New Book Reveals Myths And Realities Of Redding’s Revolutionary War Encampment

By Nancy K. Crevier

Following 12 years of research that began in 1998, Daniel Cruson has dotted all of his i’s and crossed the last of his t’s in Putnam’s Revolutionary War Winter Encampment: The History and Archaeology of Putnam Memorial State Park, the 12th book concerning the Fairfield County region by the Newtown historian, published in November. It is a book born of scratching an itch Mr Cruson has had since he was a young man growing up in Easton, visiting Putnam Park, and wondering about the lives that were lived on those grounds more than 200 years earlier. “I have been wanting to dig there since I was a kid,” Mr Cruson confessed.

The book is focused on the encampment of 3,000 Colonial troops in what is now Putnam Park, off of Route 58, in Redding, during the winter of 1778-79. The encampment is frequently referred to by local historians as “our Valley Forge,” comparing it to the brutal winter suffered by Revolutionary troops under the command of General George Washington in 1777.

In reality, archeological and historical research done by Mr Cruson, Kathleen von Jena, and Diana Messer during the past decade proves that “it wasn’t anywhere near to that severity,” said Mr Cruson. “There was actually an early spring that year. The problem was not getting supplies through the snow all winter, but through the deep mud, because of periodic thaws,” he said. While the enlisted men serving under General Israel Putnam certainly did not live in the lap of luxury that winter, there was no starving, freezing, or feet wrapped in rags, Mr Cruson emphasized.

The research from 1998 to 2010 clarified that suspicion, and tied together loose ends that had been brought to light by previous archeological digs, the first headed by former State Historic Preservation officer David Poirier in the 1970s, and a second by Boston University researcher Ricardo Elia. Access to a few of Mr Poirier’s notes and the tests, many inconclusive, run by Mr Elias, formed the loose background on which Mr Cruson and his colleagues worked to dismiss myths and prove hypotheses.

“We learned, for example, that mounds touted through oral tradition for years as a cemetery on the grounds did not mark a burial ground, but the site of the officers’ quarters,” Mr Cruson said. The mounds, upon close examination, were exposed as the crumbled remains of chimneys. That soldiers would have been buried so near the living quarters simply did not make sense, said Mr Cruson, as that would have been terribly demoralizing. More likely, the “sick unto death” soldiers went to a Danbury hospital, and those who passed were most likely buried behind that (no longer standing) building.

Tiny clues, such as the plethora of artifacts, including two pharmaceutical vials, found in the first of two huts excavated, have led Mr Cruson to believe that the first hut may have been occupied originally by Lieutenant Major John Hawkins of Hazen’s Second Company of Canadian Volunteers, and then, as camp broke in the spring, indicate that the space may have served as a hospital for sick soldiers. “I do believe that it shows they continued to care for their sick there after camp was broken,” he said.

“The beautiful part of writing a book,” said Mr Cruson, “is that you get to review all of your information together, instead of in isolation [as you are researching]. It allows you to make those links.”

Putnam’s’ Revolutionary War Winter Encampment is not just a history of the winter of 1978-79, however. Mr Cruson also delves into the prehistory of what is now the park area, the impact of the encampment on the surrounding towns, the denouement of the camp, the creation of the first state park, and the lore that has followed the Revolutionary winter camp into modern times. He does so in a narrative manner that is appealing not only to historians but to the layperson interested in the history of this area. By joining archeological with knowledge gleaned from rare historical papers and diaries, Mr Cruson succeeds in breathing life into mere names of people and places.

Archeology and Research

“The archeology of the site came before the historical research, really,” explained Mr Cruson. When the historical research began, they found that much of it paralleled the archeological discoveries. Using “muster rolls,” the registry of enlisted men found at the National Archives, and orderly books, which posted the orders from higher commanders, the researchers were able to name the people who were at the winter encampment, and flesh out those characters into real human beings.

“We started making connections when we could see the association between things we were finding,” Mr Cruson said. It was at this point that his co-worker, Ms von Jena, commented that the site had finally begun to “talk” to them.

What the site (the most northern of the three settled by Hazen’s Second Company of Canadian Volunteers and by New Hampshire regiments, led by Lieutenant Colonel Henry Dearborn, on the future Putnam Park lands) said to the archeologists was that here men had hunkered down from the war, living in wooden huts swiftly erected, eating a diet that consisted of cattle slaughtered on those grounds and chickens pilfered from nearby farms, and going about mundane everyday tasks, one day to the next.

It spoke of differences in hut construction by Canadians and Americans, of sickness and death, of the occasional march to a skirmish, or a treat or celebration, and of the two grim executions that took place for spying and desertion.

Historical and archeological research jived to tell of possible and probable interactions between local women and the soldiers, and of the more genteel lives led by Gen Putnam, housed in a large saltbox home with his aides and attendants on Umpawaug Road, away from the enlisted men, and other high commanders. The intersection of the officers’ and enlisted men’s lives that winter with townspeople of Redding is quietly revealed by these discoveries, giving a sense of realism to this long ago part of American history.

Answering Questions

The book, Mr Cruson hopes, will answer many of the questions posed by the curious visitors who came to the site as the dig was underway. “They had questions I couldn’t answer at the time,” he said. Writing about the discoveries will bring history to life for the readers, he said, as well as dispel myths.

One of the myths surrounds the book’s namesake, General Israel Putnam, who oddly figures as a background character to the book. “He was living the high life over on Umpawaug Road,” joked Mr Cruson, while his officers dealt with the day-to-day problems and running of the camp. “Remember, Gen Putnam was an old man by the time the Revolutionary War took place. His job was to see that orders were carried out, mainly,” Mr Cruson said.

The myth surrounding Gen Putnam is captured in the Anna Hyatt Huntington sculpture in front of the Putnam Park visitor’s center. In it, Gen Putnam charges down a flight of steps, memorializing one of his final heroic deeds, during what would be his final command. Lore has it that in drawing away British troops from his own men during a battle at Horse Neck in Greenwich, he rode his horse down 70 ledge steps that split the upper and lower sections of that town in two. His hat was shot off, but he and his men escaped. Files discovered from Joseph Rundel, a young orderly in the Continental Army, though, suggest that the general rode down but a few of the rocky steps, and then led his horse the rest of the way, instead. The deed was no less heroic, however, as the general did distract the British troops long enough for American troops to retreat to safety.

Gen Putnam was also crucial in quelling a mutiny by disgruntled soldiers of the encampment, and despite his age and disassociation from the actual campground, was a fairly well-respected man, Mr Cruson said, and therefore worthy of the honor of the park’s naming.

Putnam’s Revolutionary War Winter Encampment gives a clear picture of what life was like during the encampment. But the true value of the archeological and historical research lies not in the completed book, Mr Cruson said, but rather in the educational value it provides.

“It gives to schoolchildren, many who visit the park each year, a truer picture of what the Revolution was like. They can come face to face with history, and have it be more real to them,” he said. In all of the site proposals to the Department of Environmental Protection, the researchers stressed that educational component, he said.

The book may be published, Mr Cruson added, but it’s never really finished. There is always more learning to be done, more clues to link together.

“The best way to learn something is to teach it,” he said, “but the better way is to write about it.”

Putnam’s Revolutionary War Winter Encampment is sold locally at the C.H. Booth Library, 25 Main Street, at Everything Newtown, 61 Church Hill Road, and online at Amazon or at Barnes & Noble.

(Mr Cruson will lead a 45-minute winter walk of the Putnam Park encampment this Saturday, December 3. Participants of the free walk are asked to meet at the Visitor’s Center off of Route 58 in Redding, between 10 and 10:30 am. Department of Energy & Environmental Protection commissioner Daniel Esty will speak briefly at 10:30 am.)