1739–1787
Colonel Samuel Herrick
1
Events in Bennington
Biography
Samuel Herrick was a product of the Vermont frontier, shaped by decades of land disputes, hardscrabble farming, and the constant threat of raids from Canada that made military readiness a practical necessity for settlers in the Green Mountain region. He had connections to the network of local leaders who coalesced around Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys, men who defended Vermont's contested land grants against New York claimants and who transferred that combative energy into Patriot service when war with Britain began in 1775. By 1777, Herrick held a colonel's commission in the Vermont militia, commanding men who were expert woodsmen and capable of operating effectively in the dense forests and broken terrain of the upper Hudson and Champlain valleys.
When General John Stark organized his forces to intercept the German auxiliary troops under Lieutenant Colonel Friedrich Baum at Bennington in August 1777, he designed a classic double envelopment. Herrick commanded the left flanking column, leading his militia through the woods to strike Baum's position from the rear and left simultaneously with Stark's main assault from the right. The coordinated attack on the afternoon of August 16, 1777, overwhelmed Baum's fortified camp, and Herrick's men played a direct role in collapsing the defensive perimeter that the Germans had spent the previous day constructing. When reinforcements under Lieutenant Colonel Heinrich von Breymann arrived to relieve Baum, Herrick's troops were part of the American force that engaged and routed them as well, turning a tactical victory into a comprehensive rout. The Battle of Bennington cost Burgoyne nearly a thousand men killed, wounded, or captured — losses his campaign could not absorb.
Herrick's performance at Bennington secured his reputation as one of Vermont's most capable militia commanders. The battle itself proved pivotal to the Saratoga campaign, stripping Burgoyne of the supplies and manpower he had counted on and hastening the British surrender in October 1777. After the war, Herrick settled into the life of a Vermont landowner and local official, his military service remembered as part of the broader story of how New England militia forces blunted what might otherwise have been a decisive British advance. Vermont's eventual statehood in 1791 was built in part on the military credibility that men like Herrick had established during the Revolution.
In Bennington
Aug
1777
Battle of Bennington — Defeat of Baum's ColumnRole: Vermont Militia Colonel
**The Battle of Bennington: Defeat of Baum's Column, August 16, 1777** By the summer of 1777, the British war effort in North America hinged on an ambitious strategy to sever New England from the rest of the rebellious colonies. General John Burgoyne was leading a large force southward from Canada through the Hudson River Valley, aiming to link up with British forces and cut the colonies in two. But Burgoyne's army was struggling. Supply lines stretched thin through the wilderness, and his troops — a mixed force of British regulars, German mercenaries, Loyalists, and Native American auxiliaries — were running dangerously short of horses, draft animals, and provisions. To remedy this, Burgoyne dispatched a raiding force eastward into the Hampshire Grants, the disputed territory that would soon become Vermont, with orders to seize supplies, horses, and cattle rumored to be stockpiled near the town of Bennington. Command of this expedition fell to Lieutenant Colonel Friedrich Baum, a professional Hessian officer leading a detachment of German dragoons, along with Loyalist volunteers, Canadians, and indigenous warriors — roughly 800 men in all. What Baum did not anticipate was the ferocity of the response his incursion would provoke. Word of the approaching column electrified the countryside. The New Hampshire legislature had already commissioned General John Stark, a veteran of Bunker Hill and Trenton, to raise a brigade of militia to meet the growing threat from Burgoyne's army. Stark was a fiercely independent commander who had resigned his Continental Army commission over a promotion dispute, but his reputation as a fighter was unquestioned. He moved swiftly, gathering nearly 1,500 men and marching them toward Bennington. According to tradition, before the battle Stark rallied his troops with a blunt declaration, invoking the name of his wife, Elizabeth "Molly" Stark, saying that they would win the day or Molly Stark would be a widow by nightfall. Whether or not the exact words were spoken, the sentiment captured the grim resolve of the New England militia that August. Baum, recognizing the size of the force gathering against him, fortified a position on a ridge above the Walloomsac River and sent word to Burgoyne requesting reinforcements. Rain delayed the American attack by a day, but on the afternoon of August 16, 1777, Stark launched a carefully coordinated assault. Rather than simply charging up the ridge, he devised an envelopment. Colonel Samuel Herrick of the Vermont militia led a flanking column around one side of Baum's position, while Colonel Nichols led another around the opposite flank. A frontal demonstration fixed the defenders in place while both flanking forces closed in simultaneously from multiple directions. The German dragoons, elite cavalry troops now fighting dismounted behind breastworks, found themselves surrounded and unable to maneuver. The attack came from all sides at once, and the position was overwhelmed in fierce, close-quarters fighting. Lieutenant Colonel Baum was mortally wounded during the engagement. His command was effectively destroyed — approximately 207 of his men were killed or wounded, and over 600 were captured. When a relief column of German reinforcements under Colonel Heinrich von Breymann arrived later that afternoon, Stark's men, reinforced by Colonel Seth Warner's Continental regiment, engaged and routed them as well, inflicting further heavy casualties on Burgoyne's already depleted army. The consequences of the Battle of Bennington rippled far beyond the banks of the Walloomsac River. Burgoyne lost nearly a thousand irreplaceable soldiers — troops he desperately needed for his march on Albany. The defeat shattered the aura of invincibility surrounding the professional European soldiers and emboldened patriot militia across New England to take up arms. Recruitment surged in the weeks that followed. The losses sustained at Bennington directly contributed to Burgoyne's growing isolation, helping set the stage for his catastrophic defeat at the Battles of Saratoga just two months later in October 1777. That American victory at Saratoga, in turn, persuaded France to enter the war as an ally of the United States, fundamentally transforming the conflict. In this way, the determined stand of Stark, Herrick, and the citizen-soldiers who fought above the Walloomsac proved to be one of the true turning points of the American Revolution — a moment when local militia, fighting for their own communities, helped alter the course of a war and the fate of a nation.