Remembering a Revolutionary War Soldier on Memorial Day
Mount Independence in Orwell, Vermont, is a Revolutionary War historic site managed by the state. During the past four decades, I have spent many hours exploring the Mount and researching its history. The rugged 300-plus acre peninsula is located directly across Lake Champlain from Fort Ticonderoga. In the early years of the war, it was a crucial defensive installation, where the American army twice faced off against the British army invading from Canada. In 1776, the Americans successfully repelled the enemy. The following year, a British army of superior force caused the Americans to withdraw, an event that was a precursor to the battles at Saratoga.
If you hike the six miles of trails that cover the Mount, you’ll see the remains of an astonishing number of military facilities, including numerous cannon batteries, the picket fort, a 600-bed hospital, blockhouses, at least one warehouse, roadways, and barracks and huts to house thousands of soldiers. A 22-pier bridge a quarter mile long was built to connect Mount Independence to the Ticonderoga peninsula.
The chief engineer responsible for all this was a man you have probably never heard of. Col. Jeduthan Baldwin’s is not a face carved in stone for eternity. In fact, we have no portrait or statue of him. But we have something better. He kept a journal, the entries of which are a record of the development of Mount Independence and a picture of life in the Continental Army. Mixed in with all the mundane notes about whom he dined with and what projects he had worked on are passages that reveal the man, such as the joy at receiving a letter from his wife, or the pride when one of the generals looked favorably on his work.
But all was not wonderful, of course. In addition to the illnesses he suffered, Baldwin was frequently exasperated by the army. He awoke on the morning of July 16, 1776, to find that many of his personal effects had been stolen, provoking him to seek his release from service. On the 17th he recorded, “This Day I wrote to Genl. Sullivan to remind him of the request I had made of a discharge… as I am heartily tired of this Retreating, Raged Starved, lousey, thevish, Pockey Army in this unhealthy country.”
Jeduthan Baldwin abandoned his quest to quit the war, and spent another six years in the Continental Army before truly resigning his commission on April 26, 1782. In his seven years as a soldier he had crisscrossed the northeast, serving his country in Boston, New York, Ticonderoga, Saratoga, Morristown, Philadelphia and West Point. When Congress resolved on March 11, 1779, to form the Army Corps of Engineers, Col. Baldwin was one of just three American-born officers assigned to the Corps composed mostly of Frenchmen recruited for their training in military engineering.
Baldwin returned to his North Brookfield home after his military service, resuming his position as a leading citizen until his death on June 4, 1788.
Having some time on my hands one September day I decided to make a pilgrimage to Jeduthan Baldwin’s grave.
North Brookfield is a town of under 5,000 residents located almost dead center in the state of Massachusetts. As burying grounds go, the Maple Street Cemetery is not sprawling, but it isn’t tiny. I thought it might take me a while to amble through the rows of markers until I found the object of my quest, but it only took a minute or two to locate the headstone I was looking for. At first I mistook his son’s stone for Baldwin’s — as did the American Legion, which had placed the Revolutionary War veteran’s flag beside the grave of Baldwin’s first son, also named Jeduthan, one of three Baldwin children buried at the cemetery. Colonel Baldwin’s stone, much larger than the others, features an image of what I took to be an angel’s face born up with wings. The epitaph reads:
Here lies the Body of Jeduthan Baldwin Esq, Col. & Engineer in the late American War, Who died June the 4th 1788, Aged 56. He was a true Patriot, an intreped Soldier, an exemplary Christian and a friend to all mankind.
The children’s headstones tell the sad story of the hard times endured by the people of 18th century Massachusetts. Young Jed was just six years old when he died in 1763. Lucy Baldwin (named for her mother) died at two months in 1767. Isaac passed away in 1783, but the lower half of his stone had sunk below ground level, so I was unable to read his age — though it is given as 19 in the introduction to Baldwin’s journal.
I have come to respect and admire Jeduthan Baldwin. He embodied the very image of Yankee ingenuity. He was a vibrant member and leader of his community. He seemed a loving husband and father. When his country needed him, he twice answered the call — first as a young man during the French and Indian War, and then as a middle-aged man in an era when patriotism was what you lived, and not just a political slogan. Standing beside his grave, I felt as if I were on sacred ground, made all the more poignant by the three graves that preceded their father’s, and near whom he was buried.
On Memorial Day, I like to think about Jeduthan Baldwin and recall my visit to the place of his burial. The late historian Richard Ketchum gave the keynote address at the grand opening ceremonies for the Mount Independence visitor center museum in 1996. Ketchum, author of the wonderful book Saratoga, spoke of Jeduthan Baldwin.
He was the solid stuff of which the Revolution was made. The rebellion had its rabble-rousers and firebrands, of course, but Baldwin and his like were essentially moderate men who stuck it out through good times and bad (mostly bad) and provided the leadership and stability the Revolution had to have in order to survive.
Before I left the cemetery that day, I moved the Revolutionary War Veteran’s flag to its rightful place beside that of Colonel Jeduthan Baldwin’s gravestone.
