Extraordinarily sincere thank yous to matt sick and a better phil mead and Scott Stephenson here at the museum of the American Revolution for approaching me with a request for a lecture on this subject for this particular audience. I think i may owe you all appear. I was honored by your invitation, and im very, very excited to be here. So how about a quick round of applause for the entire staff of moar, including their hospital staff . Our wonderful hosts for putting this all together. And. Scott, im going to go on the record and say that your scones are tastier than ron hursts. So ill take is there anyone amongst us who has not heard of the legendary duo of calver and bolton to our particular sect of nerd them . Theyre superheroes. They are, to us what batman and robin are to comic book geeks of all ages. Though no less ridiculous to our 21st century sensibilities rather than leotards in a cape. Our gents did their best work clad in starched collars, neckties and thick wool. William Louis Calvert grew up along the hudson river, near west point, and had been interested in history since youth. His profession was that of a railway machinist and he worked for what would become the new york city subway system until his retirement in 1930. By the mid 1880s, calvert was spending his free time roaming northern manhattan in search of objects left behind by native americans. And by the late 1880s, the revolutionary war soldiers who lived there. During his lifetime, hed achieved some fame as an authority on and collector of military buttons. At the time, such a hobby was considered a gentlemanly pursuit akin to coin collecting. British born Reginald Pelham Bolton came to the United States when he was 23 and finally settled in new york in 1894. By profession, bolton was an engineer and consulted with new york Citys Department of water supply. Grand central terminal, and even macys. He was also an early preservationist, having led an Unsuccessful Campaign to save the home of naturalist John James Audubon in 1931. Bolton did help save a few others, though, and his legacy is still evident today. With interests almost identical to calibers. Its no surprise they became besties and partners in pursuit of early manhattan relics, though bolton was much more of a prolific author. Here are two of his long, outofprint titles, which are must haves for todays revolutionary antiquarian. I highly recommend picking up a copy of each and i know for a fact that digital copies of relics of the revolution can be downloaded for free. Our twosome is indelibly linked to a 1950 New York HistoricalSociety Publication with a long title. History written with pick and shovel militaire. Three buttons, belt plates, badges and other relics excavated from colonial revolutionary and war of 1812 campsites, yada, yada, yada, yada. But thats now commonly referred to as simply calver and bolton. But this indispensable book appeared years after its namesakes had passed away. The tome is a compendium of select articles published over the course of decades and brought together under one set of covers with a gem of an introduction and an especially useful index. Though it may be tempting to think so, Calvin Bolton, the book represents the tip of the informational iceberg left behind by the team. There is much more waiting to be studied and shared in the form of photographs, maps, records, and the recovered relics themselves. Now, one caveat my goal for the today is not to regurgitate what can be found within their publications, but to provide an updated perspective on some of their work in hope that our solid reexamination of their corpus may be considered and perhaps brought to fruition in time. This topic is way too big for a lecture, so ill be covering one of the more important strategic areas explored by our stars at the extreme northern tip of manhattan. As the crow flies, the sights im going to discuss are 11 or 12 miles from what was then considered new york city at the southern tip of manhattan, wrested from the rebels in late 1776. Now, i prepared this slide specifically, drew, a little bit for you, brian anderson, but a lot for todd breasted, who had the audacity not to show up. So but it is true, i am a mets fan, so. Nothing illustrates the considerable distance in 18th century terms between these sites and the city better than the outrageously scaled headquarters map of 1782 during the revolution. It would have taken hours either by land or water, to get from one to the other. One has to ask, why the heck was all this going on . Where the heck up there. Zooming in on the headquarters map, we see this place was essentially a well fortified complex. Its key geographic feature is spite diable or spitting devil creek, which connects the hudson and harlem rivers and is hemmed in on its north and east banks by heights and cliffs. Youll also see there are in close proximity for crossing points. One ferry and three bridges. One of these constructions well known to us rough war types, gave the area its period name kingsbridge, and it was the defense of king kingsbridge, which provided the rich martial quarry for our dynamic duo. New york city was the ultimate war prized by the british and washington in the continental congress. Salivated at the thought of taking it back. But could they actually do so . Even after french frances entry into the war following the victories of saratoga, britain was not going to gamble. Losing her wartime seat of operations. New york harbor could be could be defended by the royal navy and its shoreline defenses. But what about a land attack that would have to come from the north emanating from rebel positions at west point and the hudson highlands, perhaps combined with russia and bos forces based in rhode island. For this to work, its never even. Im on the right slide. I always have paranoia about that. For this to work, washington would have to get his army onto Manhattan Island and an amphibious crossing of either the hudson or the east river would have been suicidal. That left the four crossings at kingsbridge as the only viable avenues from which to besiege new york city. Defending them was all important to the crown. The kingsbridge military zone successfully kept the land attack on the british held city at an arms length from november 17, 17 six, until they left for home in late 1783. So today were going to look at just four of these sites, not necessarily chosen for their strategic importance, but by the nature of the good east discovered there by our guys, we wont have time for feature number five on the screen. Fort washington, though, yielded a treasure trove of material like 500 plus buttons, but it wasnt really part of the kingsbridge crossing defenses. And theres too much traffic in the area anyway. We dont want to go there. Im going to assume this watercolor is familiar to many folks here today. If not, dont worry, it will be executed by captain Thomas Davies of the royal artillery. It is often presented at face value as a view of the british attack on Fort Washington in november of 1776. Were going to use it differently as a unique snapshot at the site of the upcoming fortification fortifications in cantonments of kingsbridge. Taken from what is now fordham heights in the bronx. If youre reckless enough to dodge traffic on the major deegan, you can go to the same spot. Davies made his watercolor from. The vista is noticeably, noticeably built up, but much of the topography is recognizable under its thick urban veneer. Thrown into our mix will be a few remarkable maps created by boulton between 1905 and 1920. With the exception of one at New York Historical, the others reside in relative obscurity in the papers of the American Geographical Society at the university of wisconsin, milwaukee. Bolton spiced his maps up with tantalizing notations using a swashbuckling cartographers x to mark the spot where they found things like part of a howitzer halberg. And a button of the first pennsylvania discovered near a knife. If youre interested, check out uw arms website where you can download High Resolution copies of four of boltons treasure maps for free. Our first site is the misnamed place which yielded the greatest haul of historic materials and data of all the sites. Calver and bolton explored. The socalled hut camp of the 17th regiment, calvert found boltons buttons have said unit there as early as 1890, and bolton dedicated two chapters to it in relics of the revolution. Three chapters discussing the camp headed up history written with pic and shovel to which must be added a pile of photographs of the dig taken by calver. Another map by bolton and two Oil Paintings by john ward dunsmore. Over time, their name for this site varied. It started out during the world war one years as the hut camp on the dykeman farm morphed into the 17th regiment hut camp, and finally the green hill camp. By the early 1920s. While the first and last are technically correct in describing the location as it was variously referred to during the revolution, it wasnt exclusive to the 17th regiment by any means, but im willing to keep using it for convenience today, so i hope everybody will forgive me now. The list of units which were quartered there and how long they said they stayed has yet to be fully sussed out. If the buttons are any indication, we could be looking at a dozen or so regiments spanning seven years of wartime. Until the northern tentacles of the new york city subway and elevated train system reached the once kingsbridge and now inwood area. It was rural and sparsely populated. The yellow x marks the same general place in all three photographs, by the way. This is where our heroes wandered, unknowing in search of each other, with eyes glued to the dirt and any eroded slope they could access. Shortly after world war one, it was all graded away or semi permanently obscured. The heart of the hut camp was ably depicted as it appeared during the revolution by john ward dunsmore, an artist and illustrator who also labored at the site under the direction of Calvin Bolton. You may recognize this as the colored frontispiece from relics of the revolution, but you probably have not seen its companion canvas executed at the same time. But showing the vista as it was in 1915. Central to both is alone. Central to both is a lone tree, perhaps representing the same one intended by dunsmore to suggest the passage of 135 years narrowed in unhealthy. This ancient apple is prominent in many of the photographs taken during the excavation of the camp. It is a survivor of what was once an orchard on the prerevolution three deichmann tract and is a key reference for anyone studying Calvin Boltons visual and documentary materials. And were going to see it again later. As dunsmore created his polychrome views. Bolton was hard at work drafting a series of maps of the camp superimposed at the lower right is a detail of a redraft of a wartime drawing done by lieutenant von kraft of regiment von bosa in 1779. It shows the hill site with a smattering of huts labeled camp of the 17th english regiment, which had been taken prisoners in reference to the unfortunate event at stony point. But it also reveals the reason why Calvin Boltons slight misnomer for the cantonment gotten to our vernacular. So much has changed over the last 104 years that its very difficult to understand the location and layout of the camp when standing on site or looking at it on google, then empty spaces are now completely built over forested. The ground has been regraded, structures have been demolished, streets have been removed and new ones cut in with the help of some contemporary survey maps and canvas photographs. I decided to update boltons plan partly from my own grins and giggles, and partly to enable modern enthusiasts to wrap their brains around the the topographical details of this now vanished camp. The streets at the bottom of the map are largely unchanged, while the main uphill lane in the camp has been altered from prescott avenue to pace, pace and avenue and has acquired a sharp bend towards the middle of the map since four houses are frequently visible in the dig photos. I plotted them to scale on the updated version. Please note the blue dash at the top. A rock outcropping visible in so many of the old views. This humungous formation of manhattan schist is the only as it was feature of the campground accessible today. If you want to see it, youll have to hop the wall running along. Payson avenue and bushwhack a few yards in to try and hill park. Though its completely treed over now. You cannot miss it. All right. I got a little carried away with this slide since Calvin Bolton really revs my engines and powerpoint soothes my ocd. I couldnt resist slapping thumbnails of some of the houses and camp landmarks on this map. Just this a side note. If anybody wants a copy of this digitally, i am happy to send it to you. If youre a similarly afflicted, im willing to share so. But this slightly dysfunctional panorama is a photoshop composite of three of carvers images. It is rare in that it was taken from the foot of the rock outcropping along prescott avenue with the photographers location marked by a red x on thumbnail. At left is the patient residence called the mans on boltons map. And we see hut number 51 in the process of being dug out in the foreground. These shots well illustrate the sloping ground. The british bird, their camp into. It was a perfect spot with good water. Situated on the leeward side of a ridge which offered some protection from the winds and winter weather, most often coming from the west. Here we see a banner day for our sweaty and tick bitten adventurers, bolton tells us why the rows of huts lay in three lines, about three feet or, say, half a chain apart. And the central line on which so far nine huts had been located was very nearly parallel to the roadway of prescott avenue, as constructed. This indicated that both had followed the natural topography of the ground and that the present rough lane may even have been the success of a camp pathway. The distance between those huts, which lay nearest to each other along that line seemed to have been 30 to 33 feet. A presumable third row was staked out, starting from the most recent find under the Mulberry Tree and having marked with large cards on stakes, all the hut sites. A large photograph was taken of the entire area on sunday, september 6th, 1914. Now you have to look really hard, but you can see the little white rectangles denoting hut side sort of slithering their way up the hill. Built with a stone fireplace. One prescott avenue hut at the juncture of one of the paths traversing the slope is numbered one or a on the map history written with pick and shovel tells us of an interesting find there. Once one has, which held my imagination for decades. 12 private soldiers buttons which had been strung upon a cord and fallen beside the hearth, were found in a dugout hut in the british camp at prescott avenue. The iron shanks of the buttons, as aligned by the cord, had rusted together. The buttons pertained to the 52nd regiment of foot. More information is to be gleaned from boltons note still attached to the back of the frame housing a photograph of the dig and 11 of the 52nd regiment buttons. They were found on may 24th, 1914, along with buttons of the 14th and 17th regiments. But the best 52nd regiment button was later removed for an exhibition of a complete numbered set of british buttons found by the pair. No, they didnt sell it on ebay. While the bulk of calver and boltons contributions to the study of red war material culture came in the area of buttons and belt plates, they did make a unique find a pair of identical infantry hanger guards wrought of iron their distinctive and mimic some of the popular semi basket hilts of the last half of the 1770s with a digger, guard and two outboard branches. But these are plain differentiating them from more expensive pierce patterns made for senior ncos and officers. How many of you recognize this Photo Caption mementos of conflict on the hill at right. I stated it for years before i noticed the proverbial copper light in the punchbowl. Can anybody spot that . Come on, theres got to be a sword gate here. No, really. You see this thing at. Thats a baker rifle sword bayonet from the 1810 period. Now, last i checked, thats not rib war. So im just going to assume that when boulton was writing this caption, he couldnt lay his hands on his copy of them and, you know. Okay. Back to our relic hilts. We know that british privates and corporals stopped carrying hangers a few years before the war, but grenadiers and sergeants continued to do so. If regimental brass thought it proper. Having to suggests both guards belong to the same unit. Often ascribed nowadays to the 17th foot based on and boltons misleading name for the camp. The hangers could have belonged to any of the many infantry regiments which were cantone there until late 1783. Im dying to view these artifacts in person. They look to be fairly well preserved, and i want to see if theyve got a punched rack number as observed on a few of the surviving intact swords. Wouldnt it be neat if both the calver and bolton relics and the complete hangars share a Common Company and weapon numbering system . The intact example onscreen is number 30 and company i and Colonial Williamsburg for example, is number eight and company h. We do need to look for a few more to begin theorizing exactly what these swords represent. There are some things about them which suggest to me using just my spidey senses that these may have been made in ireland, which could potentially narrow down the ownership pool to the regiments, which came to america from the emerald isle. And yes, the 17th regiment is one of them. So as the war to end old wars wound down, so did Calvin Boltons excavation at the hut camp of the 17th regiment, aka the hut camp on the dykeman farm, aka the hut camp on green hill. By 1918, the team had identified and excavated. 64 huts with countless others going undiscovered or destroyed before their arrival on site. Lets move to the banks of the harlem river and the house built by john nagl, the younger in 1736, as attested to by its date stone. Now in the collection of the dykeman