![](media/image1.png){width="0.9590277777777778in"
height="1.0965277777777778in"}

**SB 686/ HR 1286**

**Testimony of Kim Burdick, MA, MPA**

**National Chairman Washington-Rochambeau Revolutionary Route**

**Thursday, April 26, 2007**

**[www.w3r-us.org](http://www.w3r-us.org/),**

[**http://xenophongroup.com/mcjoynt/yrtnsieg.htm**](http://xenophongroup.com/mcjoynt/yrtnsieg.htm)

[**www.NPS.Gov/Boso/w-r**](http://www.NPS.Gov/Boso/w-r)

The National Washington-Rochambeau Revolutionary Route Association
(W3R-USA) strongly supports SB 686 and HR 1286, ensuring the creation of
the Washington-Rochambeau National Historic Trail. The W3R is a
many-faceted jewel. It is patriotic. It is educational. It is an
economic development tool. It is a heritage tourism dream.

The W3R is a positive and healthy environmental conservation and
heritage stewardship project. This historic trail follows old roads in
old towns and cities and can easily partner with greenways and blueways.
The W3R needs no extra land. It has local, county and state government
assistance and international support. It extends an olive branch to
France and pleases old history teachers like me! It is a wonderful
project and it is a legacy that we ask you to whole-heartedly embrace.

The Washington-Rochambeau National Historic Trail (W3R) traces the 685
mile route that thousands of allied American and French Revolutionary
War soldiers and their baggage train followed to defeat the British at
the Battle of Yorktown. (See pages 4, 5.6.)

Beginning in Newport Rhode Island, these allied troops followed the
Kings Highway and unpaved rural roads south through nine states, through
Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and
the then not-yet-created District of Columbia, into Virginia, relying on
the kindness, the patriotic fervor and sometimes the avarice of the
American citizens they encountered along the way. Their success at the
Battle of Yorktown, resulting in the surrender of British General
Cornwallis on October 19, 1781, marked the unofficial end of the
American Revolution.

After the Battle of Yorktown, these intrepid souls walked back home,
ending their trek in Boston on Christmas Eve 1782 when the remaining
French soldiers sailed home.

W3R-USA members know that the National Park Service, with its expertise,
its technical services, and its professional strength and organizational
ability, is needed to help make this national historic trail an enduring
source of national pride.

We know, and the employees of the National Park Service know, that
people are fascinated by this National Historic Trail, and that
Americans love walking in the footsteps of history. The board members
and volunteers of the W3R-USA know from first-hand experience that
creating this National Historic Trail is both a feasible and a
reasonable project.

We know, because we have worked on W3R projects in all nine states and
DC, that this is a great project---a real constituent pleaser\--and we
ask you, most sincerely ask you, the members of United States Senate,
our Congress, to authorize this National Historic Trail. We ask you to
help us give this 225th anniversary legacy from the past, and the
present, to the future---to your children and grandchildren; our
children and grandchildren, to the seventh-generation to come.

Our organization, W3R-USA, is a non-profit 501 c-3, created specifically
to celebrate and communicate the importance of the march of the allied
American and French soldiers of the Yorktown Campaign. Since before
9/11, W3R members have worked on special projects, seminars, symposiums,
re-enactments, wreath-layings, 18^th^ century concerts and dances, all
geared to making this historic trail come to life. We spend our grocery
money, our very middle-class paychecks, and all our spare time,
breathing life into this magical story. Some of us have already walked
the route.

In 2004, Lee Patrick Anderson, historian at Fort Mifflin, Pennsylvania
walked the W3R from Newport, Rhode Island to his home in Mullica Hill,
New Jersey. In 2005 W3R-DE sponsored a "Hike the Pike" Day with people
walking the first leg of Delaware's W3R Revolutionary Route. Sig
Helstrom, an 80-year-old man from Graylyn Crest, Delaware, walked the
"Hike the Pike's" ten mile route in 140 minutes. In 2006, Mike
Fitzgerald, Dave Holloway and David Fagerberg walked all 685 miles, from
Newport, Rhode Island to Yorktown, Virginia, arriving in time for the
225^th^ Anniversary of the Yorktown Campaign. Boy Scouts in Rhode Island
and other states, college students, and interested persons along the
Route joined the marchers from time to time, sometimes marching the W3R
across their home states, sometimes walking for many days, then going
back to work, only to rejoin the marchers in another state.

W3R volunteers in each state welcomed the marchers as they crossed over
each state's borders, local residents hung breathlessly on their words
as they told about their adventures and misadventures; the towns and
cities held celebrations, parties and dinners celebrating both the
historic march and the contemporary marchers; and we are currently
hoping to raise enough money to produce a documentary film about their
journey.

The creation of this National Historic Trail is a good, tangible way to
show the citizens that Government officials are, indeed, proud to be
Americans and proud of American history. In the process of planning and
preparing 225^th^ Yorktown Campaign anniversary celebrations in all nine
states and DC, we learned that the grass-roots citizens of both parties
have been very disturbed that our leaders seemed to blow off America's
225^th^ anniversary. We learned that most Americans are interested in
the real stories about American history. Ordinary citizens, gas-station
attendants, grocery clerks, school teachers, insurance salesmen,
artists, writers, state and county policemen and national guardsmen took
matters into their own hands. They joined together to help W3R-USA mark
America's 225^th^ anniversary. The constituents made the W3R come alive.
Local, city, county, and state governments in the nine W3R states, DC,
and France contributed time, money and volunteers to this effort. Some
of the projects were very sophisticated; others were simple acts of
love.

Historic house museums and private homes opened their doors for lectures
and tours. Special Rochambeau dinners and colonial balls were held. Jack
Jouette's ride across Virginia was recreated. W3R volunteers began to
wear matching scarves and neckties to show solidarity. French Ambassador
Levitte and Consul General Alex-Lyoudi were honored guests in every one
of these states, and faithfully attended wreath-layings, commemorative
events, wayside marker dedications, and wine and cheese parties.

The President of Rhode Island's Naval War College gave a heart-warming
225^th^ Anniversary speech in French, and David McCullough spoke from
the heart of the important role that the French soldiers-and the French
citizens of the thirteen colonies played in fighting for our
independence.

A poor black lady in Wilmington humbly offered the marchers money for a
cup of coffee, another who saw them marching through her neighborhood
offered to make them a pancake breakfast. An Italian-American woman
spent all day making them homemade soup because she knew they were cold,
wet and hungry. A first-generation American from Scotland wrote a
marching tune for America's 225^th^ anniversary.

An artist from Scotland, Connecticut is painting 100 wall-sized canvases
that illustrate the story of the allied French and American troops,
illustrating the scenes along the 685 mile route with love and good
cheer. Black Patriots from across the nation attended a Delaware
Humanities Forum conference in north Wilmington, to discuss the roles
their own ancestors had played in the American Revolution; a Rochambeau
re-enactor living in the State of Washington criss-crossed the country
repeatedly to participate in activities all along this 685 mile route.

I, personally, have been very touched and humbled by the interest and
enthusiasm, the fun and the frustration, of working on the
Washington-Rochambeau Revolutionary Route. It has been a beautiful and a
heart-warming experience for me, a history teacher, and a mother; a
descendant of Revolutionary War soldiers, and, a person of French
descent, to see this project come together.

I am delighted to have had this opportunity to address you, and I most
sincerely ask you to join us in this constituent-pleasing endeavor. This
is a National Historic Trail like no other. It comes to you with its own
fan club!

Thank you all very much for all you do, every day, for the citizens of
the United States of America.

Respectfully Submitted.

Kim Elizabeth Rogers Burdick, National Chairman W3R-USA

***About Kim Burdick, 2007-2008 National Chairman, W3R-USA***

*Kim Rogers Burdick, MA, MPA, staffed the Delaware General Assembly's
Natural Resources Committee, chaired by Representative George Carey of
Milford, Sussex County, Delaware, for ten years. She was responsible for
the creation of both Delaware's Coastal Heritage Greenway and the
Delaware State Folklife Program, now housed in the Delaware Department
of Natural Resources. Kim served as Delaware General Assembly's staff
person on the National Educational Goals Committee. In 1994, she was
selected by the Council of State Governments as a Henry Toll Fellow.
Mrs. Burdick served on the Board of Advisors of the National Trust for
Historic Preservation from 1991-2000.*

*Currently the National Chairman of the nine- state and D.C. National
Washington-Rochambeau Revolutionary Route Committee (W3R-USA), she is
also the Chairman of the Delaware Humanities Council. Kim Burdick
teaches American History at Delaware Technical and Community
College-Wilmington Campus. Contact her at: <KimRburdick@aol.com>*

![](media/image2.jpeg){width="4.219444444444444in"
height="4.2965277777777775in"}

![](media/image3.png){width="5.995833333333334in"
height="5.322222222222222in"}

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| THE SIEGE OF YORKTOWN (1781)                                          |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
|   ------------------------------------------------------------------  |
|   ![](media/image4.jpeg){width="5.989583333333333in"                  |
|   height="3.2395833333333335in"}                                      |
|                                                                       |
|   ------------------------------------------------------------------  |
|                                                                       |
|   ------------------------------------------------------------------  |
|   Detail of the *Siege of Yorktown (1781)*, a 1786 gouache painting   |
|   by Louis-Nicholas van Blarenberghe. Blarenberghe was a              |
|   professional painter of battle and campaign scenes for the French   |
|   army. He executed his Yorktown paintings under the direct           |
|   supervision of Berthier, a skilled draftsman and former member of   |
|   Rochambeau\'s staff in America (1781-83).                           |
|                                                                       |
|   ------------------------------------------------------------------  |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| By the end of September, **approximately 18,000+ American and French  |
| combatants** had gathered in the Williamsburg area of Virginia, while |
| **about 8,000+ British soldiers, with their German auxiliary troops** |
| occupied Yorktown and Gloucester Point. The number of combatants is   |
| not exactly known, and the **figures given in historical accounts are |
| estimates**, which are based on various administrative reports prior  |
| to, and after, the siege. Such data is then adjusted based on         |
| assumptions as to what number are \'effectives\' \[physically able to |
| engage in combat\] and as to naval personnel being employed \'in      |
| direct support\' of the land operations. One outstanding scholar of   |
| the military aspects of the Revolution, Mark Mayo Boatner III, goes   |
| farther than most in identifying his assumptions and other factors in |
| deriving his figures. The following is based upon data from his       |
| remarkable ***Encyclopedia of the American Revolution*** (p.1248,     |
| *Bicentennial Edition*, NY, 1974).                                    |
|                                                                       |
|   -                                                                   |
| -------------------------------------- --------- -------- ----------- |
|   **AMERICANS**                                                       |
|                                                                       |
|   Continental Infantry                    7,290                       |
|                                                                       |
|        Artillery                          514                         |
|                                                                       |
|        Cavalry                            176                         |
|                                                                       |
|   Total Continental Army                            7,980             |
|                                                                       |
|   Militia                                           3,153             |
|                                                                       |
|   Total (non adjusted for effectives)               11,133            |
|                                                                       |
|   Non-effectives (sick)\                  -1,000\                     |
|        absent\                            -700                        |
|        present                                                        |
|                                                                       |
|                                                                       |
|  Total Effectives (\'rounded figure\')                      **9,500** |
|                                                                       |
|                                                                       |
|   -                                                                   |
| -------------------------------------- --------- -------- ----------- |
|                                                                       |
|                                                                       |
| --------------------------------------- -------- -------- ----------- |
|   **FRENCH**                                                          |
|                                                                       |
|   Rochambeau\'s                           4,000                       |
|                                                                       |
|   St. Simon\'s                            3,000                       |
|                                                                       |
|   Army detachments \[*See note at bottom  800                         |
|   of page*\]                                                          |
|                                                                       |
|   Naval personnel\                        1,000                       |
|   aboard ships, in\                                                   |
|   direct support.                                                     |
|                                                                       |
|   Total                                                     **8,800** |
|                                                                       |
|   Excluding est 15,000 naval personnel\                               |
|   on ships that contributed to the                                    |
|   overall\                                                            |
|   campaign.                                                           |
|                                                                       |
| --------------------------------------- -------- -------- ----------- |
|                                                                       |
|   --                                                                  |
| -------------------------------------- -------- -------- ------------ |
|                                                                       |
| **TOTAL ALLIED FORCE**                                     **18,300** |
|                                                                       |
|   --                                                                  |
| -------------------------------------- -------- -------- ------------ |
|                                                                       |
|                                                                       |
| --------------------------------------- -------- -------- ----------- |
|   **BRITISH**                                                         |
|                                                                       |
|   \'Reported\' army strength at start.\   8,885                       |
|   Includes German mercenaries.                                        |
|                                                                       |
|   Estimated naval personnel\              840                         |
|   directly supporting                                                 |
|                                                                       |
|   Estimate naval personnel figure is\                                 |
|   from number that surrendered to de                                  |
|   Grasse.                                                             |
|                                                                       |
|   Estimated British total at start                 9,725              |
|                                                                       |
|   Estimated sick                          -1,500                      |
|                                                                       |
|   **TOTAL BRITISH FORCE**                                   **8,225** |
|                                                                       |
| --------------------------------------- -------- -------- ----------- |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+

Chart courtesy of Durf McJoynt, W3R-VA