Lambert (Lambo) Latham (1752–1835)

Militia Soldier and Fort Griswold Defender

Among the men who gathered behind the stone walls of Fort Griswold on the morning of September 6, 1781, was a Groton militia soldier known to his neighbors simply as Lambo. Lambert Latham had lived his life along the Connecticut coast, rooted in the tight-knit communities of southeastern New England where a man's reputation was built through proximity and daily familiarity. The nickname itself — Lambo, a common colonial-era diminutive for Lambert — speaks to a life lived in close quarters with neighbors who knew him well enough to shorten his name. His background before the Revolution is only partially documented, but what is clear is that when Benedict Arnold led a British raiding force against the towns along the Thames River, Latham was among the local men who answered the alarm and took up positions inside the fort overlooking Groton Heights. He was not a professional soldier. He was a member of the militia, a citizen called to arms by circumstance, and his decision to stand with his neighbors that September morning would make him a witness to one of the war's most harrowing events.

The British assault on Fort Griswold was swift, bloody, and ultimately overwhelming. Latham fought alongside a garrison of approximately one hundred and fifty defenders — men drawn from Groton and the surrounding coastal towns — as waves of British and Loyalist troops stormed the fort's walls. When the defenses were finally breached and the garrison could no longer hold, Colonel William Ledyard reportedly offered his sword in surrender to the entering British officer. What happened next became the defining atrocity of the battle: according to the account Latham would carry for the rest of his life, the officer took Ledyard's sword and ran him through with it, turning a gesture of honorable capitulation into a killing blow. The massacre that followed claimed roughly eighty-five defenders, men cut down after resistance had ceased. Latham survived — one of the wounded or spared who lived through the carnage — and in surviving, he became something perhaps equally important as a fighter: a witness. His eyes recorded what happened after the formal battle ended, in the terrible minutes when the rules of war were abandoned.

What Latham risked that day was everything a man of his time and place possessed. He had no wealth or rank to protect him, no political connections to negotiate his release if captured. He was a local man defending local ground, and the people he fought for were not abstractions — they were the families and neighbors living in the houses visible from the fort's ramparts, the same people who called him Lambo. The British force that attacked Groton was led by Benedict Arnold, a man who had himself once fought for the American cause and who knew these Connecticut communities intimately, making the assault feel less like conventional warfare and more like betrayal made violent. For Latham, survival after the massacre meant carrying the memory of watching men he knew personally — fellow townsmen, friends, perhaps relatives — killed after they had laid down their arms. The psychological burden of that witness was a cost of war that no pension or commendation could fully address, and it shaped the story he would tell for the remaining fifty-four years of his life.

Latham's legacy rests not on a single heroic act but on the power of testimony passed through generations. His account of Colonel Ledyard's killing, preserved through family tradition and eventually collected by local historians, became one of the foundational sources for understanding what happened inside Fort Griswold after its walls were breached. The specific detail of the surrendered sword turned into a murder weapon — a detail Latham's account helped fix in the historical record — gave the massacre its most potent and enduring image. His name is commemorated on the Groton Monument, erected to honor the defenders of Fort Griswold, standing alongside those who did not survive. In recent decades, scholars have worked to recover the full composition of the garrison, revealing it to have been more diverse than earlier narratives acknowledged, and Latham's story is part of that broader recovery. He reminds us that history is not only made by those who command but also by those who remember, and that the testimony of ordinary witnesses can shape how an entire event is understood by future generations.

WHY LAMBERT (LAMBO) LATHAM MATTERS TO GROTON

Lambert Latham's story matters because it shows how ordinary people become the keepers of extraordinary history. He was not a general or a politician — he was a Groton man who stood with his neighbors and then lived long enough to tell the truth about what happened to them. His eyewitness account of Colonel Ledyard's death helped ensure that the Fort Griswold massacre was not forgotten or sanitized, and it gave future generations a human voice through which to understand the cost of that day. For students and visitors walking the grounds of Fort Griswold today, Latham is a reminder that the people who defended this place were real members of this community, and that the stories they carried mattered as much as the battles they fought.

TIMELINE

• 1752: Born in or near Groton, Connecticut
• 1775–1781: Served as a member of the Groton militia during the Revolutionary War
• 1781, September 6: Fought in the defense of Fort Griswold against a British raiding force led by Benedict Arnold
• 1781, September 6: Witnessed the killing of Colonel William Ledyard and the massacre of approximately eighty-five defenders after the fort's surrender
• 1781–1835: Survived the battle and provided eyewitness testimony of the massacre, preserved through family and community tradition
• 1830: The Groton Monument was completed, commemorating the defenders of Fort Griswold including Latham
• 1835: Died, having lived fifty-four years after the battle he witnessed

SOURCES

• Caulkins, Frances Manwaring. History of New London, Connecticut: From the First Survey of the Coast in 1612 to 1860. H.D. Utley, 1895.
• Hurd, D. Hamilton. History of New London County, Connecticut. J.W. Lewis & Co., 1882.
• Connecticut Society of the Sons of the American Revolution. Fort Griswold and the Groton Monument. Records and proceedings related to the 1781 battle and memorial.
• Decker, Robert Owen. The Whaling City: A History of New London. New London County Historical Society, 1976.