William Hazelgrove - Henry Knoxs Noble Train: The Story of a Boston Booksellers Heroic Expedition That Saved the American Revolution

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Copyright 2020 by William Hazelgrove

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Names: Hazelgrove, William Elliott, 1959 author.

Title: Henry Knoxs noble train : the story of a Boston booksellers heroic expedition that saved the American Revolution / William Hazelgrove.

Other titles: Story of a Boston booksellers heroic expedition that saved the American Revolution

Description: Guilford, Connecticut : Prometheus Books, [2020] | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: During the brutal winter of 17751776, an untested Boston bookseller named Henry Knox commandeered an oxen train hauling sixty tons of cannons and other artillery from Fort Ticonderoga near the Canadian border. He and his men journeyed some three hundred miles south and east over frozen, often-treacherous terrain to supply George Washington for his attack of British troops occupying Boston. This exciting tale of daunting odds and undaunted determination highlights a pivotal episode that changed history.Provided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019054464 (print) | LCCN 2019054465 (ebook) | ISBN 9781633886148 (cloth) | ISBN 9781633886155 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Knox, Henry, 17501806. | United StatesHistoryRevolution, 17751783Artillery operations. | United States. Continental ArmyEquipment and supplies. | United StatesHistoryRevolution, 17751783Campaigns. | Military weaponsUnited StatesHistory18th century. | United States. Continental ArmyBiography. | Boston (Mass.)Biography.

Classification: LCC E207.K74 H39 2020 (print) | LCC E207.K74 (ebook) | DDC 973.3092 [B]dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019054464

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019054465

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992

Once again to Kitty, Clay, Callie, and Careen

I returnd to this place on the 15 & brought with me the Cannon being nearly the time I conjecturd it would take us to transport them to here, It is not easy [to] conceive the difficulties we have had in getting them over the Lake owing to the advancd Season of the Year & contrary winds, but the danger is now past & three days ago it was very uncertain whether we could have gotten them until next spring, but now please God they must go... if that should be the case I hope in 16 or 17 days time to be able to present to your Excellency a noble train of artillery.

Letter from Henry Knox to General George Washington
December 17, 1775

The reflection upon my situation and that of the army produces many an uneasy hour when all around me are wrapped in sleep.... [F]ew people know the predicament we are in.

Letter from George Washington
January 14, 1776

S ources for Henry Knoxs 1775 expedition are often contradictory. Even Tom Lovells painting of the Noble Train is suspect. It is one of the few paintings that shows how Henry Knox transported sixty tons of cannon in 1775. Lovell, an illustrator during the early twentieth century, stated that he did a lot of historical research before attempting a painting. In his depiction we see the Noble Train coming through the snowy Berkshire mountains with four oxen pulling a five-thousand-pound sled, and teamsters and militia men struggling with ropes and calling out to one another. A man in a blue tricornered hat who looks like an officer is Henry Knox. Behind are the great mountains of the Berkshires; the train of cannons on heavy wooden sleds stretches as far as the eye can see. This painting is the product of Tom Lovells imagination after reading as much as he could about Henry Knoxs expedition.

Like the Knox expedition, the painting is clouded by obfuscation. There are historians who question whether Knox used oxen to pull his cannons from Fort Ticonderoga to Concord, Massachusetts. Horses might have been used instead, which throws doubt on the impression of the painting. The snow and the cold prevented Henry Knox from writing anything other than short notes in his journal. He pulled out the ragged book along the trail as the oxen or horses puffed steam and the men rested. Knox wrote in his torn and sometimes wet journal hastily, sitting on a stump or on the edge of one of the sleds and scribbling impressions and notes. Then he was off again. Henry Knox kept the thirty-page diary at the beginning of the trip, his notes eventually tapering off by the time he reached Cambridge with the artillery. The entries largely cover logistics: who was paid and how far they traveled on a given day.

John Becker Jr., a twelve-year-old accompanying his father, John Becker Sr., a teamster in charge of the actual freighting of the cannons, kept a journal of reflections on the journey. He then gave an interview to the Albany Gazette in the early nineteenth century and turned over his journal, which covered his and his fathers life and times during the Revolution.

Then there are the papers of Henry Knox, which include official letters and the letters between Henry and his wife Lucy. That takes care of the primary sources for Henry Knoxs expedition in the winter of 1775. Every secondary source written about the Noble Train uses these sources and interprets them in very different ways, if not with entirely contradictory conclusions.

Retired Lieutenant Colonel William L. Browne wrote a small book in 1975, Ye Cohorn Caravan , all of eighty pages, in which he reinterpreted Henry Knoxs diary and came to very different conclusions than others before him. This was a different interpretation of another military man, Thomas M. Campeau, a major in the U.S. Army who in 2015 wrote his masters thesis on the Noble Train of Artillery, painstakingly re-creating how Henry Knox and the teamsters moved sixty tons (the two men differ on the weight, as well, Browne counting 119,000 pounds of cannons using Knoxs own inventory and Campeau coming in at a whopping 150,200 pounds using the Rothenbergs Age of Warfare in the Age of Napoleon as a guide) over a semifrozen Lake George using oxen, over the frozen Hudson River four times (the Mohawk River flows into the Hudson ten miles above Albany and Knox, and others use these names interchangeably, sometimes mistakenly identifying the rivers), and through the peaks and valleys of the Berkshire mountains. But the major differs entirely with the lieutenant colonel about how Knox procured his sleds and oxen, where he procured them, who was involved, and where and when it happened. It is as if each man interpreted two different events.

The rest of the secondary sources treat Knoxs feat of transporting vital cannons to George Washington as a minor event with few details and many times in summary. There are several childrens books about the Noble Train but there is no definitive source stating how it happened, so the historian, like Henry Knox during that very cold winter of 1775, must pick a path and commit to it.