 All right so we will start over and say welcome to the museum for our talk with Bob Port on the bank and battle field locations reveal. So before we begin I would like to thank some of our sponsors. We have some organizations who have been very generous to us. One of them is ARP Vermont. Just right here to the next one. Oh I think it's just telling you that the lamp is now our lamp is apparently running a little low but that's okay it'll go away that'll go away. Vermont Humanities is one of our sponsors. Whole Light Investment and BurlingtonCars.com so hopefully you feel as that little message should eventually clear itself. I've never seen that one. It'll go away okay so we'll put we'll okay it looks like we're going to be ready to go here this is perfect. All right so a couple of things this is last Monday August 16th was the 245th I believe if I have the math correct the 245th anniversary of the battle of Bennington. The Green Mountain Boys were joined by other rebel forces they faced off against the professional British Army near Bennington. This battle was part of a larger Saratoga campaign and contributed to a major Revolutionary War victory which ultimately led to the successful conclusion of the Revolutionary War. But how did the American rebels near Bennington defeat the strongest and richest army in the world at that time and that is what Bob will tell us all about in a few minutes. So just a couple of things about Bob he's a Bennington historian and researcher. He has been studying at the Bennington Museum Research Library for many years. He spent five seasons at the Bennington Battlefield historic site as an interpreter. His research includes Old Bennington and the Continental Storehouse, the object of the British attack and the Vermont controversy with the orc for which he has led events to mark the Breckenridge standoff in 1771 and most of us consider the birthplace of Vermont being 1777 in Windsor but other folks especially if you live down in the Bennington area will look at the Breckenridge standoff in 1771 as our first mark of our independence. So with this I'd like you to welcome Bob and I will get out of the way here. Grab my sword here. I don't have a clicker so I might raise the sword when I want the slide to change today. So once again my name is Bob Horror. I've done in Bennington. I've been working at the battlefield for a bunch of years. One of the things about working at the battlefield is if you guys don't know the battlefield is at the top of the hill and that particular location gets all the gets all the attention. Okay so one of the things I'm trying to do here today is to tell you about other parts of Bennington battlefield and other areas that had to do with the Battle of Bennington. The hero of the Bennington, the Battle of Bennington is John Stark and there's a statue of John Stark and a statue of Seth Warner near the Bennington battle monitor. Okay so I'm going to basically be jumping right into the story of the Battle of Bennington and it's going to have images of paintings of the soldiers in the action and it's going to show you the locations like I just said. That's going to move fairly quickly. It's not going to have every last piece of information that there is about the Battle of Bennington and that will be the first two-thirds of my presentation and then there will be a little bit about the Continental Storehouse and some of the information before and after the battle. Okay so we're just jumping right into the Battle of Bennington stuff. Okay this image is of a professional army in Europe either the Germans or the Prussians so I'm giving you a sense of what the Americans would have thought of when they were threatened with invasion by a large European army. So the British had said 8,000 men, half British, half Germans also including maybe 400 Native Americans to take Alban in New York so what they're going to do is they're going to come down from Canada they would get to Alban in New York and the the storyline is that that would split the colonies in two with New England being the rebellious part of the the colonies sending troops and materials to the other part they be able to hold the Hudson River and Lake Champlain corridor because in 76 they'd already taken New York City and if they take Albany they'd really be cutting off New England from the rest of the colonies and perhaps then they would attack me okay so they're trying to get to Alban in New York. In Albany New York there's a Fort Frederick so I'm showing you the sign of Fort Frederick and that's right where the Albany State House is and that and the egg in those large buildings in downtown Albany so that's the actual place that the British were trying to get one of those star forts was there so they started to run short of supplies so let's talk about the campaign really quickly here so the 8,000 men got to Fort Ticonderoga around the beginning of July and the Americans didn't have enough men to garrison the fort like they actually did the year before so this year they only had about 3,500 men facing off against 8,000 so it was really their plan to evacuate that fort and not hold the lines so that's where we get the story of the Battle of Hoverton and the Battle of Fort Ann because the Americans actually split and retreated in two different directions and the British eagerly pursued them in both directions and and had engagements with the rearguard of the Americans so that's taken us through the Battle of Hoverton and the Battle of Bennington is really what's going to happen next okay so we're right on to the Bennington battlefield already so the Battle of Bennington happened on the 16th but now we're talking about August 14th so maybe not everybody knows that the British army got to the Bennington area just outside of Bennington in New York on the 14th and this location is in North Housick, New York and it's called the Sancoic Mill and that picture is showing the road where that Sancoic Mill was the bridge is just to the right and there's a culvert there's a culverted stream it's going over under the road right there so that skirmish would have happened between the two houses in the picture right there so on the 13th John Stark hearing that there was a group of invaders on the road sent 200 men under Colonel Greg to take post at the Sancoic Mill and on the morning of the 14th the advanced party of the British army the the Tories and the Indians had a skirmish with Greg's men at this mill and the story in the storybooks is that the Americans pulled up the planks to the bridge and that delayed the British army but at the same time the British army at this mill were able to achieve some of their objectives because they need supplies there will be 78 barrels of flour and some other supplies at this mill so then the reason why the battle of Bennington happened in New York state you can change the slide John yeah is because of the continental storehouse so in Bennington we had what would be like a business a malicious supply business that is supplying our troops in the field supplying the green mountain boys they're not that more now independence and afford high condoroga those supplies are coming from Bennington for the most part and when the British army attacked the colonies the continental army sent over some agents to Bennington to create another layer of that supply business that would be called the continental storehouse so this is what the British army is trying to to capture in Bennington is capture our supplies that would take them away from us of course and it would give the the bridge what they needed to continue their invasion towards Bennington because they were halted and they were looking for supplies so they had sent 1200 men to Bennington so here's a couple more images of the the engagement at that bridge and so in addition to the supplies in Bennington Vermont's population had been pushed south by the Burgoyan invasion um so once the for high condoroga had fell all of Vermont is uh is in consternation and they're and they're moving away from the British army and in fact the um the Vermont government is ordering themselves they're saying come south do not give aid to the enemy bring your belongings in your livestock so this stuff all these people and these supplies are going to all be congregating Bennington and this continental storehouse really is about the mills and the farms around the Bennington area so that's why they're trying to keep the British out of town so there was a skirmish at that first bridge and the Americans delayed them by pulling up the planks then they retreated to another bridge and this second bridge is going to be sort of the center of the location of the Battle of Bennington we call that the Wilcox bridge so on the 14th we're still on the 14th two days before the battle at this skirmish the Americans according to John Stark killed 30 of the enemy along with two of their enemy uh the Indian chiefs so the uh we can change the slide again so the Americans stopped them at this bridge but the British took a hold of that bridge didn't allow it to be destroyed this time and they held the houses on either side of the bridge and they had the advantageous positions around that bridge and they dug in and just here's a picture of some of the Tories that may have been there so the Americans had been sort of pushed back from the bridge but they stopped this invasion from heading towards Bennington the Americans used this house called the widow Whipple's house not that house but an earlier house in the same location and there were seven haystacks in the area they were also used by the Americans to slow this British offensive so Baum was outnumbered and he sends for reinforcements so this area right here is the entrance to the Bennington battlefield park and it's probably around that location that Baum had his headquarters and his HQ tent and where he could see most of the battlefield and probably where he wrote his letter so on the 14th Colonel Friedrich Baum said half a mile away behind a height there's 1900 Americans and at times they're building some works so you can see that he was stopped his 1200 men declined to attack the Americans that day and they started to dig in and they sent for reinforcements so that's the battle of Bennington the irony of the battle of Bennington is that the British army that was sent to attack Bennington to take the supplies didn't bring enough men and they were stopped and they dug in so the battle of Bennington is the Americans attacking the enemy just outside of town so the Americans are attacking the British who are invading Bennington next slide so Stark realizing the enemy had the better position there at the bridge withdrew just inside the Vermont border and put his camp on what we call Harrington hill in Bennington and when he when he attacked on the 16th there's a famous quote that's written on this marker here it says there are the red coats and there are hours or this night Molly Stark sleeps a widow next slide so we're going to jump right into the battle of Bennington itself now so there was a rainy day between that 14th the 14th when they stopped the Americans in the 16th when the battle happened so the Americans being very prudent and their main weapon being musketry wouldn't attack on a rainy day but that may have helped them to design their attack plan because they had a very good attack plan for the 16th so I'm going to talk about a couple of things here there was a location on the battlefield because we're talking about mysteries that Stark used and it was only about half a mile away from the the two British cannon they had brought they brought three pound cannon and those three pounder cannon had blown up with a Whipple's house I showed you that picture and they were also firing at this place called Stark's Hill so there's a quote by Thomas Mellon that says John Stark was parading his men around and around a circular hill within view and cannon shot of the enemy and the the cannons were roaring against the hill and this was a this was lessening the fear of the soldiers of the great guns but also what he's doing is he's distracting the enemy from this double pincer envelopment and circle man that is his that is his attack plan so here's our most famous map of the Bennington battlefield done by an English lieutenant lieutenant Darnford who was captured at the battle of Bennington and what it's showing is those breastworks the the lines where the British had dug in here's what the toys had dug in here was that bridge that I said that the Americans stopped them at and the the enemy had taken the houses on both sides of the bridge and this is what we all call the Hessian hill so that's really the focus of the battle of Bennington is that there was a dismounted cavalry unit and they posted themselves high on this hill and that was really the object of the Americans attack and what most people remember about the battle of Bennington and that's where the Bennington battlefield state historic site is so here you can see the Americans attacking those fixed positions and there could be large arrows that are showing the Americans taking long marches to go around the rear of the enemy positions so some maps show them the encirclement using some arrows what are the lines of the upper right go back that one slide so in the upper right this is the Hessian hill are you showing are you talking about the three groups that are attacking Hessian hill was that the Americans attacking yeah so that's the Americans attacking the the the prominent hill and what they had really done was said overwhelming numbers at the top of the hill it sort of attacked the top of the hill like two to one and overwhelmed the top of the hill so here's just another version of me using a google map to show all these very interesting positions around the battlefield that not as many people are interested in as I am so on the 14th when John Stark stopped the British he had the whole brigade set up on this ridge which was quite a bit away from that bridge position but there's a lot of people that remember the brigade being more of a gun there and I guess once again in the upper right you can see that there was the Indians were posted out in advance of that Hessian hill and was part of the defense of the Hessians on that hill so that the Hessians would have been defended by the Indians before the Americans had attacked the Hessians on top of that hill and here is more of our mysteries of the Bennington battlefield so that's just a diagram of the top of the hill Hessian hill once again and when I started working at the Bennington battlefield five years ago there's absolutely nobody that's going to tell you where the actual breastworks were on the top of the hill on the top of that hill there was a 220-yard long log breastworks so the British in this case Germans could shoot behind a protected log wall and there was a roughly 200 Germans and 20 British marksmen out there nobody's quite figured out where that thing was archaeologically but by crunching the maps and by studying the topography I think I've come up with something that we've all agreed with and we've rebuilt some of those breastworks and it was really neat in the reenactment last last weekend that the soldiers were fighting behind a breastworks that we all sort of agreed were now in the in the proper place on top of that hill and so I guess the other thing just because I have a wonderful audience here is that when people would get to the the Bennington battlefield on the top of that hill they wouldn't look in this direction from once the attack came they would look in the opposite direction towards Bennington and and look for the monument so I feel like now people are are oriented towards looking for the battle locations yep no go back to the last slide so Bennington is actually down in this direction and when they built the park all these trees were not there it was uh it was a farm field up there and so the park actually included this wonderful view of the the monument and so as it sort of disappeared in the last generation you still have people sort of looking for that monument quite a bit okay so now we're just going to jump right into some action here so back at that top of the hill the dismounted german cavalry men they were the foes and there's a picture of that log wall that I described that we had just rebuilt and there's some signs corresponding to the attacks there where New Hampshire men nickels that sign that's where they attacked and there's also a sign for the uh herricks rangers the Vermont troops where they attacked as you know so the natives the the 100 kanawake mohawk indians retreated before the battle happened so realizing they were being encircled memberized trying to explain that there was an encirclement and an overwhelming number of men sat there they realized that they were in trouble and the story is that they retreated from the battlefield area and took some of their horses that were already loaded with baggage and left for Canada directly from the battlefield but my research and some of us have figured out that some of the Indians actually went and tried to hasten those reinforcements so I remember the so remember these Germans they've dug in and they're they're expecting some help some more Germans to come and help them fight the americans next slide okay so here's the big attack on the top of the hill so when the when the Indians had retreated from the top of the hill the Germans have two three pounder cannon with them and these are very small mobile you know lightweight cannons and they can respond to battlefield action so what actually happened was one of those two cannons that were down at the bridge was quickly brought up to the top of this hill to help replace the the loss that the Germans had of their indian helpers so the americans assaulted the cap the calorie in their one cannon on this hilltop there was probably just a few volleys fired the americans are firing behind trees they're slowly sneaking up on the Germans the Germans are armed with carbines so carbines are short muskets so they're not going to have quite the length of the accuracy of the american muskets so that's also going to be a factor there but we do think that the americans just like this painting this is a painting of the battle of bennington by don treyani came it up over that breastworks and the Germans would have defended themselves very well with their saber swords and their hand-to-hand combat weapons so meanwhile down at that bridge that i was talking about john stark and the old men and boys attacked across the river against that second cannon by beards these house so here is the first time in the revolutionary war that american patriots are attacking point blank fixed artillery positions and this painting is great so it shows john stark rushing right against the cannon the cannon seems to be defended by redcoats there were 50 british redcoats at the battle of bennington and they were at the bridge position none of them returned to the british army except their commander they were all wiped out but the british cavalrymen at the battle of bennington were germans so i just thought they'd point that out so meanwhile the tories who were up in their own position just across the bridge were attacked and their position was spoiled because colonel stafford from massachusetts found a little ravine and he popped up with 50 men behind the tory readouts position um and that caused the tories to only um get off a couple of shots fired at the battle of bennington this painting is not of one of the tories the tories didn't have uniforms and the tories were armed so at the battle of bennington there was 300 loyalist americans or what we call tories many of them were there to help with the 1400 horses that the british had hoped to get from southern vermont and the hundreds of beef cattle and to to drive all that stuff back to the british army they didn't all have guns so only half of these um defenders have guns so that's why they're gonna retreat when the firing begins and this painting is not of a tori it's of one of the germans a german jeager soldier so the germans as a brigade retreated from the top of the hill and when they got down to the the planes because they retreated back down to the beardsley house that's when the hand-to-hand fighting is going to really commence ip john um here's a great painting by don traiani it's very new and it shows kernel bong with the sword there um giving the orders to the hessian brigade or the brunswick brigade sorry about that to um put away their carbines and to use their saber swords to cut through the americans so things are getting desperate and they don't have time to to volley fire anymore they're about to be captured and we know from some of the firsthand accounts that this is what happened so you see kernel bomb is issuing the order while his drummer beats a certain drumbeat that actually tells all the men far and wide what to do go ahead put down your guns and break out your swords and we think it's at this moment perhaps when bomb identified himself as the leader by giving this order the bomb was actually shot question on the previous picture can you go back to the previous one please what's the uniform in the top center that's different from the germans so the german drummers wore like an alternate uniform the one leaning against the tree at the top don't i see the one was it another uniform guy just the right of the strong sword so i think so you're right so that is a slightly different version of one of the german brigades so each each brigade has its own variations with the um accent colors so that actually looks closer to a german there's two different types of germans there okay you have the german dragoons that were the dismounted cavalry men and you had the german um grenadiers so i guess i'll just not say which one is which and the yagers were like cavalry the yagers were just hunters and they were riflemen and they had short barreled rifles okay next slide so stark captured 700 out of 1200 soldiers in the first battle out in the fields behind the beardsley house so the maps of the battle of bennington like that one over there shows where the brigade was captured behind the beardsley house i think it actually required the wombsack river to capture this germany brigade i think they just kept retreating and retreating and the americans were surrounding them they probably weren't very happy about having to capture these germans and shoot them at point blank and it wasn't until the the river became an obstacle that the americans were able to round up these um enemy soldiers so less than an hour later after they captured the two cannon and 700 out of 1200 men and they're dealing with all these prisoners and they're trying to bring them back to bennington they hear the sounds of two more cannon down the road they hear the sounds of another german brigade they hear luther and hymns and they hear the the sounds of the drummers beating away the second brigade had 14 drummers the first brigade only had seven drummers so imagine the racket that the reinforcement group is actually intentionally trying to make so that they can have less resistance as they enter this battlefield area here certainly stragglers from the first battle and said hey everybody's getting captured down the road you need to push forward and and change this battle perhaps we can still win this thing so the americans at the same time they had i think i forgot to tell you that the americans had 2000 men at the battle of bennington at the first engagement while the enemy had 1200 men so that's why they won they had quite a few more so i would say because i'm the only one that's been putting these sort of facts together that maybe a thousand of the americans didn't even fight in that second engagement for all sorts of reasons many of the reasons being they had 700 germans or prisoners to to march towards back towards bennington so it's taking a while for the americans to put out some some resistance of this 650 just germans coming down the road with two larger cannon so this is where the second engagement happened so there's a marker and you see that little turn in the road there where that marker is there's actually a hail and a rich top that's helped to stop the the germans coming down that road so in natural a defensive position that some of us call the rock ridge and it says on that marker there that's where seth mortars seth warner's men came into the action so seth warner was at the battle of bennington he was in bennington with john stark at the catamount tower helping everybody organize the battle and to design the attack plan that day but his men were still actually marching down from from manchester so some histories of the battle of bennington i don't tell the seth mourner story quite right so his reinforcements showed up in time to be the some of the first men in the field for this second engagement of the battle of bennington and here's a one of the old maps of huzik new york and it shows that you know kind of in the ground there the in the foreground bennington battleground a lot of the people in um who is it remember events having to do with the second battle because the second battle even though it's um more or less unknown to historians locals have lots of stories about how their houses were used in the second battle or finding artifacts in their backyards of the second battle so the germans fought their way from that same san quite mill which is back down here a couple of miles back to the to the first battle's um location so that's why the second battle field is all around north huzik in today's route 67 so basically the americans were here's a here's a painting of the has now cannoners and in the second battle they had two six pound cannon and the first battle they had three pound cannon um next slide so the americans were trading ground for time so they're probably just retreating you know farm field the farm field letting the germans move towards the battlefield while they were organizing themselves and bringing up more men and a final stand would occur near this house here's another painting of some of the german troops that would have been at the battle of bennington and that house there says waloon sack above the front door of that lintel right there and long before the the field of archaeology archaeology was ever invented um mr. clark who lived on that farm there had found quite a few six pound cannonballs on his farm so it would be really great if we could find them today through today's archaeological methods but it's been proved in the past that this his house was the the location of the final stand of the bed of the battle of bennington one more slide so after excess successfully advancing so the germans really did push the americans out of the way for almost two miles before the americans got enough troops in the field to stop them so let me throw some numbers at you here so 650 german reinforcements themselves may be only reinforced by 100 men from that first battle end up fighting the americans to a standoff and the americans probably only put about a thousand men in the field so 850 versus a thousand those are my numbers um and like this painting this is actually not a painting of the battle of bennington some of these paintings are not of the battle of bennington most of them are shows them fighting you know a couple of the the manner of defending some tree lines sort of in the forest in the wood so i sort of liked this painting for that and it shows them sort of fighting towards darkness okay so here's the fun part about the battle of bennington why were the was braven the reinforcement group late to come to the to the to aid of colonel bomb because he was he was late by about an hour so the first thing that the storybooks talked about is how um colonel braven had formed up his men and and disciplined them on the march and had kept order despite you know the the muddy trails and the and the the rain and the fact that the indian guide lost the the way the german leader despite all that continued to be very much a disciplinarian considering the fact that he's trying to save somebody in the wilderness for being um defeated in battle they actually left very late so colonel bomb the the guy in the first battle he had left um at five o'clock in the morning but colonel braven didn't leave until nine o'clock but the orders had gotten the night before gotten to the camp the night before well it doesn't seem that the german and the english general were getting along and the german general had some animosity about how his troops were being used in this engagement so some people point to that but my research has also pointed out if you didn't know that german general reidessal's wife fredrich baron fredrich von reidessal had actually showed up that very same day at the british camp so you can you imagine adage adjutant o'connell going to the german general's tent late at night saying we need to fill out some orders so the troops could march in the morning and uh fredre reidessal's saying well maybe i'm a little busy right now with my life and children so one factor for for going being late i mean braven being late braven said that he did not hear the sounds of the first battle so this is part of the confusion so all this cannon fire all thousands of troops he gets within two miles away to that bridge he says i couldn't hear you know the the troops and and i didn't know that i needed to move any faster at that point so if you all do study the the stories of the battle of bennington it is very interesting why braven doesn't show up on time he was actually marching towards hobarton battle of hobarton and didn't get there on time to participate in the battle of hobarton and if you guys happen to be fans of the battles of saratoga the second battle of saratoga ends at the braven readout where braven is stacked by bennington donalds and bennington donalds is shot as we know but what happened according to myth and legend is that braven was was was killing his own troops when they were trying to retreat and therefore braven was killed by his own troops at the second battle of saratoga so was braven the the well was he too professional to be an officer in the in the german army was he maybe he was better suited to be a uh a sergeant and not a crowd so 450 captured soldiers were in bennington by nightfall so the council of safety in bennington says at six o'clock the 450 troops have just arrived in town and according to most of the sources the battle of bennington the battle began precisely at three o'clock so within three hours they have a battle they capture hundreds of men and they march them eight miles into old bennington so that gives you an idea how quick that at least that first engagement happened here's one of our paintings of the battle of bennington showing along the lines of prisoners heading towards bennington and that's the two wounded commanders being brought into the house where they would die the next day so once again carnal bomb and the tories the local tory commander from who's it um france at fister were buried in chasbury by the river and that's the marker there and that's a picture of the first meeting house in bennington bennington was settled by um religious freedom seekers so new light congregationalist christians they were sort of breaking away from the puritan church and the congregational church we're looking for um better economic opportunities and places where they could worship freely in places where they didn't have to pay taxes to the congregational church and that was really the beginning of bennington and that's their church you can see that same church there in the painting um and that's a painting that's showing the prisoners that were in bennington the prisoners were in bennington for a couple of days they were actually led down to to boston to be further in captivity by paul revere who came up to bennington this painting shows some indians right there in the center so many people said did the patriots have indians at the battle of bennington well we've never really figured that out until recently so they did not have any indians at the battle of bennington um some of the stock bridge mohawk i mean mahekan indians sorry about that um marched and got to got to the battlefield so quite a few troops marched to many battles and and got to those battles so the indians would have helped with the prisoners in many ways so the soldiers who died of their wounds after the battle are buried in old bennington so in old bennington of course they would have had a hospital and that hospital would have continued through the battles of saratoga wounded from the battles of men from the battles of saratoga were sent to bennington for care so i think there's 15 or 20 men from on both sides that are buried in sort of a common grave in um the bennington center cemetery the troops the soldiers who died at the battle in the battle are buried on the battlefield in mass graves so here's one of the main questions about the battle of bennington was ethan alan at the battle of bennington well he'd actually been captured a couple of months after he took port ticonderoga in 75 and he returned from captivity to bennington in the spring of 78 so he was not at the battle he was um in captivity by the british and he wrote two of the top five books of the revolutionary war period his book reason oracle of man was a deist volume that was a similar uh similar thinking to many of the founding fathers thinking and his book about his captivity it was um well it's an important book for the legacy of prisoner wars for prisoner wars um for a long time and helped to change the the treatment of the prisoners not only in the revolutionary war but thereafter so the continental storehouse that was the object of the british attack that's what the bennington battle monument um marks and you can see on this little diagram here that actually there had been a further marker knowing quite precisely where that storehouse had been the storehouse was started by john facet he was the malice militia leader um the captain in the militia so he also seems to have been the commissary for their supply efforts the if you've been to bennington um this is monument avenue monument avenue used to you know carry right through where the monument is now that's that's that was route seven back in the day so they removed they discontinued the road when they built the monument and created that circle but the the road going through the monument circle area which had been lined by houses was the parade grounds for the troops in the revolutionary war so that's where they muster and that's where they would train is also was also here in uh old bennington so the storehouse most importantly was a storehouse of livestock so the british army like any army was happy to fight in the field as long as they had beef and flour and what they really needed in bennington was supplies for their army beef and flour but they also needed horses and they had that in bennington and we have a journal of the continental storehouse made by isaac ticking or who is the continental who's the continental army officer who sent over to bennington to gather those supplies and forward them per orders to the main army and in his journal i've made the estimate that in bennington there would have been seven or eight hundred uh beef cattle and three or four hundred horses so there really were all those supplies in bennington okay so we're we're we're done with the battle of bennington and we're still mopping up some of our stories of the battle of bennington so it's ira allen who requested the help from other states not just new hampshire and that's what resulted in john stark in 1500 new hampshire men being sent to uh to bennington and that's what stopped the british so the british were sent to bennington thinking that three or four hundred men were defending this continental storehouse no problem let's send 1200 men and we'll take that thing well they didn't realize until they got to the battlefield area i would explain that to you that there was 1900 men there and the difference was was john stark so there's the ira allen house in sunderland vermont uh surely ira would have visited his house as he retreated himself from the british invasion and went down to bennington and there's the marker in charleston new hampshire for the for john stark's expedition to bennington if you haven't been to number four in charleston it's a log picket four of vertical logs not horizontal logs and it's uh it's a very active history site and they have great events on the weekends okay here's a painting of colonel bomb on his way to bennington he's actually at the house that's famous in bennington because it's painted by grandma moses as the checkered house you've ever seen that checkered house painting it's actually the same house that colonel bomb used for his headquarters when he was in um cambridge on his way to to bennington and it seems like some sort of irony but i think that the germans did like sauerkraut and such things and we have we have to come in and stand in the campus next time and it's really neat to do the what we call the bomb trail so colonel bomb left from fort miller on the 10th to to attack bennington and there's uh i think maybe eight markers on the way for the various campsites that he had there was one day that got spoiled they thought they were going to be attacked and bomb ran up onto a hillside they all encamped there for the night so i mean just imagine what it'd be like to be an army in the wilderness with little communication and uh being easily frightened next slide okay so bomb was sent to bennington and these are some of his orders and i think they helped to to explain what's going on here so here's don troyani's painting of british general johnny bergoine and johnny bergoine issued a manifesto to the inhabitants he basically um threatens the inhabitants of north america i had but to give stretch to the indian forces under my direction and they amount to thousands to overtake the hardened enemies of great america of great britain and america i consider the same wherever they lurk so unlike general howe in the middle colonies down in new york new jersey who didn't use the the native americans um it was this particular army's desire to use native americans against the colonists the object of your expedition is to mount raid redaisal's to dragoon so not only did they not have horses for their cavalry men but german general redaisal was asked actually a cavalry officer and so was john bergoine so the history books might discount whether or not the british needed a cavalry um on this campaign in the southern campaign we know about um general we know about van astray tarleton's loyalist um cavalry was very effective so i think if the british had a mounted cavalry unit that cavalry unit itself could have taken bennington um the walume sack tavern in bennington was originally the dewy tavern and um elijah dewy was probably the the person who was um who would have had the horses for the british so that's why i'm showing the lume sack tavern next slide so this is a painting of the um the bottom house in shaftsbury the object of your expeditions to complete peters loyalist corps so john peters was from northern vermont he was from free at somewhere around newbury and he had his own corps of loyalists and they were at the battle of bennington but they weren't completed and so they were trying to recruit more men for his corps one of the most famous loyalists in the revolutionary war um in vermont is just as sherwood just as sherwood's wife sarah bottom lived at that house just as sherwood on the 13th three days before the battle with bennington came over to visit sarah and to reconfirm the information that they had about how bennington was being defended and greenlighted the attack on bennington thinking that bennington was defended by three or four hundred men but john stark had been in bennington and he already marched down that road and was already in bennington so what a lark how does it happen that justice sherwood is credited with the intelligence for the battle of bennington which was wrong and he actually went there on the 13th and the people who are living in that very house must have seen john stark's brigade marked down that very road several days before so we would have some pretty good patriots in this area they kept that information from justice sherwood on the 13th that could have upset the victory the battle of bennington next slide um your parties are likewise to bring in wagons and other convenient carriages with his men drag oxen this part of this building right here is the benjamin fey carriage shop and that was probably located somewhere on monument circle and relocated to that area there so the british were looking for quite a few horses and they were looking for the saddles and the bridles and all the things that went along with that the object of your expedition is to obtain large supplies of cattle and horses well i haven't quite finished this research yet but steven hopkins is one of the providers of cattle to the continental storehouse and it turns out that there is a hopkins in bennington that had a large stretch of land that is known as a as one of our early cattle farms and instilla the cattle area in bennington the object of your expedition is to disc concern the councils of the enemy so if you people don't know this is the catamount tavern in bennington also sometimes called the green mountain tavern it's the fey tavern so originally it's it's jonas fey's tavern steven fey's tavern and now there's a bronze catamount in front of this tavern and the bronze cat catamount has to do with the controversy between new hampshire and vermont over the land new hampshire and new york over the land that became vermont and the catamount symbolizes the vermonters resistance to new york so vermont's um vermont's government in the face of the invasion created a board of war and the board of war is really what vermont's government was in 1777 so when you read the council of when you read vermont's early papers it's all about them prosecuting the war and dealing with the prisoners and running the hospital in bennington and they're doing most of this work from the catamount tavern so this would be ira allen thomas chitenden and jonas fey are the three names that are issuing all the orders that um orchestrated the defense of bennington and the defense of the population of vermont all persons acting in committee or any officers under the directions of congress either civil or military are to me made prisoners so what would have happened if the british had broken their way into bennington well we probably wouldn't hear any more about thomas chitenden ira allen or the fey family the object of your expedition is to try the affections of the country so once again we're just talking about the loyalists and i'm showing some of the mills in north bennington next slide and those millstones right there were from havelins mill so joseph haveling was a tori in a month before the battle of bennington he went over to the british and he said to the british i will supply you with x y and z when you get to bennington when he got back to bennington he was he was arrested by our committee of safety um but those are the millstones for the the mill that once stood in that very same location and the millstones ground the grain specifically for seph warner's troops seph warner's troops that fought in that second battle came through bennington and camp near that mill and were fed um at that mill that day so the battle of bennington eight thousand men are trying to get to albany from candidate they lose a thousand of those men trying to resupply themselves in bennington they lost a month of time the first of the battles of saratoga is september 19th the second is october 7th okay so they lost the time because they had to gather the supplies they needed to move forward in other ways so they lost their initiative as well at that time and they also lost the best battleground um between albany and canada which is where the americans set up which was beamis heights so the americans set up their cannon battery in a position that was better than for ticonderoga or mount defiance and that's beamis heights so the british don't even attack down the road along the river because that cannon cannon better prevented them from doing so the the loss of time that the battle of bennington created gave the americans time to get more troops in the battle on the battlefield so i told you that for ticonderoga it's eight thousand versus thirty five hundred well it worked out better in the end for the americans because at the battles of saratoga they have equal numbers and they're going to win these battles well technically the first ones of british victory but we'll brush over that um but because they're not moving any forward there's not a tactical victory um so and then and the british are starving at the battles of saratoga and that's because of the battle of bennington so um after the defeat of the british at saratoga it's the first time in world history that a british army surrendered in the field then in the winter of 77 that's when france entered the revolutionary war on our side and it went from being a civil war or revolutionary war to being a world war because we all we would also have aid from holland in spain and the revolutionary war would turn for the most part to the southern colonies the major battles in the northward were won it was all over because of the battles of bennington and saratoga questions i just want to make a point the uh ben franklin negotiated with french to bring them into the uh into the battle against the british does anybody know the french foreign minister's name that benjamin franklin negotiated for jens for jens vermont is named at the same time the british were offering the americans everything short of independence so the battles of saratoga and bennington could have won the war with the british as well yeah well they were gonna they were willing to stop the war and to return to the peace table yeah they thought the british really thought in 77 they were gonna win the war so that's why they were a little reckless with their coordination because they had general how that could have come up and helped at albany they they figured that wasn't needed so in the revolutionary war there was in the middle colonies um how it taken new york city new jersey and then went and took philadelphia that summer instead of heading north to perhaps help bergoyne on this campaign because he didn't think bergoyne was going to need it i wonder about your perspective beginning we heard those were offered that the british army was the most powerful uh best army in the world against this militia all these mistakes were made you know they didn't have enough troops the they didn't have the right to fight for they didn't have forces their intelligence was faulty do you have your perspective on how the hell this happened that that uh all these mistakes were made by supposedly professional soldiers in the height of command versus ragtag butchers militia geez well that's a great question well some of the answer are that um they left canada without really being fully supplied so they sort of hedged their vets in the beginning by kind of saying well we think our supplies and things like that will catch up um i didn't mention that this very same army the eight thousand man army had actually come down the lakes the year before in 1776 and it only got as far as balacore island and had just seen fort ticonderoto okay so fort ticonderoto was properly defended the year before and the british decided not to attack the fort and also because it was late in the year um so so the the surprise was lost and the commander in 76 was carlton and when they appointed bergoyne to be the commander of the next year um not everybody liked that so carlton didn't really didn't help bergoyne's invasion as much as he could have and also the german general rebase oh um you might say it was more of a carlton person than a bergoyne person so there was some issues there um um yes just a comment on the gentleman's question i think wars are a lot easier to analyze after thinking whether they're happy right because i think of modern armies today i can't understand vietnam ukraine we're seeing modern armies facing very unexpected events yeah okay so one more thing there was a gentleman named philps keen who's the commissary on the on the attack to bennington and he he's the person behind skeensboro or today's white ball okay um he was telling bergoyne and the british because he was actually over in britain meeting with the king everything the king needed to know which was a faulty information that there was more loyalists in this area and that they would all they're all just wanted the king to show up before they'd say yeah we're not into this patriot thing anymore we're ready to go so and skeen also was leveraging the british to build a road to his settlement so that was another reason your question you said at the outset that the uh were germans and as well as british troops on the way to bennington i had read a while back that bergoyne did not want to send british troops to bennington he wanted germans he wanted other people to do the flight he wanted them to remain with him yep so the the go ahead yeah the british troops are more valuable so as the british as the british army marches south from canada the right wing of the british army is the british troops the left wing of the army is the german troops so anything that occurs on the left is for the germans to take care of anything that would happen on the right would be for the british to take care of so that's one reason why the germans were sent um what else what was the other part of that question well that was it first of all also uh you you mentioned uh bergoyne was part of the attack in 1776 and he was real annoyed at the fact that carleton did not make a real attempt to take take on the yeah which of course was very well defended that yeah so he had a beans bucket about going back the next year and doing it his way that's right you know there's a plot in that whole strategy that their line of supply from canada to bennington albany was problematic to say the least so he had to sit since his son want whatever he could pick up along the way which wasn't adequate yeah so so the most important object for the british that was in their way for the british to get albany was for ticonderoga and after bergoyne took for ticonderoga in 77 and when king george got word of the defeat he said i have beat them i have beat all the americans that's how important ticonderoga was and on the american side they were so upset that the americans didn't have a battle and for ticonderoga the americans would court marshal the two generals involved skylare and uh sinkletcher if anybody else would like to ask some questions of bob we'll stick around for a few minutes but we're all i don't know if you have places to go thank you so uh before we leave uh we can't give bob a mug of eastern alice because as you pointed out eason was a prisoner uh more a prisoner so we do have a mug of the homestead since he is here on the homestead and bob came all the way from bennington today to be with us thank god i have to also a mug maker bob compton uh from bristol is back here and he has a little box with a mug of curl stark and self-warner and i was thinking why would it be nice to put us on our shelves but bob i think you should leave those with our speaker here for having come all the way up from bennington today so by the way if you have friends family members move up history consider a unique gift of one of our mugs which we have quite a collection of and bob you didn't mention eason's two books the narrative and and and reason the only oracle of man which we do have here somebody i was talking to about that earlier they said that they were very interested in in getting a copy of reason the only oracle of man that is a difficult book to read it's kind of the logic is a little circuitous uh but it is definitely worth reading we have a little i guess it's like a 14 page booklet that was put together by the late michael mcnight who gave a talk here back i think it was in 2010 and it's a summary there's like one page for every chapter of the reason book so if you want to read the reason book having that as a guide it's a tremendous little guide and that little booklet you will not find on amazon because we're the only place that sells that michael's went over the loudest who gave us permission to keep printing though so it's a great little resource if you're interested in learning a little bit about eason's progressive thinking um afro's 100 i mentioned we had 152 talks i'll bet you 140 of them have been by men right and that's because men have written the history of right naturally but next month we're going to try to start to even the score a little bit we had sky mccurious who's going to talk about women in colonial america i think the third sunday in september i don't know if that's around the 18th or so if you're on our mailing list you can get notices about that so again thank you for coming today and um i hope if you'll take a few minutes to check out the gift shop on your way out so all right take care everybody