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 Summary: Long before General Horatio Gates took command of the Northern Department of the Continental Army, the militia of New England respond to British General John Burgoyne’s invasion of New York in 1777. Colonel Enoch Hale issued the initial request to Captain Gershom Drury on the day British ships were spied at the mouth of Otter Creek, a few miles north of Ticonderoga. Moses Kelly copies Hale’s letter and makes his urgent call to Captain Samuel Philbrick of Weare, New Hampshire, on the same day that Burgoyne’s army began to invest Fort Ticonderoga: “Expecting you will raise one quarter of the militia under your command, with out lose of time.”
[Saratoga Campaign]. Autograph Document Signed. Moses Kelly to Captain Samuel Philbrick, with Kelly copying Letter from Colonel Enoch Hale to Captain Gershom Drury. Goffstown, N.H. June 29-30, 1777. Inventory # 21432 $3,800 Complete Transcript: Ringe Sunday June ye 29 – 1777
Sr. I this moment received an express from Capt Bouker of Otter Creek by way of Coll Hammond, informing that Ticonderoga is besieged and the communication is cut off by eleven hundred men this side the lake. You are therefor requiered if possible to raise one quarter part of your militia and send forward without loss of time otherwise that Importan[t] Place will be lost
Enoch Hale Coll.
To Captn. Gershom Drury
A Copy A copy of the above I have recived this moment, from Col Moor, to aquant you. Expecting you will raise one quarter of the militia under your command, with out lose of time - -
Moses Kelly
Goffstown June ye 30: 1777 - -
To Captin Samuel Philbrick of Wear[e, New Hampshire] [docket:] Coll Mores Letter / June 29 1777 Historical Background:
In June 1777, General John Burgoyne amassed an army of seven thousand British and German regulars and fifteen hundred allied Indians from as far away as Lake Superior. His intention was to drive southward and to meet Sir William Howe’s main army, which Burgoyne expected would ascend the Hudson River, to occupy Albany. As it turned out, Howe had his own plans, resolving instead to take the American capital of Philadelphia. Burgoyne assumed Howe would adopt his strategy, which had been prepared in consultation with Secretary of State Lord Germain in London that winter. Even without Howe’s help, he almost succeeded. General Arthur St. Clair commanded only 2,500 soldiers, spread out between Fort Ticonderoga, on the west side of Lake Champlain, and Mount Independence, on the east (Vermont) side. On June 23, St. Clair received intelligence that Burgoyne’s Indians were scouting on both sides of the lake and that five British vessels were patrolling the mouth of Otter Creek, the gateway to the Valley of Vermont. “No army was ever in a more critical situation that we now are,” St. Clair wrote to his superior officer, the commander of the Northern Department, Philip Schuyler. St. Clair resolved to hold the fort as long as possible. However, neither St. Clair nor Schuyler had ordered cannons placed atop Mount Defiance (or Sugar Hill), which commanded both Ticonderoga and Mount Independence. Burgoyne ordered General Fraser to seize Mount Defiance, which he did on July 5. Despite their immediate response to the urgent call for reinforcements, Philbrick’s militia were too late to help save the fort. According to Chandler Potter’s Military History of New Hampshire, “From Weare and vicinity, a party of twenty men, out of Col. Moore’s regiment, upon the alarm of June, 1777, marched to Number 4, under Samuel Philbrick, Captain. And returned, having heard of the evacuation … From Goffstown and vicinity, a company of forty-two men, under Moses Kelley, Lt. Col marched, July 1, 1777, for the relief of Ticonderoga, as far as Washington and Number 4, when they were ordered back, being out five days.” In the early morning hours of July 6, St. Clair evacuated the two forts. This caused political uproar in New England. St. Clair retreated into Vermont, fighting a brisk rear-guard action at Hubbardton before circling southwestward to join Schuyler at Fort Edward, on the Hudson River in New York. In August, Congress removed St. Clair and Schuyler, naming Horatio Gates to command the Northern Army outside Albany. Gates was helped by thousands of militiamen rising from home and hearth to stop Burgoyne. The militia did not play a prominent role in the Battles of Saratoga, but they did harass Burgoyne’s tenuous supply line, which stretched all the way back to Montreal. And they were a major component of General John Stark’s motley force which defeated a wing of Burgoyne’s army at the Battle of Bennington on August 16, 1777, inflicting nearly a thousand casualties. A regiment of New Hampshire militia commanded by Colonel Enoch Hale, whose original letter was copied in Kelly’s letter here, fought splendidly under Stark at Bennington. And Captain Gershom Drury, mentioned in this document, commanded Colonel Daniel Moore’s 9th New Hampshire Militia Regiment at Bennington and in the later stages of the Saratoga campaign. Burgoyne’s attempt to split the colonies in two and isolate New England ended with defeat at the Battles of Saratoga (September 17 and October 7, 1777). On October 17, Burgoyne surrendered his entire army, an event which marked a great turning point in the war, as it helped persuade France to recognize the United States and to sign a treaty of alliance. Historical References:
Ketchum, Richard. Saratoga: Turning Point of America’s Revolutionary War. New York, 1997.
Potter, Chandler. Military History of New Hampshire.
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