Digging In Putnam Park––

Revolutionary Encampment Comes To Life

By Dottie Evans

Those who have read the Newtown Reads book, April Morning by Howard Fast, had an opportunity Saturday, April 12, to relive revolutionary times through the eyes and words of town historian Dan Cruson.

Since the fall of 1998, Mr Cruson and his archaeological field crew, assisted by Kathleen von Jena and several of his senior archaeology students at Joel Barlow High School, have been digging in the ruins of a colonial army encampment at Putnam Park in northern Redding.

 After extensive analysis of the ground and examination of relics uncovered at several sites among 54 enlisted men’s huts, Mr Cruson has developed a detailed scenario of what he thinks went on at the site during the winter of 1778–1779, when the right wing of the Continental Army under the command of General Israel Putnam was camped there.

“We know this was a command position and we know who the officers were. A lot of soldiers had gone home for the winter,” he explained, because conditions were too severe for battle since their firearms were rendered inoperable in the wet and cold weather.

Nevertheless, generals, officers and enlisted men, as well as camp followers such as tailors, butchers, carpenters, and soapmakers, spent the winter there –– up to 3,500 in all –– encamped along the wooded and rocky hillside nearby a rushing stream.

“Their presence made a huge impact on the site,” Mr Cruson said, not the least of which was the construction of a double line of 54 enlisted men’s huts, complete with stone chimneys built in a double line across the hillside, a row of huts that Mr Cruson has termed Company Street.

Even after 225 years, the evidence of the encampment is plain to the naked eye in the collapsed piles of chimney stones seen at regular intervals over the length of Company Street. In almost all cases, the log walls and roofs have long since disappeared.

As Saturday’s visitors followed Mr Cruson around the Putnam Park Loop, past the high ground where the officers would have lived down to Company Street where the soldiers were quartered, they learned how in Revolutionary times, the soldiers would have been able to sustain themselves through a hard winter in what was then a wilderness outpost.

There had been three Revolutionary encampments in all, one in New Hampshire, one in Canada and this one, the easternmost encampment at Putnam Park, which was possibly the largest.

 

What They Found:

A Button, A Ramrod, And An Ax

Mr Cruson described the process of uncovering artifacts after sifting through fine layers of dirt and rocks under what would have been the hut floors. Always, the collapsed chimney stones provided a point of orientation and place to start digging, since the fireplaces were situated on the huts’ back walls with the doors opposite.

“These ruins were amazingly clean, but we have found minute bits of bone from past meals, always swept to the side and usually ending up at the edges. These have helped us identify certain walls and corners,” he said.

One hut, isolated from the others, yielded a couple of medicine bottles and other evidence that it had served as a hospital tent.

“If soldiers were really ill, they were taken to Danbury where they either got better or died. Nobody died in this camp, although 27 died who were enlisted here and part of this company,” he said, adding that allowing the men to die in the winter camp would have been very bad for morale.

During excavations with his students, Mr Cruson said one boy had found an officer’s button.

“The thrill of being the first person to touch that button since it was dropped more than two centuries ago, was nearly indescribable,” Mr Cruson said.

In another instance of what he called Cruson’s Law of Archaeology, a very important find was made within three hours of closing the entire excavation for the year.

“It was our last day working on that hut and we noticed a piece of cast-iron sticking out of the ruins of a hut that had been burned. It turned out to be an 18th Century ax.”

Another time, they found a ramrod stashed under a raised fireplace hearth that had probably been used to poke the coals.

“They lived in tight quarters here. The huts were 16 by 12 feet and from eight to 12 men shared each hut.”

Mr Cruson and his archaeological field team have uncovered some 1,200 artifacts, many of which are exhibited in the park’s museum, although state budget cuts have curtailed the hours that the museum is open to the public.

 Their work in the fall of 2002 had been “snowed out” by the early winter, however, so their license to dig granted by the Department of Environmental Protection, has been extended.

“If we go very slowly, we’re hoping for 100 percent recovery,” Mr Cruson said.

“Remember, as you are looking at this,” wrote Mr Cruson in a flyer titled Archaeology At Putnam Park, “what is before you is exactly the same as it was 225 years ago, shortly after the soldiers marched out of the valley to continue the fight for independence.”

 Newtown Reads participants might have wondered whether young Adam Cooper of Lexington was in their number.