Matthew J. Kelly, Photographer and Journalist, Part Two

The Battle Of Bennington

In the American Revolution, one of the turning points was the defeat of British General John Burgoyne at Saratoga by Colonial forces. One of the elements of that conflict was that Burgoyne sent Lieutenant Colonel Friedrich Baum, and his forces to Bennington to attack a poorly defended Colonial stores and Burgoyne would have supplies for his forces. Baum failed. The stores were guarded by about 1,500 militia men about whom Burgoyne and Baum were not aware. Ethan Allen and his troops from Bennington engaged Baum’s troops and killed or captured about 1,000 of them. Baum himself was among the dead.  The conflict has gone down in history as “The Battle of Bennington,” which has sparked local conflict. 

Walloomsac Battle Re-enactment

The Battle, which was for Bennington, took place in Walloomsac, New York, near that state’s border with Vermont, along the banks of the river on farmland currently being farmed by the Cottrell family. While the battle actually took place in New York, Vermont has been able to capitalize on it.

Bennington has the tall Bennington Monument which is to celebrate the battle, it has the Battle Day Parade, every August to mark the anniversary of the battle, and then of course there is the name, “The Battle of Bennington.” People across the line in New York tend to refer to it as “The Battle for Bennington,” in an unsuccessful bid to get some recognition. 

The state of New York has built a pleasant little park on the hilltop across Route 67 from the battlefield overlooking the conflict site. It is a great spot for a picnic and generally a quiet little place that locals all know is there and take for granted, as a native of New York City never goes up to the top of the Empire State building. 

Tourism is a major industry in Vermont, and they know how to promote, while the question of where the battle took place is of interest only to the people in the Hoosick, White Creek area. The vast majority of people in the state of New York have never heard of the Battle of Bennington and care even less of it. But to the people who live there, it is an insult. It is a slap in the face with a pair of brown, calf-skin gloves. It is a constant reminder that a key, but small battle in the Revolution took place in Walloomsac, and nobody gives them credit for it and nobody cares. 

I have enclosed a photo of re-enactors in front of the Old First Church in Old Bennington and two shots of militia members from a re-enactment that took place on the anniversary on the fields on which the actual battle took place, which was a major accomplishment for the Battle for Bennington crowd. I have also included a photo of the Colonial Mobile Artillery. 

Barbara Brown Brenenstuhl 

Barbara Brown Brenenstuhl was a diminutive woman in West Hoosick who lost a son. Barbara’s first husband was Howard Browe, who worked on our farm briefly. Barbara lived in North Hoosick at the time and Howard was staying at our place, just outside North Hoosick. They had three sons — Paul, Daniel and John Browe. 

John joined the U.S. Army and was an eighteen-year old private stationed at Fort Campbell, Kentucky.  On January 3, 1988, Browe and three other soldiers were involved in a car collision on the icy Green River Bridge. Their car apparently skidded and struck another car that had already slid on the ice and struck the bridge. The soldiers got out of their car and were trying to help the other operator when a third car came onto the bridge and slid. The soldiers scrambled out of the way. John Browe, either in an effort to avoid being hit or being hit and thrown, went off the railing of the bridge and plunged to his death.

However, in all the confusion, no one saw what happened to him. The other soldiers, all children like he was, returned to base and assumed John Browe had been taken to the hospital. The state police assumed he had returned to base. The Army, when he had not shown up for several days, declared him absent without leave. Barbara, who would get weekly calls from him, was concerned and she knew something had happened.

She had married Clark Brenenstuhl and they had a small farm. Barbara was a short woman to begin with and this seemed to shrink her more. She remembered me from her courtship with John’s father, and she knew I worked at a local paper, so she called for help. I hectored the state police and the Army and I think it was a combination of the persistence of a grieving mother and the fluttering fear of any military careerist of unfavorable publicity that forced the state police to go back out to the bridge and after some searching underneath it they found John’s body, dead of a fractured skull and severe internal injuries.

When Barbara first called the Army and the state police and the newspaper, I think she knew what the result would be, that it was all aimed at recovery and not rescue and I think for those several weeks she and I were in frequent contact, she knew John was gone, but as long as no one said it out loud she could hold it together, chasing after a slender wisp of hope that dissipated more each day until it was gone and there was nothing to hold on to but a cold reality that gave no succor.

I don’t think I saw her again after that affair. I do know that she died at age fifty-nine in 2006, in January, the same month in which her son died eighteen years earlier.

Jim Mulligan

The Browes had a house on Delavan Hill Road in White Creek. After they left, the house was sold to Thomas Gore Auchincloss, who fixed it up fancy into a show place. Jim Mulligan, an officer in the Buskirk Fire Department, was also a rural mail carrier. He had a package for Tom one time, a package for which Tom was supposed to sign and Jim went to the front door of the house and when he knocked, Tom’s step sister came to the door and told Jim that Tom wasn’t there but she would sign for the package. Jim was agog because Tom’s step sister was Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis. 

Tom’s father Hugh had married Jacqueline’s mother. Jim was very impressed because he seldom got to meet people as famous as she was, and several people bought a round for him at Delaney’s because he had met the late president’s wife.

White Creek had several famous people and got accustomed to it. One of the most famous was Grandma Moses, a ‘primitive’ artist. 

Grandma Moses

Autumn Berkshires by Grandma Moses

Hortense Calisher, a well-known New York writer, had a house there, as did Duane Michaels, a popular photographer, also from New York City.

Duane Michaels

There were others, who were famous elsewhere, such as Bob Epstein, a sculptor of strange creatures, popular in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.  Norman Rockwell spent many years living in nearby Arlington, Vermont, and my friend Tim used to tell his girls, who were raised up in Cambridge, New York, that they lived halfway between Grandma Moses and Norman Rockwell.

Bob Epstein

These people were known in town, but not ‘famous,’ only Bob or Hortense or Duane, people who could make good money for their art or their creations, but who when there were just folks.

Hathaways Drive In

North Hoosick, New York, has one of the few drive in theaters left in the state. It is still running, celebrating its seventy-fifth anniversary. When we were teen-agers, before we had cars, we were walk-ins, carrying a blanket to lie on and under which to hide the beer. The walk-ins would park in the first two rows that were too close for the cars. And we would look up at this enormous screen and watch spaghetti westerns and James Bond films and luxuriate to the music of Ennio Morricone and John Barry over cheap speakers under the starry sky. Movies were big then, big enough for the outdoors, not penned up in a theater or a ‘cinema,’ as they were called later.

Hathaway’s screen was framed by the dark night sky and when the camera zoomed in on Lee Van Cleef’s eyes, it was so much bigger than reality. George Lazenby was an impressive James Bond at that size and Once Upon a Time in the West was magnificent, even if we were seeing the short version from which  Hollywood had sliced twenty minutes.

And while movies have gotten smaller and smaller and gone from 8 mm reels to VHS tapes and digital video discs and are now streaming so that people watch movies on their telephones, I still often think about that big screen, still out there, still framed against the night sky, caressed by my memory of Lee Van Cleef’s eyes, his face so huge, as was the experience, the way movies, I think, were meant to be, even though the sound was piped in through my car radio.

There is a certain magic in movies under the stars when we could afford cars, and when we met girls, and when the screens were visible through window glass.