None of the Colonies’ soldiers west of the Connecticut River was ordered to Boston at the time of the Lexington Alarm. Only those east of the river received orders to march, while those on the west side were generally instructed to await orders. At the battles of Lexington, Concord and Bunker Hill, if any of our townsmen participated, it was as individuals――as they did when Arnold marched to Quebec. But the most thrilling event of this time was undertaken by a Litchfield man――born in a house still standing if tradition is to be believed――Colonel Ethan Allen, who was in command of the troops that captured Ticonderoga, and who demanded the surrender of the fortress,――“In the name of the Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress,” nearly fourteen months before the Declaration of Independence. Before the War, Connecticut had no cavalry regiment, as such. Each regiment of infantry had a troop of horse attached to it, consisting of one company. Soon after the beginning of the War, these companies were consolidated in a cavalry regiment and placed under the command of Colonel Elisha Sheldon――which regiment soon became the pride of the army, and was subsequently reorganized as the United States First Dragoons. The conspicuous part which that regiment played in the War is of common knowledge and need not be dwelt upon. When Washington needed protection in his retreat from Long Island and through the Jerseys, it was this regiment which acted as rear guard and protected his retreat through the state. Colonel Sheldon was a distinguished and valuable citizen of the town, and I have reason to believe that the house in which he lived is still standing. The pulling down of the equestrian statue of George III on the Bowling Green in New York and the bringing of it to Litchfield to be moulded into bullets by the fair women of our town is an incident too well known to require special mention, but it has always seemed to the writer to have a semi-comic as well as a tragic side. A British soldier maimed by a bullet moulded by Yankee Rebel women out of a statue erected to honor his King, must have had mingled feelings; his loyalty to the King prohibited his having any ill-feeling toward the statue, but his respect for the ladies of Litchfield must have been considerably lowered.