General Stark’s Field

Guest Post by John Coster

Two weeks back, before the sugar maples had started to burn away their leaves in a blaze of red and gold, I walked down to the Green River where it flows south beneath the covered bridge. I was taking a break from reading about the Revolutionary War in these parts. I had just finished an account of the Battle of Bennington by the commanding officer, John Stark, and I wondered if the nearby Stark Mountain Road had been named after that general. The bridge was closed for repairs, so I intended to cross the river and hike into the broad field beyond. It was easiest to cross over river rocks, particularly given the low water level from the dry hot months of this past summer.

I hopped across, then pulled myself up the far bank by grabbing the small trees above. I knew the path just beyond the band of brush that bordered the river. It ran down the edge of the long, broad field that covered the floor of this little valley, a small even plain of dazzling green in the bright sunlight. Thick forests rose up and over the surrounding hills like the jagged sides of a flat bottomed bowl. The path led to a sign I had seen before, designating the land as set aside for conservation, and I wanted to follow it to the north side of the field to photograph the valley from the highpoint of the road beyond the covered bridge. As I reached the path, a tan dog, maybe a golden lab, came bounding up, followed by a woman walking, a hiker in jeans and a sweatshirt. We nodded hello as she went quickly down the trail.

I reached the road and spent some time taking pictures, then headed back towards the place where I had crossed the river before. As I neared that spot, I saw that the woman who had passed me was now returning up the path. This time, I looked at her more closely. She was barefoot. How had I not noticed that before? She was not carrying any shoes either, eliminating the likelihood that she had simply taken them off to feel the warm earth under her feet.The trail, though grassy in many places, wasn’t that smooth, and I marveled at the confidence with which she strode along, not flinching from whatever rocks or woody plants obstructed the path. We both slowed down as we drew closer, and I noticed that her face was tanned and somewhat lined in a way that suggested she spent a lot of time outside. “Beautiful day,” she said. I slowed to a halt.

“Beautiful valley,” I replied as she also paused and bent to playfully cuff her dog. I asked her about this sweeping green field, encircled by the tops of mountains. Like much of the surrounding land up here, it seemed closer to the clouds, I noted, and indeed it was, for we were on the eastern flank of Stark Mountain. The Green River wound down through these highlands on its way to the Ct River Valley hundreds of feet closer to sea level.

“When I was a child,” said the woman, “this whole field was planted in corn. We could hide in the corn and never be found.” I imagined green stalks, row upon row, stretching a third of a mile down to the narrow gap in the hills where the river drops towards Massachusetts and the forest closes back in over the rocky stream bed. Then, out of the blue, she suddenly said, “This is where General Stark camped with the militia on his way to Bennington.” I was taken aback by the coincidence and started to explain that I had been reading about John Stark that very morning and suspected that he was the Stark for whom Stark Mountain and the nearby road had been named.

Then I paused and introduced myself, adding that I was staying a mile up the hill in the house on the right, just past Josh Road where the Bartenhagens had lived until selling the place this past July. The woman smiled and replied that she didn’t know which place that was. I thought this odd since she had evidently lived here since childhood and there were only three houses along that whole stretch of road. Then, without telling me what her name was, she continued, “You should meet Mrs xxxxxxxxxx in the little gray house by the bridge. She knows all the stories of the old days. She will keep you there for hours talking if you let her. Why Molly Stark stayed in her house for a while, they say.”

I tried to ignore the awkwardness of my failed attempt to find out who she was, and the conversation continued. She like me hoped the valley would remain as it was, that no developer would try to put up houses on the hills overlooking the field. She thought the rough unpaved roads would deter them. Her parents had moved here in the early sixties and bought the house where she now lived. It was just up the way, north of the church on the Green River Road. We talked for a bit longer, then proceeded on our separate ways, I saying with some confusion that it was nice to meet her, realizing that I still had no idea what her name was. “Up north of the church?” I thought to myself. That meant walking barefoot on a gravel road. I winced at the thought.

This encounter jogged my memory. Hadn’t I read in various places about the terrible lack of clothing among the American rebels? Hadn’t I in fact read that many of them were actually barefoot? I recalled the description of the American army by Lafayette, who along with my ancestor in the box of letters, General John Armstrong Sr, was with Washington at the Battle of Brandywine in the summer of 1777:

“About 11,000 men, ill armed and worse clothed, presented a strange spectacle to the eye of a young Frenchman. Their clothes were parti-colored, and many of them were almost naked. The best clad wore hunting shirts.” (Wheeler p.244 Voices of 1776)

Whenever I drilled down into accounts of the Revolution, I was always struck by the physical toughness of the Americans. These ill-equipped citizen soldiers endured long marches, bad weather and lack of shelter, but barefoot? Were many of them really barefoot? Later that day I searched around on the internet and found the following passage:

“In that day and time an army ‘traveled on its feet’ and in this army so many were barefoot that this was the literal truth. So many men were without shoes with no possibility of replacement that Washington offered a reward of ten dollars to anyone who could produce a shoe substitute made from hides.”

(www.revolutionarywararchives.org.49december1777.html) by Andrew Stough, reprinted from Gold Country Chapter no.7 of the CSSAR, slightly edited by the Sons of Liberty Chapter of the CSSAR

I’ve since learned that this theme of the barefoot soldier was particularly relevant to the events that led John Stark to set up an encampment in this very field. As Washington pondered how best to counter the British descent toward Albany from Canada, he contemplated taking his own troops on a forced march north to assist the assembling patriot forces of which Stark’s New Hampshire militia was one contingent. Could he throw his forces into that fray and crush General Burgoyne’s regulars, then return south to defend Philadelphia? As it turned out the issue was decided for him because one fifth of his soldiers had no shoes, and a grueling march from New Jersey was therefore impossible. (Rupert Furnneaux, The Battle of Saratoga, p.90). The Yankees prevailed but with greater losses than would have been the case with the assistance of Washington.

General Stark was a formidable soldier. He had been one of Roger’s Rangers fighting in the wilderness during the French and Indian War. He and his New Hampshire militia had devastated British troops at the Battle of Bunker Hill and if my barefoot friend was correct, when they camped in this pleasant valley in the summer of 1777, they were about to inflict a serious blow to the British troops under General Burgoyne. In so doing, they altered in a direct way the course of my own family’s history.

Stark and his men trekked over these rugged hills to Bennington where with the help of Seth Warner and the Green Mountain Boys of Vermont they soundly defeated the British and their German allies who had come to Bennington seeking supplies for his Majesty’s Army. They got no supplies and lost a sizeable portion of their troops. Stark and Warner and their tough Yankee militiamen had demoralized the invaders and prepared the way for the American victory that followed.

At the Battle of Saratoga shortly after, the colonials under General Horatio Gates defeated Burgoyne in what many think was the decisive battle of the revolution. My two ancestral grandfathers, John Armstrong Jr. and Morgan Lewis, two young officers who were aides de camp to Horatio Gates, came out unscathed and almost certainly during this period encountered the Livingstons of Clermont and the sisters who would become their wives and my ancestral grandmothers.

What do I know of this? Nothing really. I can easily imagine the Livingston household offering whatever hospitality could be mustered for officers of the Continental army heading to the northern front. Margaret Livingston, the matriarch of the clan, one of the nation’s founding mothers, was willing to commit everything she had to the cause of independence. Clermont with its broad meadows overlooking the widest stretch of the Hudson and the dark mountains beyond would have been a natural rest stop for Gates and his men.

Moreover, it would have been entirely appropriate for Gates to pay homage to Janet Montgomery, the widow of the revolution’s martyr, the fallen Richard Montgomery, whose heroism and death at Quebec had been the inspiration of broadsides and ballads on both sides of the Atlantic. Since the younger Armstrong and Morgan Lewis were most likely unknown to each other before serving with Gates, it seems probable that both men met the Livingston girls at some such occasion.

Moreover, after the revolution and the death of Horatio Gate’s wife, the general proposed to Janet, the oldest of the Livingston girls. Somehow Gates and his two younger aides, all became romantically involved with Livingston sisters. Indeed, in my box of letters, is a copy of Janet’s reply, refusing somewhat awkwardly his proposal. She had dedicated her life to the memory of her husband, “my poor soldier” as she called him and never would remarry.

I like to imagine this scene, perhaps just a formal dinner, as much as one could be produced in the midst of a rebellion. As one of the representatives on the drafting committee of the Declaration of Independence, older brother Robert, not a soldier but a wanted man, spent little time with his mother and siblings. He would likely have been elsewhere, but brother Henry, the recklessly courageous colonel, could have attended, Henry who dove into battle with a kind of manic violence. Who knows?

Benedict Arnold was in some of the same close combat that distinguished Henry. As a high ranking officer, he could have been a dinner guest as well. I can’t say if such a gathering actually took place. Maybe some archive of old letters could tell me, or some historian who has poured over such documents. If indeed such an evening happened during this period when the outcome of the revolution was still very uncertain, it would have been one of the last events held in the old mansion. Even if historians now see the Battle of Saratoga as the turning point, the war was far from over.

On October 17th on the very day when “Gentleman Johnny Burgoyne” surrendered to General Gates with the young John Armstrong and Morgan Lewis, future brothers in law standing by, British Major General John Vaughan led a raiding party up the Hudson and burnt Clermont to the ground. The British could not allow this stronghold of rebellion to stand and offer a haven of gentility to mere rebels. Alida and Gertrude the future brides of our two young officers saw the last of their home from the back of a wagon bouncing over rough dirt roads as they fled east to Massachusetts watching the flames rise from Clermont into a darkening sky.

I don’t suppose that given their family’s wealth, they ever had to go barefoot, but I believe they were tough and spirited women. Their marriages were born out of a revolution and the new relationships that formed as Americans from different areas were thrown together on the battlefield.

Back on Stark mountain in the quiet by myself tonight, I am remembering a time last summer when I walked over the bridge and met ANOTHER woman with a dog; she was barefoot too. Different dog, a terrier of sorts I think, a different woman without a name walking barefoot on a gravel road. There is something dreamlike about these brief encounters, something that makes me think I have seen a ghost or imagined the whole thing. These hills probably look much like they did in 1777.

The forest has reclaimed much of the old farmland. In deep woods, stone fences and lost wagon roads cut across hills and the trees themselves are now the only harvested crop. In the 1800s as better lands opened up, many of these pioneer farmers quit the rocky worn down mountains of Vermont for better soils in the west. Tough as they were, I guess they wanted an easier life and maybe a decent chance at a good cash crop. But many families, of course, stayed on because this is where they belonged. John Stark went back to New Hampshire, like Cincinnatus, the great Roman general returning to his farm and giving up the military and public life at the height of his fame.

He lived to be 94 years old. I am thinking about those barefoot women, wondering if Molly Stark might have sometimes walked these hills without shoes and perhaps dipped her toes in the Green River.