A Great Jubilee Day
A Great Jubilee Day, first held on Monday May 26, 1783, in North Stratford, now Trumbull, Connecticut, commemorated the end of fighting in the American Revolutionary War. This celebration included feasting, prayer, speeches, toasts, and two companies of the North Stratford militia performing maneuvers with cannon discharges and was one of the first documented celebrations following the War for Independence and continued as Decoration Day and today as Memorial Day with prayer services and a parade. North Stratford Militia. The Connecticut general assembly named Robert Hawley the Ensign of the North Stratford Train Band or Company  of the 4th regiment of the Connecticut Colony militia in October 1765. He was promoted to Lieutenant in October 1769, and ultimately to Captain in May 1773. At a special meeting assembled in North Stratford on November 10, 1777, he was appointed to a committee to provide immediately all those necessaries for the Continental soldiers. On March 12, 1778, the parish of North Stratford made donations of provisions for those residents serving in the southern army stationed at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, under the command of General George Washington. Mr. Stephen Middlebrook donated the sum of seven pounds (money), three shillings  and ten pence to transport the almost two hundred pounds of provisions. George Washington called Connecticut the Provision State because of supplies contributed to his army by Governor Jonathan Trumbull the only Colonial Governor to support the cause of America's Independence from Great Britain.