New Milford is credited on the Connecticut War Records and the Connecticut Historical Society’s rolls with two hundred and eighty-five men in the war, many of whom served two and three, and some even four terms of enlistment. While these soldiers of the Revolution were in the field doing military duty, their fathers and brothers were at home laboring for their support; not so easy a task when it is remembered that in the first three years of the war the Colony of Connecticut paid for the maintenance and equipment of her troops in the field, for the damage to her people in the British raids of Danbury and Norwalk, the immense sum of £516,606. During the last four years of the war the Continental Congress fixed Connecticut’s share of the expenses of the war at $1,800,000 a year. At times the tax rates were three shillings on the pound. The eight years of the war were years of toil and suffering to those on the sterile hill-farms, where the striving and stress were about as great as in the midst of the dangers of the battle-field. Indeed, much of the war had come to these farmers’ very doors, for the Tories of Squash Hollow and the Quakers of Quaker Hill and Straits Mountain had not proved themselves exactly the men of peace that they professed to be. The leading family of New Milford in the Revolution was the Bostwicks. There were ten of the name in the service during the war--Amos, Benjamin, Elijah, Elisha, Ebenezer, Isaac, Israel, Joel, Oliver and Solomon. The next was the Turrills, of whom there are nine on the records--Ashel, Caleb, Ebenezer, Enoch, Isaac, Joel, John, Nathan and Stephen. The Canfields have seven names to their credit--Amos, Ezra, John, Josiah, Moses, Nathaniel and Samuel--and the Baldwins, four--Jared, John, Jonas and Theodore. It would be impossible to give all the actions in which New Milford men were concerned during the Revolution without giving a history of the entire war. Some of the marked battles in which they were engaged were those about Philadelphia, the Mud Forts, Germantown and Monmouth. They participated in the crossing of the Delaware from Princeton and, later, were at the surrender of Germantown. New Milford men were with Morgan at Saratoga and tradition says that they were at the capture of Ticonderoga and Crown Point, with Ethan Allen. Colonel Warner of Roxbury, the companion of Allen, who was well and favorably known in New Milford, had many friends, some of whom may have gone with him on that expedition. There may be some truth in this story, therefore, as it is extant.