BU preserving Newtown, Chemung battlefields

• A Binghamton University facility is preserving Newtown and Chemung Revolutionary War battlefields
• The Public Archaeology Facility has been funded about $230,000 total in grants for the project
• The facility will hold meetings with residents and interested parties on how best to save the land

Binghamton University is working to preserve a bit of American history.

The university's Public Archaeology Facility was recently awarded $28,600 from the National Park Service's American Battlefield Protection Program to further its efforts to preserve the locations of the Revolutionary War battles of Newtown and Chemung, which took place in August 1779.

Michael Jacobson, 36, project director for the facility, said he hopes the grant will fund the final step toward preserving the battlefields, just miles outside of Elmira and bordering Route 17.

Many American battlefields have been razed or forgotten in the urban sprawl-driven construction of housing developments, businesses and infrastructure, said Jacobson, of Endicott. The Newtown and Chemung battlefields could be disturbed by expansion of the Chemung County Landfill or any work on Route 17, and preservation would help prevent that, he said.

"All this goes toward the path of preservation," he said. "We know where (the battles) were and what was left. We don't want it to disappear," he said.

The facility has received five grants since 2008, totaling about $230,000, to fund the battlefield efforts.

Each site underwent two rounds of grant-paid research before this most recent round of funding. Work included mapping the exact battle locations and conducting archeological field surveys to recover physical artifacts and pinpoint any geographic sites — a ridge or treeline, for example — that could have affected the battle.

"This is the importance of preservation," Jacobson said. "We need artifacts to tell us what may have happened. The landscape tells the story of what happened. But preserving will help others see."

This round of funding, Jacobson said, will help the facility's efforts to include the community in the preservation process. The facility will organize meetings with various groups, including the local historical society, property owners living on the fields and members of the Iroquois Nation.

The facility then plans to develop a preservation plan that will satisfy all the groups, Jacobson said.

The first meetings are tentatively scheduled to take place in the fall and winter, he said, and plan writing and more discussions would occur throughout 2015.

Though they are not nearly as well known as the Battle of Saratoga or other skirmishes in the state at the time, the Newtown and Chemung battles were important to the war, Jacobson and area residents said.

The battles included Continental soldiers gathered by Generals John Sullivan and James Clinton — more commonly known as the Sullivan-Clinton campaign — and British troops with their varied allies, including Native Americans and loyalists. The campaign was started as retaliation to the violence the British forces inflicted on American settlements and villages. Only 16 days separated the battles, with Chemung's conflict occurring about two weeks earlier than Newtown's.

"When the American soldiers came here, the Iroquois and the British had been working together. They had fruit trees and corn fields. The Americans basically destroyed their supplies," said Dr. Earl Robinson, 67, of Lowman. Robinson is the vice president of the nonprofit Residents for the Preservation of Lowman and Chemung, as well as the titular president of the Lowman Historical Society.

Robinson, one of the property owners who also resides in a home on the Chemung site, said he would like to see the Newtown and Chemung battlefields merge as one plot — they overlap in some places. Parts of the Newtown Battlefield are encompassed in its namesake park, which is on the National Register of Historic Places.

"We've got to do it," Robinson said of the preservation efforts. "Otherwise, it will go the way of everything else."

Several grants were awarded to Binghamton University's Public Archaeology Facility from the National Park Service's American Battlefield Protection Program to preserve the sites of the Revolutionary War's battles of Newtown and Chemung.

• 2008: $53,286 toward historical research of the Battle of Newtown site

• 2009: $37,357 toward historical research of the Battle of Chemung site

• 2010: $50,723 to fund an archeological field study of the Newtown site

• 2012: $56,194 to fund an archeological field study of the Chemung site

• 2014: $28,600 toward preserving the two battlefields