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The First Congregational Church of Lebanon, color photograph by Grant Huntington, 1996-97. Reprinted, by permission of the Town of Lebanon, Connecticut, from Around the Lebanon Green: An Architectural and Historical Review of Lebanon, Connecticut (1999).    >>Get More Info


  From December 1780 to June 1781, a mounted detachment of about 250 French soldiers from the Duc de Lauzan's legion (who would subsequently form the left column on Rochambeau's march from Rhode Island to join George Washington's Continental troops on the Hudson River) camped in the fields on the west side of the common. They baked their bread in an open-air oven on the Lebanon Green.

 
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he strong sense of history and timelessness in Lebanon is here enhanced by the quiet presence of the 1804 brick Congregational church (its third on the green) and Lebanon's well-known associations with Revolutionary War activities.

  Among the town's patriot citizens were William Williams (1731-1811), member of the Continental Congress and a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and Governor Jonathan Trumbull, Sr. (1710-85), whose term in office between 1769 and 1784 made him the last governor of the Colony of the Connecticut and the first governor of the State of Connecticut. Trumbull was the only colonial governor to side with the patriots during the war for American independence. Many important meetings concerning Connecticut's contribution to the fight for American liberty, -- some attended by such luminaries as George Washington, the Marquis de Lafayette, and the Comte de Rochambeau (1725-1807), commander of the French allied troops Ñ occurred in the War Office, a small building (1727) fronting the Lebanon Green that Trumbull had previously used as a store.

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Hussar, Lauzun's Legion, 1780, print from original painting by Eugene Leliepvre, 1974. Reprinted, by permission of Eugene Leliepvre, from The Soldier Shop, Volume 14, Number 4.    >>Get More Info

 
 
 

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