Picture the village of Ridgefield in 1777: much of the land had been cleared, and the views from the three ridges that made up the town center were magnificent. In late April, a spring storm with lashing wind and rain arrived on a Friday evening. Soon, word also came that a large British force had landed at Westport and was marching north.
Danbury, a depot for the Continental Army, was the target of some 2,000 troops, led by Major General William Tryon. After a day and night of looting and destroying the provisions warehoused there, the British troops, aware of gathering Patriot forces, headed south early Sunday on a route that passed through the center of Ridgefield. At the time, the population of the town was about 1,700. The colorful British troops would have been visible and loud as their half-mile-long line of march approached, a terrifying prospect for the villagers.
The Battle of Ridgefield, Benedict Arnold, the Patriot Militia and the Surprising Battle that Galvanized Revolutionary Connecticut is Keith Marshall Jones III’s latest book about this Revolutionary War event (his previous account of the battle, Farmers Against the Crown, was published in 2002).
As the Battle’s 250th anniversary approaches in 2027, the understanding of its scope and significance continues to expand. Thanks to newly available digital archives and the research completed under the first National Park Service American Battlefield Protection Program grant initiated by the Ridgefield Historical Society, the Battle of Ridgefield is understood as more than just a skirmish or series of skirmishes.
Jones’s narrative of the lead-up to Tryon’s raid and the events that occurred that weekend of April 25-27, 1777, as well as his assessment of the battle’s impact on the outcome of the war, is both lively and extensively documented. “Most of us have been educated to understand our War for Independence through the eyes of ‘great’ men,” he explains. “But Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Hamilton, and company were only part of the story. Perhaps my greatest joy in researching Ridgefield’s 1777 battle was to meet so many fascinating, overlooked characters who constitute the larger part of our past.”
One of the overlooked characters that Jones brings to life is British general Sir William Erskine. “Known as “Woolly” for his thick mop of hair, Erskine – who bears an uncanny resemblance to Beatle Ringo Starr – was the tactical brain behind Tryon’s successful raid,” says Jones. “Knighted for battlefield valor in Europe, Erskine’s sheer competence enabled him to speak truth to power during his American service.”
Jones found Connecticut militia colonel Benjamin Hinman equally fascinating for the sheer longevity of his military career. “Hinman is one of the Revolution’s true lost-to-history heroes, so what a pleasure to give him his due,” Jones says. “Continuously in the field during the French and Indian War, the 58-year-old Hinman not only was wounded at Ridgefield, but also participated in the Canadian invasion as well as the pivotal engagements at Bennington and Saratoga. He even superseded Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold in command of state troops at Ticonderoga.”
In his foreword to the Jones book, Walter Woodward, Connecticut State Historian Emeritus, says, “While sustaining a captivating level of narrative interest from start to finish, The Battle of Ridgefield retells the story of the Danbury campaign from the perspective of the British and American troop commanders, and it vividly recreates the experiences of the rank-and-file soldiers and militia engaged in the often chaotic, bloody and terrifying events of that four-day campaign.”
The 320-page history is extensively documented and indexed, making it the ideal book for anyone interested in a deep and fascinating dive into Ridgefield’s place in the history of the American Revolution. The timing is particularly appropriate as the second National Park Service project gets underway this year with archaeological exploration of Battle of Ridgefield sites and as the 250th anniversary of the Battle of Ridgefield approaches in 2027.
Keith Jones is also the author of John Laurance, the Immigrant Founding Father America Never Knew (awarded the American Philosophical Society’s 2019 “Publication of the Year”); Congress as My Government, Chief Justice John Marshall in the War for Independence (2008); Farmers Against the Crown (2002); and The Farms of Farmingville (2001).
Copies of The Battle of Ridgefield is available at the Ridgefield Historical Society and other booksellers, such as Books on the Common. •
