Westport celebrates restored statue with Minute Man Day

WESTPORT -- On April 25, 1777, British forces landed at Compo Beach for a surprise attack, triggering a battle which resulted in the defeat of Westport's 'minute men' -- one of the American Colonies' famous revolutionary militias, so-named for their ability to ready for battle at a minute's notice.

"The minute men that were in the town got their guns and formed up as best they could, and took on the British, which, as it turns out, wasn't very successful," said David Perkins, a member of Sons of the American Revolution (SAR), an organization for male descendants of Revolutionary War soldiers who reenact scenes from the revolutionary period.

On Sunday, SAR erected a Revolutionary War-style militia encampment on Jesup Green to commemorate the British landing, as well as Westport's Minute Man Monument, a statue funded by SAR in 1910 and restored this year by the Westport Arts Advisory. (The statue depicts a tricorned minute man crouching heroically with a musket; some say the statue's countenance is modelled after one Horace Wakeman, Westport's First Selectman at the time.) The encampment was part of Minute Man Day, a daylong event organized by Kelle Ruden of Westport Library.

Minute Man Day also featured the 37th annual 5 kilometer Minute Man Race at Compo Beach, walking tours of the battlefield, a lecture from Monument restorer Francis Miller, and a dramatic account by local storyteller Ed Hynes of the Compo landing and subsequent Danbury raid.

SAR's encampment recreated conditions in a typical campsite for a company of militiamen: an open-sided headquarters tent, canvas wedge tents for billeting soldiers, a smaller tent or "bell of arms" for sheltering the company's firearms, and a fire pit.

Per the ragtag nature of militia life, the actors did not wear matching uniforms.

"Everybody is dressed eclectically ... because you would wear the clothing that you had on you," Perkins said. Supplies were limited.

"(Militia soldiers) just slept out under the stars a lot of times," said SAC Commander Todd Gerlander.

Several revolution era flags were staked around the campsite: one bore Benjamin Franklin's famous "segmented snake" cartoon ("Join or Die"); another was printed with the logo of George Washington's special Life Guard unit ("Conquer or Die"); another was a replica of the famous Bedford Flag, oldest known flag in the United States ("Vince aut Morire").

Perkins and Gerlander performed period-appropriate military drills throughout the day; they also performed musket demonstrations.

"This is an officer's model Brown Bess," said Gerlander, referring to his musket, a replica of a British firearm that would have been produced around the year 1750.

Gerlander led the drill; he and Perkins loaded the muzzles of their weapons (in pantomime, of course), used their teeth to rip the ends of paper cartridges, loaded the powder, and fired. Black smoke and the smell of burnt gunpowder -- a smell no doubt familiar to revolutionary militia troops -- wafted across Jesup Green.

Although this was the first Minute Man Day celebration, event organizer and Westport Library Community Relations Director Kelle Ruden hopes it won't be the last.

"We hope this is the first of many," Ruden told The Hour.