Visit Rochambeau monument

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Middlebury Historical Society President Bob Rafford, far left, and aspiring Eagle Scout Jack Teixeira, far right, are shown with Scouts and friends – left to right, Adam Burns, Spencer Bigman, Elliott Frohlinger, Terrance Dumoulin, Evan Battiste, Stephan Bscheider, Walker Morris, Christian Kjeldsen and Paul Silva – who helped Teixeira complete his Eagle Scout project. That project forged a new entrance path and cleared the pathway to the Rochambeau monument shown in the photo. (Submitted photo)

By DR. ROBERT L. RAFFORD

June 27 is Rochambeau Day, the day we commemorate his army’s encampment on Breakneck Hill in Middlebury, and this year marks the 238th anniversary of that memorable event. It’s a good year to visit the monument because Boy Scout Troop 5 cleared the pathway to the monument, directed by Scout Jack Teixeira, who used this project as part of the process to earn the Eagle Badge, the highest award a Boy Scout can achieve. The Middlebury Historical Society is grateful to Jack, his parents, and all the Scouts and leaders of Troop 5 for a job well-done.

Middlebury’s monument is a quarter-mile off Breakneck Hill Road in what was once called “Rochambeau Heights.” A boulder on Artillery Road at the intersection of Artillery Road and Breakneck Hill Road marks the beginning of the 600-foot trail leading to the monument, all on town land. (The story that the name Breakneck originated from one of Rochambeau’s oxen “breaking its neck” on the steep hills there is erroneous; the name was used many years before by local people and its origin is unknown, although we may guess that the grueling terrain had something to do with it.)

Have you ever visited our monument? Middlebury’s monument to Rochambeau on Breakneck Hill was erected and dedicated in 1904 by the Irish American Historical Society to the Comte de Rochambeau. Many Irish citizens joined Rochambeau’s army to fight the British, a common enemy, so it was fitting that they be remembered.

The purchaser of the six-foot square plot of land on which the monument was erected was an Irishman, Dennis H. Tierney of Waterbury. Tierney was “one of the foremost and respected citizens of Waterbury and who was prominently identified with the city’s real estate business and development,” according to his obituary in 1916, when he died at the age of 70.

The French army, having landed at Newport, R.I., in March 1780, marched through Connecticut and encamped in Middlebury in June 1781 on its way to fight with General Washington’s army. In the French army was the Legion of Lauzun, an infantry unit that contained “a coterie of Irish officers headed by its second-in-command, Col. Robert Guillaume Dillon.”

Dillon was the eldest of three Irish brothers, all officers in the Legion, and when Washington visited the army in Lebanon, Conn., in March 1781, he noted meeting two of the brothers. Other Irish officers in this unit and throughout Rochambeau’s army included Thomas Mullens, who was “honored for his bravery at the battles of Brandywine and Germantown.”

There was an Irish Brigade in the French army, organized in 1691. Each of three Irish regiments of the Brigade at the time of the American Revolution saw service in America or the West Indies during the war, including the unsuccessful assault on Savannah, Ga., in 1779. Their officers sported names such as Dillon, O’Moran, Moore, O’Neill, Nugent, Macquire, Macdermott, O’Reilly, Kelly, O’Doyer, Doghlan, O’Keefe, O’Farel, O’Brien, FitzMaurice, Walsh, Nagle, Keating and Barry.

Rochambeau’s army reached Yorktown, Va., where Lafayette had cornered the British army under General Cornwallis. French Admiral De Grasse’s fleet in the harbor blocked any retreat by the British and prevented British ships from coming to Cornwallis’s aid; serving on De Grasse’s ships were many Irishmen. Yorktown was where the American forces finally achieved victory, forcing the British forces under Cornwallis to surrender, winning independence for America.

General Rochambeau and his army marched from Yorktown in triumph and again encamped in Middlebury in June 1882, enroute to Boston, where ships would take them home to France.

Bob Rafford is the Middlebury Historical Society president and Middlebury’s municipal historian. To join or contact the society, visit MiddleburyHistoricalSociety.org or call Bob at 203-206-4717.