Cathryn J. Prince is the author of the newly released Death in the Baltic: The WWII Sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff A Professor, as well as three other nonfiction books including Shot from the Sky: American POWs in Switzerland. She worked as a correspondent for The Christian Science Monitor in Switzerland and in New York, where she covered the United Nations. Prince works as a freelance journalist, and is an adjunct professor of journalism at Quinnipiac University.
In April 1775 the Fairfield, Connecticut, mansion of the Honorable Thaddeus and Eunice Burr was a-bustle. Preparations were being made to welcome a contingent of key patriots: John Hancock, Samuel Adams, Lydia Hancock and Dorothy Quincy. Word had reached Burr (who was High Sheriff of the County), Colonel Gold Selleck Silliman (he hadn’t yet been […]
During the winter of 1778-1779 General Israel Putnam and about 3,000 troops of the Continental Army encamped in Redding, Connecticut. The harsh winter brought a rash of problems, from illness and low food supplies to the more problematic issues of desertions and theft.[1] Indeed Tory spies frequently penetrated Putnam’s lines, carrying information to the British. […]
The crevices and stony outcroppings of Devil’s Den, a 1,756-acre nature preserve in Weston and Redding, Connecticut, can provide shelter for hikers during an unexpected rainstorm. Or, as was the case for some women and children 236 years ago, the perfect place to hide during a British invasion. It was shortly before sunset on April […]
Sometime around midnight on May 1, 1779, British soldiers smashed through the wooden door of General Gold Selleck Silliman’s Fairfield, Connecticut home. They snatched him and his eldest son, William, from their beds. The soldiers, accompanied by eight armed Tories, confiscated the general’s fusee, a pair of his pistols, his sword, and three hats (one […]
