Henry Trowbridge

Quick Facts

Date of Birth:

1758

Place of Death:

Stillwater, NY

Date of Death:

September 19, 1777

In August 1777, Henry Trowbridge (born 1758) of Colchester, Connecticut, was living at home with his parents and siblings when the drafting notice came. Like most white men aged 16 to 60, the teenager was subject to the state’s militia law - this order was to serve a two-month tour of duty at the war front north of Albany.

Henry turned out as a private soldier in Captain Amos Jones’s Company of Colonel Jonathan Latimer’s militia battalion. Once arrived in the Northern Army camp, the teen and the rest of the Connecticut militia were placed under the command of their favorite general, Benedict Arnold.

The time for fighting arrived on September 19, the day of the First Battle of Saratoga. Henry never served in combat before, and his battalion was one of the last that Arnold deployed to the fight that day. When Latimer’s militia returned to camp late in the evening, three of the regiment’s men remained behind, dead. Henry was one of them.

The British likely buried Henry’s body near Freeman’s Farm.