Posted on 12/21/2019 11:35:08 AM PST by SunkenCiv
Human skeletal remains -- possibly belonging to Revolutionary War soldiers who fought in the Battle of Ridgefield in 1777 -- were discovered under the foundation of an early 18th-century house last week.
The Connecticut Office of State Archaeology was notified by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner about the find on Dec. 2.
Subsequent excavations by the state archaeologist Nicholas Bellantoni, with assistance from the Friends of the Office of State Archaeology, Inc. and University of Connecticut graduate students, have yielded two more skeletons.
"One has been completely excavated already and is in the medical examiner's office and we're working on these other two," said Bellantoni, who began working on the site on Dec. 3.
Bellantoni noted that all three skeletons were "robust adult men lying in an east-west orientation in ground that appears to be haphazardly dug."
...Historians recorded 16 British soldiers and eight Americans were buried in a small field to the right of the American position on the battlefield (which would be south of the Stebbins house). In his extensively researched book, Farmers Against the Crown, Keith Marshall Jones III reported being able to document 13 deaths and 27 wounded from the Patriot ranks. Earlier historians offered varying numbers, he noted. Jones named seven Americans, including one from Ridgefield, Bradley Dean, whose remains are not recorded in any cemetery records. These, he said, were presumably those buried at the battle scene.
They include, in addition to Dean: Private Noah Bartlett of Hartford; Lieutenant Hezekiah Davenport of Stamford; Samuel Seeley of Easton (then part of Fairfield); Volunteer David Selleck of Stamford (via Salem); Private David Stevens of Stamford; and Lieutenant William Thompson of Trumbull (Fairfield).
(Excerpt) Read more at wiltonbulletin.com ...
What did they know about the Clinton family?
“How’d they manage to be under a house foundation that was built in the early 18th century?”
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Article says the original house was “very small” and that the remains were found under a later addition.
Reading the article? That’s cheating.
Yes. Later in the article it says “The original house was built around 1790 and was very small,” said Sharon Dunphy, president of the Ridgefield Historical Society.” So that would be late 18th century not early. But the article further states “There have been several additions made to the home over the years — and one of those construction projects built over the burial site.” “The skeletons were not in the original house,” Dunphy explained. “The additions to the home finally put a roof over them. The burials were definitely beyond the original structure.”
LOL! I know! And not only did I read the original article, but I searched and read a couple of others because I had never heard of the Battle and wanted to learn more about it /nerd/teacher’s pet
Enough! If these were Colonial soldiers fighting the Brits during the Revolutionary War they are heroes who deserve our reverence and respect. I hope that they are re-interred in a proper burial with an honor guard.
Then again, the current author probably thinks he has written this article in the early 20th Century. Thanks to his oh so fine modern education which frequently doesn’t even include the history of earlier centuries.
Some have skeletons in the closet while others have them under their home....
Some of the homes built back then had dirt floor basement.
When we were house hunting in Maryland years ago, we went through a house built-in the 1700’s for one Of Lord Calvert’s family members, and the basement had a dirt floor.
There was a body found in the basement of an old home in Annapolis several years ago. It was a young man and by the injuries he had suffered through his life they assumed he was a slave. The DNA showed he wasn’t African but European probably a Scot or Irish.
These bodies were under a later addition. Secrets were buried in basements.
Stebbins House served as the field hospital for the battle, IIRC.
Is the unnamed site near Stebbins House...?
Might have had a dependency built over the burial site years later.
Exactly what I was going to post! ...Thought to scroll down the thread to see if someone caught that before I did.
Wasn’t this the plot of the movie Poltergeist?
The plot of “Poltergeist” was that the real estate developers had moved the headstones, but not the actual graves.
That was back when Connecticut was pro-America, the Connecticut I used to love to visit. Now it is a marxist/Democrat run leftist crime ridden state.
I NEVER cheat! /s
Connecticut had some battles, that is unrecorded. Danbury is one, Ridgefield. Essex is another. Wethersfield was visited by George Washington...
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