Groveland Keeps a Revolutionary War Memory in the Fields

Groveland has a quiet farm-country look, but one of its remembered stories is not quiet at all. The town historian centers the Groveland Ambuscade of 1779, tied to the Sullivan Campaign during the Revolutionary War.

The account places the event on the western front, where British and Native forces fought against farms and settlements in New York and Pennsylvania. George Washington sent General Sullivan to strike the Native economy and cut off support for the British. Groveland’s ambush story sits inside that hard campaign.

The later memory is almost as interesting as the battle. The historian chronology says remains were removed to Mount Hope Cemetery in Rochester in 1841, a centennial celebration happened in 1879, a monument was erected in 1901, and the site became officially listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2009.

That is a lot of memory for a place that can look like open fields and roads at a glance. Groveland asks you to see the landscape twice: once as Livingston County countryside, and once as ground where Revolutionary War memory kept being marked, moved, debated, and returned to.