The Convention Army
In the autumn of 1777, Continental Army forces under the command of General Horatio Gates won a decisive victory over the British at the Battles of Saratoga, marking a major turning point in the American War for Independence. Gates’s victory secured the northern colonies for the American cause and led to direct French intervention in the war. American authorities, however, were faced with the unprecedented challenge of housing and caring for a large number of prisoners of war. The surrendered British Army consisted of between 6,000 and 6,500 individuals, including British troops, German mercenaries known as Hessians, Canadian and American Loyalists, and hundreds of wives and children accompanying the soldiers on campaign.
Several hundred Canadian and American Loyalists were allowed to return to Canada. The remaining British and German prisoners became known as the “Convention Army” under the terms of their surrender. The Convention of Saratoga stipulated that these prisoners were to be repatriated to Britain on the condition that they not serve again in North America during the war. The prisoners were marched to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where most spent the winter in poorly constructed barracks built during the Siege of Boston in 1775. Hannah Winthrop, a local Boston woman, described the men as “poor dirty [and] emaciated” and the women as “beasts of burthen” carrying their few possessions on their backs.
The prisoners remained in the Boston area for nearly a year as negotiations over their fate dragged on. The Continental Congress was reluctant to adhere to the terms of the Convention of Saratoga, fearing that returning the prisoners would free up other soldiers to come to America. Congress revoked the convention until King George III and Parliament signed it, fully aware that they would never acknowledge American independence by doing so.
After a year in confinement in Massachusetts, desertions and attrition took a toll on the Convention Army. Although the British government initially paid for the care of the prisoners, supplies were scarce in the Boston area, and some British prisoners were temporarily moved to Rutland, Massachusetts, to alleviate the strain. An estimated 800 prisoners took this opportunity to desert and either returned to British lines or started a new life in America.
Fears that the prisoners could be rescued by British forces, as well as continuing supply shortages, convinced the Continental Congress to relocate the remaining members of the Convention Army. In October 1778, the Board of War ordered a set of “temporary log barracks” constructed in the vicinity of Charlottesville. The site’s remote location—several miles from a main road and more than 200 miles from the Atlantic Ocean—was meant to discourage rescue attempts from British forces operating near the coast. Land for the prison camp was provided by Colonel John Harvie, a lawyer who was a member of the Continental Congress and a childhood friend of Thomas Jefferson. Harvie offered several hundred acres of land on the north bank of Ivy Creek, approximately five miles northwest of Charlottesville, rent-free. Captain George Rice of the Quartermaster Department was tasked with preparing facilities to house at least 4,000 prisoners, for which he was appropriated $23,000. Much of the work to clear the area, fell timber, and build the log huts was done by enslaved laborers belonging to Harvie.
The Prisoners Move South
An estimated 3,000 British and German soldiers, women, and children took part in the march to Charlottesville. The prisoners were divided into three brigades to make the march more manageable. The first group left Cambridge on November 9, 1778, and the remaining groups departed on subsequent days, marching through Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania before reaching the old Carolina Road that took them across Maryland into Virginia.
For much of the journey, the weather was mild, but travel was still difficult. Enlisted men and their families were expected to march fifteen miles a day on minimal rations. They slept where they halted along the roadside. More captives took the opportunity to desert as the army made its way south, with many of the German soldiers melting into the German communities they passed along the way. Conditions for officers and their families were substantially better than for enlisted men. They rode on horses or in carriages, and the officers could draw from their personal funds to pay for meals and lodgings at local inns and homes.
The weather turned cold and snowy when the army reached Frederick, Maryland. At Noland’s Ferry, the prisoners had to cross an ice-choked Potomac River into Virginia. British officer Thomas Anbury recalled, “We crossed the Potowmack River with imminent danger as the current was very rapid, large floats of ice swimming down it.” Once across, conditions did not improve. “[O]n our entering Virginia … the roads were exceedingly bad from the late fall of snow which was encrusted, but not sufficiently to bear the weight of a man, so we were continually sinking up to our knees and cutting our shins and ancles,” Anbury recalled. Baroness Friederike Charlotte Louise Riedesel, the wife of German general Friedrich Riedesel, wrote in her journal that “such a great quantity of snow fell, that four of our servants were obliged to go before my wagon on horseback, in order to make a path for it.” She found the countryside “picturesque” but “by reason of its wildness, inspired us with terror. Often we were in danger of our lives while going along these breakneck roads; and more than all this we suffered from cold, and what was still worse, from a lack of provisions.”
Life at the Albemarle Barracks
The Convention Army arrived at the Albemarle Barracks in January 1779 after an exhausting journey of eight weeks. They found that the camp consisted of poorly constructed log huts, many of which were incomplete. German lieutenant August Du Roi wrote that “the construction is so miserable that it surpasses all that you can imagine in Germany of a very poorly built log house … a great number of our men preferred to camp out in the woods.”
The camp consisted of 336 log buildings arranged in a grid of seven large squares, with each square consisting of four rows of twelve huts. The huts measured approximately twenty-four feet by fourteen feet and were meant to house eighteen soldiers. A broad street divided the camp into two sections, with the British on one side and the Germans on the other. Portions of an incomplete wooden stockade ringed the perimeter. The remote location created several logistical problems. Drinking water was not readily available, and providing food and provisions for the prisoners was difficult.
Accommodations for the officers and their families were far better than those of the enlisted men. Both British and German officers were allowed to rent homes from local property owners, and many took up lodgings in Charlottesville. General William Phillips lodged at Blenheim, a plantation belonging to Edward Carter, while his German counterpart General Riedesel moved into Colle, home of local merchant Phillip Mazzei. Thomas Jefferson personally assisted some officers in finding homes and frequently entertained British and German officers at Monticello. Jefferson maintained close relationships with many officers throughout their captivity, going as far as to attend a theatrical production given in the camp at the invitation of General Phillips. Writing to Phillips, Jefferson cordially proclaimed that, “the great cause which divides our countries is not to be decided by individual animosities.”
As the weather improved in the spring of 1779, the prisoners set about improving their accommodations, building churches, stores, taverns, a coffee shop, and a theater. Gardens were established, and livestock was raised to augment the prisoners’ limited rations. Prisoners traded and sold goods to local residents, and those with skills were allowed to leave the barracks and practice their trades. Their presence brought an influx of hard currency to the area, as they purchased goods, often at inflated prices, from local farmers and merchants. By 1780, the Albemarle Barracks was operating as a nearly self-sufficient town and with nearly 4,000 residents, was one of the largest communities in Virginia, with a population double that of Williamsburg.
The Albemarle Barracks were also home to hundreds of guards tasked with preventing escape and keeping the peace. Security was also provided by militia companies drawn from local counties. Albemarle, Amherst, Buckingham, Culpeper, Goochland, Louisa, and Orange counties were each ordered to provide 100 men for three-month tours. Guards were also furnished by Virginia state troops. Crockett’s Western Battalion, which was formed in 1779 to protect the western frontier, spent months at the barracks assisting the militia.
In December 1778, the Virginia House of Delegates passed an act empowering Governor Patrick Henry to raise 600 men for the purpose of guarding the barracks. In January 1779, the Continental Congress authorized the Virginia Regiment of Guards, also known as the Convention Guards Regiment, as part of the Continental Army, with enlistments to last for one year. The ranks were primarily filled by men from Albemarle, Orange, and Amherst counties, under the command of Colonel Francis Taylor, an Orange County native with considerable military experience. Efforts were made to ensure that the men guarding the barracks were better fed and equipped than other Continental soldiers in an attempt to project the strength of the Patriot cause.
The Barracks Abandoned
Virginia saw little military action in the first years of the Revolution after the last royal governor, John Murray, fourth earl of Dunmore, was driven from the colony. That changed in October 1780, when a small British force captured Portsmouth. They soon would be reinforced by additional troops under the command of General Benedict Arnold. Unable to stop British advances, Patriot leaders feared that the prisoners at the Albemarle Barracks would be liberated and rejoin the army. On November 20, 1780, the remaining British prisoners, now numbering approximately 1,200 men, women, and children, were evacuated north to a new camp at Fort Frederick in western Maryland. The Hessian prisoners, numbering about 1,400, remained until the following February, when they too were sent north, first to Winchester and then on to Maryland. They were escorted as far as the Potomac River by the militia, Western Battalion, and Regiment of Guards.
Following the departure of the prisoners, Colonel Harvie sought approval from the Quartermaster Department to sell off what was left of the barracks. A subsequent inspection by Captain Rice found that the barracks “cannot be considered in any other light than a pile of ruins, more than one third of them were burnt by the prisoners at the time they were ordered to Maryland.” In addition, nearly all of the salvageable wood, nails, and other material from the remaining structures had been stripped away by local residents. It was decided that the expense of rebuilding the barracks for other uses far outweighed any benefit. In February 1781, the remaining huts were sold off, and the Albemarle Barracks ceased to exist.
No original structures from the Albemarle Barracks remain, but several references to its existence can be found in the vicinity of Charlottesville. The site of the camp is indicated by a historic marker on Barracks Farm Road. The nearby neighborhood of Barracks Rugby takes its name from the former site, as do Barracks Road, Hessian Road, and Hessian Hills.
