During the Revolution, Danbury was connected with Hartford by a military road. There was an army hospital, and Continental troops were mobilized here by the thousand. The streets echoed to the marching feet of Rochambeau's army, as they passed through on their way to Yorktown in 1781. Early in the War, Danbury was chosen as a place of deposit for military stores, whose destruction was the object of Tryon's Raid. His troops entered the village from Bethel on the afternoon of Apr. 26, 1777. Tryon took up his headquarters in the Dibble house on South St. (R. 58; corner Stone st.) where Gen. Wooster died a few days later. The site has been marked by the D. A. R. Another marker (Main and Boughton sts.) locates the house from which the first reckless shots were fired in defense. The British artillery went into action near the present Court House, raking the main street. The military stores found in the Episcopal Church and other places were destroyed and three of the buildings burned. After a night of looting and drunken riot, the British troops, learning of the approach of American forces, set fires in various parts of the village and beat a hasty retreat. The total loss was 19 houses, a church, and 22 stores and barns; the owners were later compensated by the distribution of the "Fire lands" in northern Ohio. The body of Gen. David Wooster, who was brought here mortally wounded after the battle on Ridgebury Rd., was removed in 1852 from the town cemetary to the beautiful Wooster Cemetary on Ellsworth Ave. (3 blocks east on Main st.) where a monument was erected to his memory.
At the outbreak of the Revolution the town was an important depot for military supplies and consequently the objective of Tryon's Raid in 1777. The British, who had landed at Westport, burned and looted the town, destroying the church, nineteen houses, twenty-two stores and barns, with all of the military goods. Tory houses, carefully marked, were spared. The townsfolk hid in the surrounding hills and swamps, while the braver spirits shouldered squirrel rifles and shotguns and harassed the raiders. Horse, foot, and guns, the British retreated in good order, fighting an occasional rear-guard action and leaving but few dead and wounded along the way. Reparation for damage to private property was granted Danbury citizens by the distribution of 'Fire Lands' in the Western Reserve.
The First British Raid: Danbury, April 1777
From the outbreak of the war the Patriots in exposed towns along the Sound lived in great fear of a British attack. In October 1775 came the first important act dealing with coastal protection, which involved stationing seventy men at New London, thirty at New Haven, fifteen at Lyme, and forty at Stonington - all men to be paid the same at those serving elsewhere. Those at New London were to occupy themselves with completing the fort and mounting cannon on it. Contingents of such size, too weak to repulse a major British attack, could repulse minor marauders or give the alarm in a major attack. After the British secured control of New York and Long Island, fear of invasion vastly increased. Not until April 1777, however, did the long-dreaded British attack eventuate.
General Howe, seeking a safe objective for a secondary raid, ordered Major General William Tryon, royal governor of New York, to attack Danbury and destory the Continental military stores located there. Howe gave Tryon about 2,000 troops, a few dragoons, and some fieldpieces. The expedition sailed from New York, put into the mouth of the Saugatuck River, and landed at Compo on the afternoon of April 25, 1777. Marching inland they spent the night in Weston. The appearance of so many soldiers sent Patriot messengers fanning out to warn the countryside. Some surmised that the Danbury supply depot would be the chief target, and at 3:00 A. M. on April 26 a courier rode into Danbury with a warning. Another arrived at 6:00 A. M. to confirm the likelihood of attack. When word reached General David Wooster at New Haven, he promptly called out the militia there. Benedict Arnold, sulking at his sister's home in New Haven and "itching to fight" as always, joined Wooster, and they hastened to Fairfield, where Wooster assumed command of counteroperations. Meanwhile, General Selleck Silliman, in command of Fairfield County militia, had called his men to arms.
On April 26 Tryon's little army marched unopposed to Danbury, where local forces amounting to only 150 men could do little but withdraw. Arriving in Danbury shortly before three that afternoon, Tryon set up his headquarters in Nehemiah Dibble's home on South Street. Six- and twelve-pounders sent cannon balls screaming through the town to intimidate any resisters, after which the British began a methodical destruction of all stores, though a few, including medical supplies, had just been removed to safety. The supplies in a barn belonging to Nehemiah Dibble were destroyed, but the barn was preserved because of Dibble's Tory inclinations. Those supplies in the Anglican Church were burned in the street, as the redcoats spared the church. A torch was applied to a large barn full of grain on Main Street, which burned furiously. Tryon ordered his men to destroy the rum strores, but soon hundreds of them were gloriously drunk! The inebriated bands, shouting, singing, and tumbling about, filled the town with terror as darkness fell. Luckily for Tryon, some of his men remained sober, and moved about marking crosses upon houses of known Tories so that these would not be burned.
Meanwhile General Tryon suddenly realized that he was in a precarious situation. Seeing the majority of his troops helplessly intoxicated, he suspected that Connecticut militia in unknown numbers were closing in upon him. Probably he had hoped to spend the Sabbath quietly in Danbury, but a little after midnight he received word that the militia had reached Bethel and might attack soon. Immediate orders went out to evacuate Danbury and, by means best known to hard-boiled noncoms, the drunken soldiers soon found themselves capable of marching again! Before departure, however, picked soldiers spent an hour or so setting fire to accessible homes of Patriots, so that some nineteen homes, plus twenty-two storehouses and barns, were consumed. Against this fiery backdrop the redcoats took their departure.
It soon became apparent that the return march of the British would be much more difficult. The Connecticut militia were displaying that "swarming" tendency which characterized American militia in all states when their own neighborhood was invaded. Tryon sought to outwit the Americans by swinging farther westward through Ridgebury and Ridgebury for his return to the Sound, but this maneuver was anticipated. In Bethel at 2:00 A. M. on Sunday, Wooster, Silliman, and Arnold considered how best to employ their force of about 500 militia and 100 Continentals. They decided that Arnold and Silliman, with 400 men, should proceed to Ridgefield for an attack upon the retreating British. Meanwhile, Wooster, with 200 men, was to harass the enemy's rear.
Wooster's men, knowing the country intimately, broke out from the woods up on a unsuspecting British rear regiment at breakfast and captured 40 men. Later that morning Wooster's men struck again. This time the British jarred the Americans with artillery fire which caused them to hesitate in the attack. Observing this, Wooster turned in the saddle and called out, "Come on my boys! Never mind such random shots!" At that instant an enemy musket ball struck his back and fatally wounded him.
The British pushed on meanwhile and soon reached Arnold's roadblock in Ridgefield. Though outnumbered four to one, Arnold's men threw a heavy fire, but they were forced back when the British outflanked them. Arnold, the last man to retreat, suddenly spied a British platoon, charging down upon him from a ledge. As he turned his horse to flee, the platoon fired. No less than nine bullets struck his horse, but Arnold miraculously escaped. As he tried vainly to disentangle his feet from the stirrups a redcoat, bayonet drawn, rushed him and shouted, "Surrender! You are my prisoner." Arnold replied, "Not yet!" and calmly shot his pursuer dead. Then, extricating himself from the stirrups, he sprinted into a nearby swamp, followed by a harmless shower of bullets.
Determined to even the score with the British, who camped near Ridgefield that night, Arnold once more rounded up the militia. Artillery reinforcements under Colonel John Lamb and militia under Colonel Jedediah Huntington joined him. Monday's retreat proved to be a nightmare for Tryon's men. On a smaller scale it was another retreat from Concord to Boston. From behind the convenient stone walls, trees, and buildings the militia fired continually at the redcoats marching on the road. Arnold, in the meantime, had stationed his forces so that they commanded both roads by which Tryon might try to gain the safety of his ships. The exhausted British were now outnumbered and might indeed have been captured, but timely reinforcements of hard-hitting marines from the fleet broke up the incipient American attack. Arnold rode furiously about the field, pleading with his men to repulse the marines and close in on Tryon. Another horse was shot under him and a bullet ripped through his coat collar. Although Lamb's artillery also fought valiantly, the bulk of the American forces fled. In the confusion Tryon's men slipped aboard their boats. Tryon had achieved his mission, but at a cost which would discourage a return visit! British casualities ran close to two hundred, including ten officers. The Americans lost about twenty killed and forty wounded.
The Assembly's special committee upon personal damages in Danbury reported verified losses of over �,000, and in May 1778 the Assembly appropriated one-third the amount of the losses for relief of the sufferers. In Ridgefield the selectmen noted that the British troops "did in their merciless rage consume with fire about six dwelling-houses .... a corn-mill and other buildings together with a large quantity of household goods, cloathing, provisions &c. . . . amounting to the sum of �25.1.8." Again, the legislators voted one-third the damages. In view of such niggardly treatment, one can imagine that victims did not soon, if ever, recover financially from the losses, not to mention the terrors of the experience.