the raid on Deerfield, published around 1900

The Deerfield Raid

On the night of Feb. 28, 1704, a band of Abenaki and Mohawk Indians attacked Deerfield. They killed 39 people, including small children. They plundered possessions, set houses on fire and slaughtered cows, pigs and sheep. The Indians took 112 people captive, including the surviving members of the Williams family: John, Eunice, and five of their children, Samuel, 15, Esther, 13, Stephen, 9, Warham, 5, and Eunice, 7. Then they began the two-month journey through the snowy wilderness into New France.

The children and their father would survive the long winter journey. Their mother would not.

Philippe de Rigaud, Marquis de Vaudreuil. Was he ultimately responsible for the abduction of Eunice Williams?

By April 1704, the Indians took the Deerfield pastor and three of his children — Esther, Samuel and Warham — to Montreal. All four were turned over to the French authorities. They wouldn’t return home until further negotiations ended. Stephen was still at large in the woods with the Abenaki. He would stay with them for 14 months, until he was ransomed and sent to join his father in captivity in a small village near Montreal.

Eunice Williams

The Indians took Eunice Williams to live with Catholic Mohawks in a small mission fort near Montreal called Kahnawake. John Williams visited his daughter once, and she begged him to take her with him. He told her to pray and to remember her scriptures.

By 1706, five of the Williams family were ransomed and sent home. A Mohawk family that had lost a daughter to smallpox adopted Eunice Williams. The family gave her a new name: A’ongonte, meaning ‘she who has been planted like an ash.’ She was also baptized Catholic and given the name Marguerite.

Her father tried to arrange for her release, but the French intermediaries said the Mohawks “would as soon part with their hearts as the child.” She would later take the adult name of Kanenstenhawi.

Her father would spend the rest of his life trying to free the daughter he always knew as Eunice Williams.

In 1707, John Schuyler, a New York merchant who had many contacts with northern Indians and traders, heard about a sighting of Williams’ daughter. He also heard she didn’t want to return to her family. Schuyler stayed in touch with her Mohawk family in an effort to redeem her.

[optinrev-inline-optin1]In March of 1713 the Williams family learned the melancholy news that Eunice Williams had married an Indian. They were devastated.

Not Even A Look

John Schuyler visited her at Kahnawake. She had forgotten her English, and they needed a translator to communicate. Schuyler pleaded with her to return to her family. She said no, not even for a visit.

Rev. John Williams, father of Eunice Williams

The next year, her father visited her. She did not give him so much as a pleasant look. He would never see her again.

Eunice Williams and her husband, François-Xavier Arosen, had two daughters who grew to adulthood, Catherine and Marie, and a son named John.

Eunice Williams Returns

After John Williams died in 1729, Eunice’s brother Stephen took up the task of bringing her back. He had become a minister in Longmeadow, Mass., and he persuaded her to meet in Albany with him, along with their brother Eleazer and brother-in-law Joseph Meacham. On Aug. 27, 1740, they had a ‘joyful, sorrowful’ meeting, and Stephen persuaded Eunice and her husband to visit them in Longmeadow for four days. They actually stayed a little longer, camping out in the orchard near Stephen’s house.

The next summer Eunice and Aronson brought their children first to Longmeadow to visit Stephen, then to Coventry, Conn., to visit her sister Esther. Finally they went to Mansfield, Conn., where they visited her brother Eleazer.

In 1743, Eunice Williams and her family came to spend the winter with her family in Longmeadow and Deerfield, where her brother Elijah lived. Stephen hoped that this long visit would persuade her to stay, but again she refused.

One Last Visit

She wouldn’t return for another 17 years. In 1761, she brought her husband, a daughter and son-in-law and grandchild to Longmeadow for a brief 10-day visit. Ten years later in 1771, she wrote a letter to Stephen, chastising him for not staying in touch and expressing a desire to see him again. Stephen died in 1782 without ever seeing Eunice again. She died Nov. 26, 1785 at the age of 89.

By the time she died, Eunice Williams had one grandson and 12 great-grandchildren. Two of her great-grandchildren were sent to school in Longmeadow, where they dropped their Indian dress and manners. One of them, Eleazer, would later make the fraudulent claim that he was the lost Dauphin – Louis XVII, the rightful heir to the throne of France.

In 1837, 23 descendants of Eunice Williams arrived in Deerfield, Mass., to visit the graves of their ancestor John Williams and his wife Eunice. They camped near the village and attended Sunday services. They stayed for 10 days, weaving baskets and selling fabrics to the villagers who visited them so often they could barely find time to eat their meals.

Eunice Williams’ descendants behaved “decently and inoffensively,” according to the prefatory remarks of a sermon delivered about their visit. And then they returned to Canada.

With thanks to The Unredeemed Captive: A Family Story from Early America by John Demos.

This story was updated in 2023. You may also want to read about the Rice boys, also taken captive by Indians, here.

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