French General Jean Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, comte de Rochambeau, and thousands of French ground and naval forces arrived in Newport in July 1780 to assist the Americans in the War for Independence. After wintering in Newport, Rochambeau’s troops marched through Connecticut to join General George Washington’s Continental Army just over the New York border. Washington and Rochambeau first met in Hartford on September 21, 1780, to discuss a joint military campaign, and after the French fleet under Admiral de Grasse arrived in the Caribbean they met again in Wethersfield at the Webb House on May 22, 1781, where Washington wrote that he had fixed with Rochambeau the plan of campaign. Rochambeau then marched his army across the Connecticut River between June 19 and July 2, 1781 and waited with the Continental Army in what is now White Plains, New York, until word came that de Grasse’s fleet was heading for Chesapeake Bay. The combined forces moved down the eastern seaboard and confronted Lieutenant General Earl Cornwallis and the British army in Yorktown, Virginia, where after a prolonged siege Cornwallis surrendered on October 19, 1781, virtually ending the war and ensuring American independence. Wethersfield was also connected to the alliance through Silas Deane, a town representative to the Connecticut General Assembly and delegate to the Continental Congress who was sent secretly to France in 1776, enlisted officers and obtained military supplies for the American army, and on February 6, 1778, joined Benjamin Franklin and Arthur Lee in signing treaties of Friendship and Alliance with France, the first country to recognize the United States as an independent nation.

Photo: Michael Herrick

Photo: Michael Herrick

Photo: Michael Herrick

Photo: Michael Herrick