Chronicling Glastonbury’s role in the Revolutionary War : Historical Society of Glastonbury publishes book for 250th anniversary
- Peter Marteka
- 2 days ago
- 4 min read
By Peter Marteka
Editor
The story of a widow who lost her husband and her three sons during an explosion of a gunpowder mill in South Glastonbury but rebuilt and continued to supply the Continental Army until the end of the war. The story behind the Asa Talcott Musket, one of the society’s prized artifacts. The mystery of a Glastonbury soldier unearthed in Ridgefield during an excavation.
These are just some of the stories in the Historical Society of Glastonbury’s latest book – “Our Sacred Honor: Glastonbury and the Revolutionary War.” The 91-page book chronicles the history of the Revolutionary War and its connections to Glastonbury. The book was written by society board member James Hallas.
The idea was hatched during a board of directors’ meeting last year as a way to celebrate the country’s 250th anniversary. A publication committee of Jim Hallas, Susan G. Motycka, Marshall S. Berdan, and June Blacksten went to work.
The plan was to collect and publish all the society’s articles about the Revolution written for the Glastonbury Citizen over the decades “of the ordinary people of Glastonbury whose extraordinary commitment helped bring us the liberties we enjoy today.”
“The more I looked the more I realized that it just wasn’t going to fit together as a bunch of articles,” Hallas said. “There were contradictions. There was overlap and lack of context. So I started rewriting stuff as I did research, I got into areas where apparently no one else had gone…I was sort of the prime mover in the writing, but I had a lot of help and owe so much to the people who wrote before and laid the groundwork.”
One of those new areas were pension papers for Revolutionary War veterans.
“They contained a lot of human interest information so I was able to focus on some sort of the human element of it which is what I like to do anyway instead of Washington did this and Washington did that,” he said.
The government in the 1830s began granting pensions to old soldiers who were in need. Forms had to be filled out showing proof of service.
“They were pretty strict about it,” Hallas noted, “and some of them were pretty sketchy. ‘I was here and I joined here.’ ‘I served until then and then I came home.’ But a lot of them took that opportunity to kind of elaborate on their experiences. One wrote ‘I was in the battle of Long Island and got bayoneted in the chest by a Hessian.’”
Hallas said the more he dug, the “more I found things that people had not touched on before.”
“One of the most curious stories was a lieutenant from Glastonbury who was hanged for going over to the enemy…Not exactly a patriotic, uplifting story. But that’s essentially how it got going,” he said.
The book also includes a roster of everyone who served in the army including Glastonbury—centric names like Bidwell, Goodale, Goodrich, Hollister, Hubbard and Talcott.
“The lists we had were either incomplete or they were wrong. We went through and rechecked all those names and basically did genealogies on every name we came across and tried to pin down where they were buried,” Hallas said.
Hallas said one of the biggest surprises he discovered were 450 men served out of a population of about 2,000. Another surprise was the discovery of a Glastonbury soldier in Ridgefield during an excavation of an historic house there in 2019.
“They tested the strontium in the bones and figured out it came from this geological area…It just shows history can be ongoing. Things pop up…I grew up in town and thought I was somewhat familiar with the colonial history of the town. I found out how little I really know.
“I had no idea the first person from Glastonbury killed in the war was killed on Bunker Hill,” he added. “There’s just a tone of stories. We were heavily involved and Glastonbury was a patriot town from the beginning.”
The book was made possible by a generous grant from Town Councilman Thomas P. Gullotta. Hallas noted the book never would have come to fruition without the grant from Gullotta.
“We are so grateful to the research and dedication of Jim Hallas in bringing Our Sacred Honor to life,” Theurkauf said. “The compilation of stories and events have brought us closer to the founding of our country in a unique way. Not just statistics and dates, but a fuller picture of the time.”
In Hallas’ preface he notes that it is “easy to forget as we go about our daily lives that our republic was made possible in part by men and women who walked the same ground we walk today.”
“They are not commemorated by heroic paintings of generals or by elegant signatures on defiant declarations, nor do they appear in etchings of solemn men contemplating solemn questions in the struggle to create a new nation,” he wrote. “They were ordinary people, not so different from ourselves in their human strengths and weaknesses. Ordinary people who endured sacrifice and privation and ultimately prevailed.
“Without their commitment,” he added, “without their fortitude, there would be no heroic paintings, no bold signatures on sacred documents, no etchings of nation builders... indeed, there would be no nation.” GL
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