Selden West is a retired U.S. history teacher. She lives with her husband, dogs, and assorted livestock on a farm in the High Peaks of the Adirondacks. Her special interest is the Revolutionary War in southwestern Connecticut and Long Island Sound.
Monday, November 17, 1777. The men started their march north through Westchester County at six o’clock, more than an hour after nightfall. The afternoon’s clouds had given way to wind and freezing rain. After a few hours the sleet turned to snow. Roughly one hundred men marched in silence. Their green coats disappeared in the […]
Very early on a hot summer’s day in 1778, Moses Mather, Jr., son and namesake of the Patriot minister of Middlesex Parish (today’s Darien), Connecticut, was seventeen years old and sitting in a whaleboat just offshore.[1] Only two years before, whaleboats rarely had been seen in western Long Island Sound. But as enemies on both […]
The fabulous news of the victory at Yorktown was announced in the small town of Stamford, Connecticut, on the coast of Long Island Sound on October 27, 1781. Surely steeple bells clamored and there were prayers of thanksgiving at the Congregational meetinghouses. Soldiers stationed in Stamford were marched to a small hill half a mile […]