A new educational kiosk in Ballston Spa celebrates local Revolutionary history.
In the early morning hours of October 17th, 1780, roughly 200 men raided the homes of settlers along Middle Line Road, home to the present-day towns of Ballston and Milton.
244 years later, history buffs are gathered in Trieble Park to celebrate a new kiosk that outlines the history of that raid.
Three large panels feature the history of the area, and details of the raid itself, as well as the aftermath.
Jim Richmond is the author of the book “War on the Middleline: The October 1780 Raid on Ballston,” used to create the kiosk.
“Yeah, I guess everybody thinks of the Battle of Saratoga as the turning point, which it was, but if you lived in this area, along the Mohawk Valley and Saratoga County the war continued for four more years and there were continuous raids that happened by the British coming down from Canada. And people were at risk years after the Battle of Saratoga so the area did not return to a peaceful settlement until after the surrender at Yorktown four years later,” said Richmond.
Rick Reynolds is the Town of Ballston’s historian.
“You know, the heroes that we hear about from all of our wars are famous ones. They are ones that we learned about in school, that people have drilled into our heads for ever and ever. But there’s a whole lot of local people who never get any sort of press whatsoever. And they are equally as important because it’s the little guys that won these wars, it really is. And the people that fought against the British on Middle Line road, unexpectedly fought against it because they got raided in the middle of the night, they’re really important people. We need to celebrate those people. And we celebrate them because they are what we became,” said Reynolds.
Reynolds, a retired teacher, says it’s important to give curious young minds easy access to the history in their backyards the way this kiosk does.
“But I truly believe that that incidence of things that happen in 1776 remains with us for a long time afterwards. Look at 9/11. A lot of commemorations that continue to go on today. All of these events are critical events in the history of our country, people will remember them, but we need to bring the local piece into it far more than we ever have,” said Reynolds.
Mary Skelly and Barbara LeBarron teach in nearby schools. Skelly is a reenactor with the Second Continental Artillery and LeBarron is a self-described “revolutionary geek.”
“Well I think that the children need to understand the history, and not to coin the phrase but you need to understand history so it doesn’t repeat itself. And a lot times they don’t feel like they’re a part of that history. So when you come to something like this or you experience something in the classroom that brings it to life it makes it more personal to them,” said LeBarron.
“Being a reenactor I’m able to bring everything into the classroom and also bring my students out so they’re actually standing in the place, on the day, at the time. And when they feel that connection from the ground up, you have a hole generation of history lovers. Because right now, history is cool. History wasn’t cool for a while but now with ‘Turn,’ with ‘Hamilton,’ with the 250th coming up, history is cool,” said Skelly.
The kiosk’s installation is part of a larger regional push ahead of the 250th anniversary of the Revolutionary War that’s expected to draw heritage tourists from around the world.