SAVE THE ANNA WARNER BAILEY HOUSE!

Anna Warner Bailey House on 108 Thames Street, Groton, Connecticut

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Why is the Anna Warner Bailey House Worth Saving?

This house was once the home of a heroine of the Revolution and The War of 1812. At the tender age of 16, she fearlessly tended to the wounded at the Battle of Groton Heights in 1781. Later in 1813, she attained national fame and recognition for being an inspiration to the soldiers in their defense of Fort Griswold. She was paid visits from President James Monroe, Lafayette and President Andrew Jackson and then Vice-President Martin Van Buren in recognition of her patriotism. In 1833 President Andrew Jackson presented her with a cast iron fence that surrounded the house. 

Anna Warner Bailey (1758-1851)

Anna and her husband, Captain Elijah Bailey, a survivor of the Battle of Groton Heights, moved into the house around 1800 and opened a tavern.  In 1818, President Thomas Jefferson appointed Captain Elijah Bailey as the town's first postmaster and the house became the first post office for Groton.

The Anna Warner Bailey House is on the National Register and, as such, cannot be torn down. It is an important building within the Groton Bank National Register Historic District and of the Thames River Heritage Park, located on 108 Thames Street within easy walking distance of its new water taxi service to Fort Trumbull and New London City Pier where riders can walk to the other historic buildings, such as the Shaw Mansion and the U.S. Customs House.

What  Is Its Current  Status?

It is currently owned by the City of Groton. The Anna Warner Bailey Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) has spearheaded the formation of the Friends of the Anna Warner Bailey House (FAWBH) under the umbrella of the non-profit 501(c)(3) DAR chapter. Officers of the Friends of the Anna Warner Bailey House are: President, Susan Archer, Vice President, Donna Brewer, Secretary, Jane Clukay and Treasurer, Sharon Jackson.

The committee is currently developing a proposal to the City to assume ownership and seek private and grant money to restore the house, ideally, as a Visitor Center for the Historic Groton Bank with its Fort Griswold Battlefield State Park, Fort Griswold Museum, Fort Griswold Monument, the Avery-Copp House, the Ebenezer Avery House and the Bill Memorial Library and the Submarine Veterans Memorial.

What Will Be Its Future?

The Mother Bailey House could serve as a historic resource to showcase the history of Groton. Key periods in the history of the community, encompassing early colonial settlement, the Revolutionary War through the War of 1812, and beyond into the 19th and 20^th centuries can be interpreted from time to time.  Focus could be on the years that the first occupants lived and worked in the house, emphasizing Mother Bailey and her story, but could also include eighteenth century medicine.  At the height of her fame, Anna Warner Bailey, known as “Mother Bailey”, lent her name to the manufacture of a patent medicine called Mother Bailey’s Quieting Syrup.  

Other themes related to the house could emphasize its use as tavern and inn, and early postal service. 

The center would be able to highlight and promote the other historic sites in the Groton Bank.  Visitors interested in historic tourism are often drawn to areas with multiple sites, as it enables them to explore several places within a small geographic area – and most of these sites are free to the public.

The Anna Warner Bailey House could be established as an architectural study museum focusing on historic building techniques and materials, rather than furnishing a house to interpret a specific time period. This type of museum exposes construction elements, so that visitor can see into walls, under stairs, and behind chimneys.  Features of post and  beam construction, evidence of the use of traditional hand tools, historic forms of insulation, brickwork and plastering could be exposed to enable people to understand how a house was constructed from the inside out. These structural techniques, including historic alterations and repairs, are usually concealed in a finished house.

Groton has an opportunity to provide a unique historic preservation resource to be open to our community and to visitors from outside our region.

Various cultural and historic groups could maintain exhibits or displays inside the house

Kiosks could offer information to visitors regarding all the things to see and do in Groton.

Non-profit groups such as the Friends of Fort Griswold and Groton Bank Historical Association, neither of which have physical spaces of their own, could use the Anna Warner Bailey House for meetings, lectures and on-going exhibits.  These groups would also serve as excellent resources to provide volunteers for staffing the museum. 

We Need Your Help!

We are asking you to help us in one or all of the following ways.

Please write to the Mayor expressing your support for our plan. In order to convince the City to transfer ownership to us, we need to show the City we have the support of the community. Mayor Keith Hedrick, Municipal Building, 295 Meridian Street, Groton, CT 06340 or email hedrickk@cityof groton-ct.gov

Promote the idea. Spread the word about our plan and encourage others to support the idea.

Become a member of the Friends of the Anna Warner Bailey House. The membership fee is $50. Note: 25 hours of volunteer time (pre-approved) can be used to cover the membership fee. Write to Friends of the Anna Warner Bailey House,  P.O. Box 907, East Lyme, CT 06333 and ask for a membership application.

Make a tax-deductible donation to the effort to preserve the house. Checks should be made out to the Anna Warner Bailey Chapter of the DAR (with a Memo Note of the Friends of the AWBH.) It can be sent to the above address.

Volunteer your time

We are looking for people to help us with fundraising, grant writing, mailings, and events. Again, volunteer hours can be used to cover the membership fee.

Check out the Anna Warner Bailey blog. Written by Lisa Saunders, author of numerous local non-fiction books, at annawarnerbailey.blogspot.com

Contact us for further information. Email: awbfriends@gmail.com

Find more information about Anna Warner Bailey at the the Anna Warner Bailey Chapter of the DAR website: http://annawarnerbaileydar.org/

Photograph of the Anna Warner Bailey House taken by Jane Loeser Clukay on August 4, 2017.

Photograph of the Anna Warner Bailey House taken by Jane Loeser Clukay on August 4, 2017.

Anna Warner Bailey: Patriotic Petticoat and Tavern

Anna Warner Bailey: Patriotic Petticoat and Tavern

Groton, Connecticut

Heroine of the Revolutionary War & War of 1812

Anna Warner Bailey

HER HEADSTONE READS:

IN

Memory of

Anna Bailey

Relief of

Capt. Elijah Bailey

who died

Jan. 10^th, 1851

Age 92 years & 3 mos.

Mrs. Bailey having passed through some trying scenes of the Revolutionary War.  The patriotism of those times became a prominent trait of her character, which so conspicuously manifested itself during the second war with Great Britain, as to give her a wide celebrity.  Honored with the rich and respected attention of some of the Presidents of the Republic and of many distinguished citizens, she was no less endeared to the more humbled by her persistent action to charities.

Headstone of Anna Warner Bailey in Starr Burying Ground Cemetery, Groton, Connecticut, as seen in 2016. (Photograph by Lisa Saunders).

INTRODUCTION

by Lisa Saunders

Red may or may not have been the color of Anna Warner Bailey’s famous petticoat, but no one denies she removed it in the middle of the street before onlookers during the War of 1812. It was needed as flannel wadding at Fort Griswold in Groton, Connecticut, to fire cannons at the British in an expected imminent attack. Anna had already witnessed what the British would do to her fellow countrymen during the American Revolution in the massacre led by traitor Benedict Arnold on September 6, 1781. She would not let that happen again.

The Daughters of the American Revolution named their Groton, Connecticut, chapter after Anna Warner Bailey. As a member, I attend their meetings held at the Fort Griswold Museum, which displays some of her belongings in addition to artifacts from the massacre. When I enter the main meeting room, I often gaze at Anna’s portrait in search of clues to her thoughts of our work to keep history—and her memory— alive.

Why did our Chapter name itself after her—against the wishes of its first regent, Abby Day Slocomb? When I learned about Anna’s dramatic, proven role in the American Revolution and the War of 1812, I not only agreed with those first chapter members, but I thought Anna deserved a book of her own. Thankfully, those who know more about Anna and her tavern agreed to collaborate with me so you can understand why this lady was celebrated by American presidents and why her tavern is so important to the history of Groton.

One can still visit Fort Griswold, the scene of the massacre that set Anna’s heart on fire. You can walk around the ravelin (a v-shaped mound of dirt), which protected the fort, and through the mysterious tunnel passageway. You will see plaques marking where leaders Montgomery and Ledyard met their ends and get a sense of what Anna’s world might have looked like the day she found her uncle laying mortally wounded on the floor of the Ebenezer Avery House, which now stands at Fort Griswold State Park.

The blood stains have long since faded on the floor boards of the Avery House, and although traitor Benedict Arnold is still burned in effigy in New London, the British and Americans mended their wounds and moved forward as friends. But they were not friends at the time of Anna Warner Bailey’s legendary act during the War of 1812.

TRAITOR BENEDICT ARNOLD AND THE MASSACRE AT FORT GRISWOLD

The massacre at Fort Griswold, led by traitor Benedict Arnold in 1781, changed Anna’s life forever—as it did all who witnessed the carnage or had to live with the results.

When Col. William Ledyard surrendered the fort to the British, the fight went from a battle to a massacre. Ledyard was rammed through with his own sword after stepping forward with it pointing toward himself in an act of surrender. When Ledyard’s nephew and others moved to avenge their commander’s death, all were stabbed repeatedly by bayonet—one as many as 30 times. Colonists hiding at the fort were tracked down and bayoneted to death.

One of the injured, Stephen Hemstead, recounted the battle, Ledyard’s death by his own sword and the ensuing massacre in a letter to the Missouri Republican 45 years later in 1826: “The enemy landed in two divisions, of about 800 men each, commanded by that infamous traitor to his country, Benedict Arnold, who headed the division that landed on the New-London side, near Brown’s farms; the other division, commanded by Col. Eyre, landed on Groton Point, nearly opposite…

Col. Ledyard, seeing the enemy within the fort, gave orders to cease firing, and to throw down our arms as the fort had surrendered. We did so, but they continued firing upon us crossed the fort and opened the gate, when they marched in, firing in platoons upon those who are retreating to the magazine and barrack rooms for safety. At this moment the renegado Colonel commanding cried out, who commands this garrison? Col. Ledyard, who was standing near me, answered, ‘I do sir, but you do now,’ at the same time stepping forward, handing him his sword with the point towards himself. At this instant I perceived a soldier in the act of bayoneting me from behind. I turned suddenly round and grasped his bayonet, endeavoring to unship it, and knock off the thrust—but, in vain. Having but one hand, he succeeded in forcing it into my right hip, above the joint, and just below the abdomen, and crushed me to the ground. The first person I saw afterwards, was my brave commander, a corpse by my side, having been run through the body with his own sword, by the savage renegade. Never was a scene of more brutal wanton carnage witnessed, then now took place. The enemy were still firing upon us  in  platoons, and in the barrack rooms…All this time the bayonet was ‘freely used,’ even on those who are helplessly wounded and in the agonies of death... After the massacre, they plundered us of everything we had, and left us literally naked.”

In the meantime, Benedict Arnold ordered New London burned. Arnold, a native of nearby Norwich and former general in the Continental Army, used his knowledge of the American gun firing code to trick the colonists at Fort Griswold and New London into thinking the approaching vessels were American. More than half of the 160 vastly outnumbered colonists against the 800 British soldiers at Fort Griswold were killed, or some would say murdered, in the massacre.

Of those taken prisoner, many were never heard from again. The wounded unable to walk were loaded into an artillery cart for transport to the Thames River. The cart was let loose and careened out of control toward the River until it ran into an apple tree. Stephen Hemstead continued his account of the massacre: “The pain and anguish we all endured in this rapid descent, as the wagon jumped and jostled over rocks and holes, is inconceivable; and the jar in its arrest was like bursting the cords of life asunder, and caused us to shriek with almost supernatural force. Our cries were distinctly heard and noticed on the opposite side of the river, (which is a mile wide) amidst all the confusion which raged in burning and sacking the town.”

British soldiers took the badly wounded defenders to the Ebenezer Avery House then located and left them unattended and bleeding on the wooden floor boards. Hemstead recalled that first terrible night: “None of our own people came to us till near daylight the next morning, not knowing previous to that time, that the enemy had departed…Thirty-five of us were lying on the bare floor—stiff, mangled, and wounded in every manner, exhausted with pain, fatigue and loss of blood, without clothes or any thing to cover us, trembling with cold and spasms of extreme anguish, without fire or light, parched with excruciating thirst, not a wound dressed nor a soul to administer to one of our wants, nor an assisting hand to turn us during these long tedious hours of the night; nothing but groans and unavailing sighs were heard, and two of our number did not live to see the light of the morning, which brought with it some ministering angels to our relief.”

One of the first to find the wounded was Anna Warner who had come in search of her uncle. 

Fort Griswold and Anna Warner Bailey: Excerpt from book, Mystic Seafarer's Trail

Book, Mystic Seafarer's Trail,  by Lisa Saunders includes information about Anna Warner Bailey:

The Headless Major at Fort Griswold

The massacre at Fort Griswold, led by traitor Benedict Arnold in 1781, is no secret. But what continues to puzzle historians is the whereabouts of British Major William Montgomery’s headless body.

Thrust through with long pikes when leading a charge over the fort wall, Montgomery was quickly avenged by his regiment who swarmed over the wall after him. When Col. William Ledyard surrendered the fort to the British, the fight went from a battle to a massacre. Ledyard was rammed through with his own sword after stepping forward with it pointing toward himself in an act of surrender. When Ledyard’s nephew and others moved to avenge their commander’s death, all were stabbed repeatedly by bayonet—regardless of age—one as many as 30 times. Colonists hiding at the fort were tracked down and bayoneted to death.

After the massacre, the living and dead were plundered of their possessions, including their clothes.  In the meantime, Benedict Arnold ordered New London burned.

Benedict Arnold, a native of nearby Norwich and former general in the Continental Army, used his knowledge of the American gun firing code to trick the colonists at Fort Griswold and New London into thinking the approaching vessels were American. More than half of the 160 vastly outnumbered colonists against the 800 British soldiers at Fort Griswold were killed, or some would say murdered, in the massacre. Of those taken prisoner, many were never heard from again. Those unable to walk were loaded into an artillery cart for transport to the Thames River. The cart was let loose and careened out of control toward the Thames River until it ran into an apple tree. One of the wounded, Stephen Hempstead, recounted his ride 45 years later in a letter to a newspaper: “The pain and anguish we all endured in this rapid descent, as the wagon jumped and jostled over rocks and holes, is inconceivable; and the jar in its arrest was like bursting the cords of life asunder, and caused us to shriek with almost supernatural force. Our cries were distinctly heard and noticed on the opposite side of the river, (which is a mile wide) amidst all the confusion which raged in burning and sacking the town.”

British soldiers took the badly wounded defenders to the Ebenezer Avery House and left them unattended and bleeding on the wooden floor boards. Hempstead recalled that first terrible night: “None of our own people came to us till near daylight the next morning, not knowing previous to that time, that the enemy had departed…Thirty-five of us were lying on the bare floor—stiff, mangled, and wounded in every manner, exhausted with pain, fatigue and loss of blood, without clothes or any thing to cover us, trembling with cold and spasms of extreme anguish, without fire or light, parched with excruciating thirst, not a wound dressed nor a soul to administer to one of our wants, nor an assisting hand to turn us during these long tedious hours of the night; nothing but groans and unavailing sighs were heard, and two of our number did not live to see the light of the morning, which brought with it some ministering angels to our relief.”

When Anna Warner, who wanted to enlist to fight the hated British herself, learned her uncle Edward Mills lay at the Avery House mortally wounded, she ran home for his infant son and placed him in his dying arms. Now she hated the British even more.

One Mystic girl recorded an account she read of the massacre in her diary: “There were more than forty women of the Congregational Church in Groton who that day were made widows, and no man was left at the next communion to pass the bread and wine.”[i]

Legend has it that Major Montgomery was buried sitting up inside the ravelin (a V-shaped mound of dirt), which protected the gate of Fort Griswold. Other British soldiers were buried in the ditch outside the ravelin. According to Jonathan Lincoln, Park Supervisor of Fort Trumbull State Park Management Unit, the British later exhumed their dead for proper burial. Yet when Major Montgomery’s niece came from England to claim her uncle’s body, all she retrieved from his grave was his skull.

In 1985, when ground penetrating radar was used to do an archeological survey, no bodies were found. Since digging is not allowed, I thought I’d try my handy dandy EMF detector despite my promise to myself not to use it again. Maybe his bones would emit some sort of electromagnet frequency. No luck—not even when I slipped through the tunnel-like passageway located under the mound where he was slain.

Although one can visit Fort Griswold to see the ravelin, the sword used to murder Col. Ledyard and the plaques marking where Montgomery and Ledyard met their ends, this once blood-soaked ground refuses to give up the rest of Major Montgomery’s body. Could the spirit of Anna continue to hate the British so much she is preventing the discovery of Montgomery’s headless bones?

Later marrying a veteran of that battle, Elijah Bailey, Anna Warner Bailey became famous in the War of 1812 for removing her red flannel petticoat in the middle of the street when soldiers needed wadding to load their muskets in anticipation of a British attack. Anna and her husband had no children and became inn keepers. She died in her 90s when a spark from the fireplace landed on her clothes while she slept.

Although the blood stains have long since faded on the floor boards of the Avery House, the home still speaks to visitors at Fort Griswold State Park. Inside is featured the very table where Lt. Ebenezer Avery had his last breakfast before getting killed that day on September 6, 1781. Although traitor Benedict Arnold is still burned in effigy in New London, the British and Americans have long since mended their wounds and moved forward as friends and allies. Perhaps the spirit of Major Montgomery has been invited to dine by the spirit of Lt. Avery at his table until Montgomery’s body is recovered and reunited with his head back in England. If the spirit of Anna Warner Bailey has been invited to dine there as well, who knows when that will be. (Acidic soil could have dissolved the bones, but that’s not as interesting to contemplate.) 

Another possibility is that colonist Captain Shapley is hiding Major Montgomery’s bones until his name is featured on the plaque marking the site where Montgomery met his end. History states that Jordan Freeman killed Montgomery, yet in Stephen Hempstead’s account of the battle, he wrote that Major Montgomery was killed “having been thrust through the body whilst in the act of scaling the walls at the S.W. bastion, by Capt. Shapley." Did I just discover something that could change a few words in a history book? I asked Jonathan Lincoln, Park Supervisor, about the discrepancy.

Lincoln replied, “We did a little investigating. One of the other contemporary accounts of the Battle of Groton Heights by George Middleton states that Capt. Adam Shapley and Jordan Freeman killed Major Montgomery with long pikes. Rufus Avery’s account does not mention the manner of Major Montgomery’s death at all. Stephen Hempstead’s narrative is the only one that only mentions Capt. Shapley in the killing of Major Montgomery. I think it is safe to say that both participated in the death of Major Montgomery.”

I don’t blame Captain Shapely if he is annoyed his name didn’t make it on a plaque after doing something historically significant. If I ever do something for the history books, I’d want a plaque too!

The Daughters of the American Revolution named their Groton-based chapter after Anna Warner Bailey. As a member, I attend their meetings held at the Fort Griswold Museum. When I enter and leave the main meeting room, I often take a moment to gaze at Anna’s portrait in search of clues in her expression. Does she hold the secrets to this sacred ground?

---

[i]  (Clarke, 1997, p. 168)

The book, Mystic Seafarer's Trail, is available in paperback and e-book on Amazon and in local shops. Click on: Mystic Seafarer's Trail. (Please contact me at LisaSaunders42@gmail.com if you have more information about Anna Warner Bailey.)