Current Owner Vetoes Designation ––

Rochambeau’s Newtown Campsites Eligible For National Register Listing

By Jan Howard

State Historic Preservation Officer John W. Shannahan in June announced that Camps 10 and 41 of Rochambeau’s Army, located on Church Hill Road, had been determined eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places effective May 6.

The State Historic Preservation Board, comprised of professional archaeologists, architects, architectural historians, historical architects, and historians, had approved the property’s nomination in February.

The owner of the property, Carmine Renzulli of Norwalk, has, hoewever, objected to the property’s being listed, and thus the property will not be listed.

The National Preservation Act and federal regulations provide that owners of private properties nominated to the National Register must be given an opportunity to concur with or object to listing.

If the owner or owners object to the listing, the nomination cannot be entered in the National Register. Federal agencies are, however, required to comment before the agency may fund, license, or assist a project that will affect properties determined eligible for the National Register, Mr Shannahan said in a letter dated June 6 to Mr Renzulli.

The site, located opposite Walnut Tree Hill Road, is one of 19 sites being investigated as part of the Rochambeau army’s route through Connecticut.

According to Mary Donohue of the Connecticut Historical Commission, five years ago a group of municipal historians in eastern Connecticut expressed interest in marking and researching the route of march taken by the French army.

Studying The Route

In 1998, the Connecticut General Assembly approved three years of funding for the Historical Commission for the study, $30,000 each for the first two years, and $20,000 for the third year.

In 1998, the Historical Commission hired two teams for the project, Ms Donohue said.

“Dr Robert Selig’s task was to document the above-ground resources along the route,” she said.

The bulk of the money, $25,000, went to the Public Archaeology Survey Team (PAST) to look at the whole range of maps of the French and other Revolutionary era maps and to determine what the actual route was, she said.

According to Ms Donohue, PAST members looked at campsites and tried to find existing areas that could be excavated, and actual areas of the French march that had not been developed and therefore survived.

The first year’s work included study of eastern Connecticut. During the second year, Dr Selig studied the winter quarters of Count Rochambeau’s cavalry, led by Duc de Lauzun, on the Lebanon Green and that unit’s march through Connecticut in 1781.

Meanwhile, PAST was studying campsites and other historical places of the French army’s route in western Connecticut, including the campsites in Newtown.

“There are more undisturbed campsites in eastern Connecticut than in western Connecticut,” Ms Donohue said. “There’s more open, undeveloped parcels of land there.”

During the third year of the study, the Historical Commission began a manuscript that will serve as a tour guide to the French army’s route through Connecticut, she said. Once it is published, she noted, people would be able to follow the trail.

“Connecticut is the first state to undertake the project,” Ms Donohue said. With no previous model, the project is being “invented as we go along,” she noted.

PAST’s second project was to take the reports, write a history of the route as an overview, and identify resources for nomination to the National Register. Four resources were identified, including campsites, such as in Newtown; taverns and private homes that housed French officers and soldiers; pieces of roads that were undeveloped or abandoned that would maintain their scenic value as would have been seen by the French army; and a historic landscape, the Lebanon Green.

Ms Donohue said a study completed 30 years ago had identified a number of historic buildings that no longer exist. The purpose of studies such as that of the Rochambeau march is to point out what places are historically, archeologically, or architecturally significant, she said. In this case, the route of the French army’s march, is a theme.

Commemorating The March

In addition to the Connecticut Rochambeau project, in 2000 a bill was enacted into law by Congress that allocated funds to identify resources that commemorate the 600-mile march of generals George Washington and Count Rochambeau that led to victory at Yorktown, Va., in 1781.

The study focused on the states of Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Virginia, and identified the route’s relationship to the Revolutionary War and how it could best be preserved. The study is in conjunction with activities being planned to celebrate the 225th anniversary of the victory over British forces under the command of Major General Charles Cornwallis in Yorktown.

John Herzan, National Register coordinator for the Connecticut Historical Commission, said, “Some people have used their right of owner rejection to listing on the National Register of Historic Places. That’s their privilege.”

Mr Herzan said the property met the criteria as demonstrated in documentation, and was eligible for enrollment on the National Register. As such it received a DOE (Determination of Eligibility), which, he said, affords the property some protection.

“It has considerable historical resources, and is historically valuable,” he said of the Church Hill Road camps.

The nomination for the Church Hill Road sites was forwarded to the Keeper of the National Register at the National Park Service, US Department of the Interior, in Washington, DC, along with copies of letters and newspaper clippings regarding the nomination. According to Mr Herzan, the staff of the National Register reviewed the nomination to determine whether it met the criteria for enrollment even though it cannot be listed.

Mr Renzulli said he had the right to reject the listing, and as the owner had done so. “They wanted it for that, but it was my choice to reject,” he said recently. “They approached me, but I don’t want to give up the value of the property.”

Despite an easement on the property purchased by Iroquois Transmission for its pipeline, the property can be developed, he said, though he has no current plans to build on it. He purchased the approximately three-acre property from Kenneth M. Anderson of Stratford in 1987 for $135,000. The property, which has 463 feet of frontage, is zoned two-acre residential. He noted that in the future he might ask for a change in zoning to a commercial designation.

On the other hand, he noted, “I might leave it vacant forever.”

 Ms Donohue said if a property previously approved for National Register listing is sold, a new owner could request it be listed without any additional paperwork.

Count Rochambeau and his army had arrived in Rhode Island in July 1780. The French army’s presence was in response to appeals to King Louis XVI of France by Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania, Silas Deane of Connecticut, and the Marquis de LaFayette, who had been commissioned a major general in the army of the United States. The king agreed to send French troops to aid the colonial cause during the American Revolution, and chose as commander a proven older general, Marechal Jean-Baptiste de Vimeur, Count de Rochambeau.

Arriving In Newtown

In July 1780, Count Rochambeau and his army arrived in Rhode Island. Almost a year later, on June 18, 1781, his army left Rhode Island, marching westward from Providence. His forces numbered 600 artillery, 600 cavalry, and 3,600 infantry. They marched through Hartford, Farmington, Southington, and Break Neck (Middlebury), the first regiment reaching the Housatonic River at Newtown on June 28. The troops crossed the river via a wooden bridge, but heavy equipment, such as siege guns, were forded across the river by eight teams of oxen.

As the troops and equipment made the crossing, they took the road directly away from the Housatonic River into Newtown, to the camping ground in the meadows southwest of the village. The decision to camp in Newtown was made because provisions could be found here.

On the evening of June 28, Count Rochambeau was staying in the inn across the road from Newtown’s Congregational Church. Intermittently for three days, his troops marched in review past the inn.

It had been tentatively planned that General George Washington would meet Count Rochambeau in Newtown. He was delayed, however, and sent an urgent communication requesting that Count Rochambeau “push on his troops with greater haste than he now intends.” The French army broke camp on July 1 and proceeded west to join Washington’s army on July 6 at Phillipsburg, N.Y. Together, the Americans and Frenchmen marched on to victory over the British General Cornwallis at Yorktown, Va.

“Without the French, we wouldn’t have won the war,” Ms Donohue said. The French, of course, had their own motives for helping the Americans, she noted. “They wanted leverage against the English.”

The National Register of Historic Places is a list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects that are significant in American history, architecture, and archaeology. It is a guide for federal, state, and local governments, planners, private groups, and individuals to those properties that merit preservation.

 

(Some information for this story was found in the League of Women Voters’ book, Newtown Connecticut Directions and Images.)