Lunch & Learn with Keith Jones on The Battle of Ridgefield

A single day in April 1777, on a road in Ridgefield, and Connecticut was never quite the same afterward.

Keith Jones brings a fresh look at the Battle of Ridgefield and its place in the American Revolution to the Museum's Lunch & Learn table. He is working from new historical research and archival material rather than the familiar retelling, and the picture that comes out of it is bigger than the skirmish itself.

He looks hard at Benedict Arnold's role in the fighting, at the Patriot militia who turned out to meet a British raiding column, and at the way the battle galvanized Connecticut into a state that took the war personally. That mattered well beyond the town line. Jones traces how the events of 1777 helped set the stage for Saratoga, the campaign that finally convinced France the Americans were worth backing.

It is a Connecticut story with national consequences, told an hour up the road from where it happened.

Bring lunch. This is a bring-your-own-lunch hour, sandwich or soup or whatever gets you to one o'clock. The talk runs 12 to 1 pm.

What it costs. Free for Museum members and $10 for nonmembers. Registration runs through Zeffy, linked from the Museum's own event page.

Where to go. New Canaan Museum & Historical Society, 13 Oenoke Ridge Road, New Canaan. The Museum is open Tuesday to Saturday, 10am to 4pm.