| Object ID |
A26 |
| Object Name |
Cannon |
| Early Date |
1776 |
| Late Date |
1776 |
| Made By |
Jan and Pieter Verbruggen |
| Description |
This gun is one of the four cannons taken on August 16, 1777, by General Stark's troops at the Battle of Bennington. The guns were practically new, having been cast the year before by Jan and Pieter Verbruggen at Woolwich (now a borough of London) and were probably used for the rest of the Revolutionary War by American forces. Its is known that the cannons were used during the War or 1812 when two of them were captured by the British at the American surrender of Detroit on August 6, 1812, only to be recaptured by the Americans at Fort George on the Niagara River in May of the following year. At the conclusion of the War two of the cannons were placed in an ordnance depot in Washington where they were later declared obsolete. In 1848, Congress ordered them sent to the Watervliet Arsenal near Troy, New York, where they were given new carriages for presentation to the State of Vermont.
That same year Henry B. Stevens, antiquarian, historian and founder of the Vermont Historical Society, received the two cannons for Vermont from the United States Government. They were briefly exhibited in Bennington on August 16, 1848, in celebration of the 71st anniversary of the Battle of Bennington, after which they were returned to Montpelier. One cannon was placed at the State House there and the second, this one, in The Bennington Museum for the Museum's opening in 1928.
|
| Credit |
On loan from the State of Vermont |
|
