revolution 250

Author Keith Marshall Jones III will share a new and definitive account of inland Connecticut’s only Revolutionary War engagement, on April 27, 1777, in a lecture at New Haven Museum. “The Battle of Ridgefield” will take place on Thursday, April 24, 2025, at 6 p.m. Register here. The free NH250 event will also stream on FB Live.

The Story of the Battle of Ridgefield

Jones will discuss his latest book, “The Battle of Ridgefield: Benedict Arnold, the Patriot Militia, and the Surprising 1777 Battle that Galvanized Revolutionary Connecticut.” The book tells how Benedict Arnold and the patriots dashed British hopes for Crown hegemony over southwestern Connecticut. According to Connecticut State Historian Emeritus Walter Woodward, Jones’s work “shows that the action was a more complex and significant Revolutionary moment than previously realized.”

Jones noted

The Battle of Ridgefield was a militia action involving local farmers and merchants against a professional enemy thrice their size. It reminds us today, when democracy itself is under siege, that Independence was won at the grassroots level and that is how it must be perpetuated.

Jones will integrate findings from a new generation of historians with the National Park Service’s 2022 Ridgefield Battlefield Protection Program Phase I Study. He will also reveal a number of new conclusions based on a digital trove of never-before-published archival primary source material.

The Battle of Ridgefield Itself

The bloody, day-long battle involved more Redcoats than at Lexington and Concord or in Washington’s startling victories at Trenton and Princeton. American forces under the command of Maj. Gen. David Wooster attacked retreating British troops under Maj. Gen. William Tryon. Anticipating Tryon’s return march to Long Island Sound after the attack on Danbury, General Wooster, Gen. Benedict Arnold and Gen. Gold Selleck Silliman then moved their militia and members of the Continental Army farther westward.

Wooster attacked Tryon from the rear. Arnold and his men set up a roadblock at the north end of Ridgefield’s town center. The combined casualties and missing — up to 130 men — were higher than previously thought, Jones says.

Tryon’s route to Ridgefield from Compo Beach in Westport

Jones notes that Royal Governor of New York William Tryon had good reason to expect that Connecticut loyalists might rise-up if he marched an army inland to destroy Danbury’s Continental supply depot.  Gen. George Washington was warned twice in advance of Tryon’s potential incursion. But he would not, or could not, act.

Little more than half of the Fairfield County militia turned out. But, together with nine unsung New York militia companies, it was enough to quash Tryon’s loyalist vision and chase his British army from Connecticut.

The Battle of Ridgefield was clearly a British victory, Jones says. But it resulted in the ascendance of Benedict Arnold, freed up local militia units to participate at Saratoga and tightened screws on Connecticut loyalists. Those consequences created conditions that helped assure Britain would lose the war.

About Keith Jones

Jones, an independent historian, has a flair for coaxing fresh crop from the well-plowed fields of America’s Revolutionary Era. He does it by harvesting primary source materials. His career path includes 30 years as a corporate marketing executive. He served in the cola wars (Pepsi), beer wars (Anheuser-Busch) and toothpaste wars (Colgate).

Keith Jones

In 2000, he summoned the nerve to jump ship and chase ghosts from the past. He became the founding president of the Ridgefield (CT) Historical Society. Two books on local history soon followed. To research life as a soldier in George Washington’s army, he served as a grunt in the 5th Connecticut re-enactor regiment. He wrote his subsequent third book, “Congress as My Government,” in a partnership with the John Marshall Foundation. It was the first comprehensive account of the Chief Justice’s formative years as a Continental Army infantry officer.

His fourth book, “John Laurence:  The Immigrant Founding Father America Never Knew,” earned the John Frederick Lewis Prize. It was Ben Franklin’s American Philosophical Society 2019 “Publication of the Year.”

 About NH250

This event is part of NH250, an ongoing series of programming developed by New Haven Museum to complement “America 250.” Culminating with the 250^th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the series will highlight inclusive, local and lesser-known stories connecting past and present.

 About the New Haven Museum

The New Haven Museum has been collecting, preserving and interpreting the history and heritage of Greater New Haven since its inception as the New Haven Colony Historical Society in 1862. Located in downtown New Haven, the Museum brings more than 375 years of New Haven history to life. It has collections, exhibitions, programs and outreach. A Blue Star Museum, the Museum offers free admission to the nation’s active-duty military personnel and their families. That includes National Guard and Reserve. For more information visit http://newhavenmuseum.org  or @NewHavenMuseum or call 203-562-4183.

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Learn more about Connecticut’s role in the American Revolution in this complete guide to Revolutionary War sites in New England. Brought to you by the New England Historical Society. Click here to order your copy in paperback, here to order an ebook.