On April 29, 1776—250 years ago today—the Connecticut Committee of the Pay Table ordered that Colonel John Strong be paid 16 shillings, 6 pence “for Expence of a Guard from Chamblee with Prisoners”. The prisoners may have been Fort Chambly’s garrison of 84 soldiers and 100 women and children, who surrendered on October 18, 1775. Strong likely waited for up to six months to be paid for his services, but Chambly’s garrison had waited just as long for their release, and they would continue to wait.
The Chambly prisoners had traveled far since their capture. They first marched south to Connecticut, which played host to other British prisoners from the first months of the war. At least some of them stayed in Connecticut long enough to cause trouble: a meeting of the colony’s Council of Safety on November 23, 1775 described several prisoners from Chambly being held in Farmington who were “turbulent and disorderly… and say they will escape unless imprisoned”.
On November 17, the Continental Congress resolved “That the prisoners taken at Chambly and St. John’s, be sent to, and kept in, the towns of Reading, Lancaster, and York, in the colony of Pennsylvania.” Chambly’s garrison was on the move again, traveling deeper into the American colonies. Captured soldiers marched on foot, while women, children, and baggage were transported by water. The groups reunited at their temporary homes in inland Pennsylvania, where they would stay for nearly a year.
Congress arranged for the prisoners to be housed and fed, allowing them the same rations that Continental Army privates received, and urged that they be treated with civility. They were initially allowed to roam freely around the towns in which they stayed. But tensions grew between the prisoners and their hosts as the gulf widened between Britain and America. By the summer, British prisoners were being kept confined in stockaded barracks. The odyssey of Chambly’s prisoners finally ended in early December, when they were exchanged and released.
Learn about this pay order (object ID MS.7523, property of Robert Nittolo) on the Ticonderoga Online Collections database: https://fortticonderoga.catalogaccess.com/archives/31388