Intern Update: Cornwall's Support of Boston Revolutionaries in 1774

By CHS intern Ryan Bachman.

 In the aftermath of the Fourth of July holiday weekend, this week’s blog entry relates to Cornwall’s Revolutionary War history. Following the Boston Tea Party in December 1773, the British Parliament passed a series of punitive measures directed against the Province of Massachusetts Bay, popularly known in the American Colonies as the “Intolerable Acts.” One of these measures, the Boston Port Act, effectively shut down all commerce in Boston Harbor until the destroyed tea was paid for. In response to this development, towns from throughout the thirteen colonies responded to Boston’s plight by sending money and provisions to the blockaded city.

At a special town meeting on August 22, 1774, Cornwall residents voted that it was their community’s duty to support Boston, which the selectmen claimed was “suffering in the common cause of liberty” (emphasis in original). A benevolent committee was established to collect donations and forward them to Massachusetts, and to show just how enthusiastic the selectmen were in their support of Boston, voters ordered that the meeting minutes be printed in the Connecticut Journal and thus made public throughout the state. Members of the Cornwall donations committee gathered supplies from their neighbors and subsequently met with other committees from nearby towns at a county convention where they commonly sent their donated items north to Massachusetts along with a letter of support.

In November 1774, Cornwall’s selectmen received a reply from the Boston Committee of Donations, pictured below. According to the committee chairperson, David Jefferies, Boston’s civic leaders were very impressed with the “liberal donations” sent to the city from Northwestern Connecticut, especially in regards to the 51 cattle that were driven from the Litchfield Hill towns overland to the Massachusetts capital. Although the contents of the letter that the county delegation forwarded to Boston is unknown, the language was evidently prophetically strong—Jefferies took the time to specifically thank the Litchfield County committee for pledging to assist Boston with their “lives and fortunes whenever there shall be occasion.” Five months after the Cornwall selectmen received the letter from Jefferies, the Revolutionary War began at Lexington and Concord and militiamen from throughout New England swarmed to the countryside outside Boston. Four of the five men appointed to Cornwall’s donations committee went on to fight in the Revolution, namely Thomas Porter, Edward Rogers, John Sedgwick, and Heman Swift.