This story is the unfortunate flip side of “Top Ten Revolutionary War Patriot Homes in Connecticut”: the most significant Connecticut houses demolished in the 1800s or 1900s. Not included, of course, are the plethora of homes burned by the British in their raids on the Connecticut coast, including New Haven and Fairfield, in July 1779; […]
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. […]
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 […]
