Putnam patriot., 1918-07-05
ADDRESS OF JUSTICE I. N. MILLS
 AT WEST THOMPSON JULY
Continued from Page Three)

A1OHtinueo from T age taFEeI
 ter came by messenger to the com mandant of the local militia, the Elev- enth. Colonel Ebenezer Williams, at his residence on Pomfret street. At once he sent orders to his captains to forthwith summons their men to mus ter at Pomfret. The next day and night the warning officers were riding hard and swiftly up and down these hills and valleys carrying the sum mons to the remGtest farmhouses. With those officers 'the fate of na- ton was riding that night" as certain ly as it rode with Paul Revere and William Dawes the night but one be-
 fore There were then no slackers hereabouts; and early Sunday morn ing the 23rd, many of the men of Poufret. Woodstock and Killingly
 (which then embraced Thompson1,
 were assembled there on POmfret streets Among them were fifteen of the men buried here. During the forenoon. while the men thronged the chuecn and listenei to q stirring ser mon, the officers cona0ite and decid- e4 that onlY aae fifth Of tse men should 20 to the seat of war The ehoseo ones at fge that very aftes- noon began tHei- march t0 Cambsi42e ard among them were twelve of our fifteen.
 The second most general service by these men was that of the local mili tia regiment. the Eleventh, in the New
 York campaign in the fall of 1776. h
 it's ranks upon that expedition were fourteen of these men, all but two members Of the two Thompson com panies, of the other two one being in d Pomfret company and the other m d Woodstock company. When the regiment marched away from here it was at one of the darkest periods of the war, just after the disastrous de
 feat of Long Island and at the begin ming of the retreat from New York City The Connecticut Continentals and the fourteen militia regiments west of the Connecticut River were already in the service there when
 Washington appealed to Governor Trumbull for the last possible aid.
 The doughty Governor responded on
 Sept 9th with proclamation calling out the nine militia regiments lying east of that river to muster and forth
 with to march to New York and ren- dezvous there at Westchester His proclamation closed with these words : March; this shall be your warrant:
 May the God of the armies of Israel
 be your leaderr Then indeed was there hurryng and scurrying about of the warning officers. Both the Thomp- son companies that of Captain John
 Green and that of Lieutenant Paine
 Converse, the latter from my boyhood
 home district, ffty-seyen men in all,
 assembled on the Common at Thomp-
 son Hill, filed into the old church, where the pastor, Priest Russell" !" as l he was locally known. preached tc them patriotic sermon Then they marched past this very spot, over this highway, to Pomfret street
 where. near the residence of Colonel | Williams, they met the other of the twelve captains of the regiment. which came there from the rest of killingly Woodstock and Pomfret
 Thence the regiment. 410 strong. marched by the Middle Road" | through Ashford, to Hartford, New 1 Haven. and thence along the Shore road, by the sound, to the stated ren- dezvous within q few miles of my present home. The number of men 1 was not larger because many belong | ing to the regiment had that spring enlisted in the Connecticut Continent als and were already in the service | The regiment reached New Haven on | the 10th and was at Westchester be- fore the 20th, as a letter written home from there by one of the men, and | still eXtant, proves. They marched without any of the gay trappings of war. it's gold and silver tinsel or it's | bright colors without uniforms, clad | in their homespun, some of them | doubtless wearing in place of coats | the frocks which farmers then here so commonly wore in the fields
 They marched, however, to the | shrill music of the fife and the rattle of the drum. prepared to do and dare and for any fate Each one of their ! leaders knew well that failure meant. at least for him, the gallows tree, as | he bore still the commission of the King. Connecticut did not adopt the Declaration of Independence until l about a month later. and the commis- sionS of the officers were not called in and re=issued in the name of the State l instead of that of his Maiesty's Col ony until the following May As the roads were intolerable and the dis tance about l60 miles, their march was most expeditions. In 17S9 Wash lngton, in his coach and four, upon his return from his trip to Boston and beyond, took seven days, from noon of Saturday. November 7th. when he dined at the Jacobs Tavern, East Thompson. until the afternoon of No vember 18th. to ride to New York l City over the same route, less one day. Sunday, the Sth, on which the Connecticut Blue Laws compelled him l to stop at Ashford and listen to ''an l indifferent sermon preached by MT |
 , as he somewhat petulantly re corded in his dairy I love to vizu- alize the long march of the yeomanry 1 of the town hastening through the ! heat of that most heated season, in | which, as the quaint chronicle states, ! Captain Crosby melted himself" by | his exertions on the march of Put nam's retirement from New York City
 There was pitable dearth of all manner of supplies. sanitary and otherwise. and the men of the regi- ment suffered intensely from sickness A letter still extapt, from the Com of the regiment, dated Octo- Der 9th. states that six of them died