Matthew Reardon is a native of northeastern Connecticut. He earned his BA in history and an MA in education from Sacred Heart University. His research interests mainly focus on Connecticut during the American Revolution and the Civil War. He served as executive director of the New England Civil War Museum & Research Center for over fifteen years. His first book The Traitor’s Homecoming: Benedict Arnold’s Raid on New London, Connecticut, September 4-13, 1781 will be released in May 2024. He currently works as a middle school teacher in Vernon, Connecticut. Matthew and his wife Melisa live in Enfield, Connecticut.
Solomon Tift was long believed to be one of the last surviving veterans of the Battle of Groton Heights in Groton, Connecticut. Daniel Eldridge was also supposedly there with Tift heroically defending Fort Griswold. But neither man was there. In fact, on September 6, 1781, while the battle raged, Tift and Eldridge were not defending […]
At dawn, on Sunday, May 19, 1782, “a large new schooner” moved steadily eastward across Long Island Sound. At the helm was Capt. James Hovey. Born about 1743, Hovey was a native of Stratford, Connecticut, and mercantile captain by trade.[1] He remained in the trade throughout most of the war, frequently running merchant vessels, except […]
By April 1782, the war in America was supposed to be over. It had been nearly six months since Lord Cornwallis surrendered his army to Generals Washington and Rochambeau at Yorktown. The previous February, the British Parliament had voted to stop funding the war. Peace negotiations between British and American representatives had begun in Paris. […]
In the spring of 1841, a correspondent from the Hartford Courant went to East Windsor, Connecticut looking for an elderly man who was a bit of a local celebrity. The Courant, which had originated as a weekly newspaper in 1764, played a large influential role in affecting the opinions of many within Connecticut during the […]
New London’s harbor was the center of Connecticut’s wartime naval activity for the duration of the eight-year American Revolution. Because of its recognized importance, its provincial government, as early as 1775, sought ways to protect it. Sending a military commission to the harbor area, they would eventually order the construction of three earthen fortifications on […]
It is considered the oldest, continuously serving military unit in the United States. The 1st Company, Governors Foot Guard has as much a storied history as the state that it serves. It came into existence in 1771, when the Connecticut General Assembly approved a petition that had been submitted by a group of prominent Hartford […]
In early September 1781, General Sir Henry Clinton, the British Commander in Chief in America, found himself facing a combined Franco-American force poised to attack his stronghold in New York. Or so he believed. Purposely deceived by the allies that an attack was forthcoming, he eventually decided that his only option was to make a […]
