Approximately 7,500 soldiers of the Continental Army from New England, the Mid-Atlantic states, Canada, and Europe lived at New Windsor Cantonment. Although most were in their twenties, they ranged from their early teens to their sixties, and some had served since the first shots of the Revolutionary War were fired in 1775. Officers and enlisted men lived in log huts there, while major generals and hospital staff were billeted in private homes nearby in New Windsor and Newburgh. Some 500 women and children also lived there as the wives and families of soldiers, many of them desperate refugees from war-torn communities who tried to earn livings as washerwomen, seamstresses, and nurses after traveling hundreds of miles on foot with only the possessions they could carry.