Reliving the Bronx’s Biggest Battle
The New Yorker · Ian Frazier ·
In 1776, Continental Army soldiers defended what is now Glover’s Rock from the British. The other day, reënactors did it all again at Orchard Beach. Ian Frazier reports.
A plaque on the rock says it was named for Colonel John Glover. He commanded four regiments, a total of eight hundred men, which occupied defensive positions along the road. The odds in this fight were five to one, at best. Glover came from Boston, and his New England troops not only fought as infantry but also provided Washington with whaleboats and oarsmen when he needed them. The boat in which he is standing in the painting “Washington Crossing the Delaware” was theirs.
As soon as Glover had light enough to see, he knew the enemy was approaching, and he wished a general could tell him what to do. Improvising, he ordered three of his regiments to hide behind stone walls that lined the road. An advance guard stood in formation near the rock, ready to meet the British. The fourth regiment he put farther back along the road, in reserve.
Sunrise, according to contemporary sources, was at 6:32 A.M. Two hundred and fifty years later, on Sunday, October 18, 2026, first light came at about 6:30. At that hour, Glover’s Rock is a lonely sentinel. A street light shaped like a “Y” casts bluish light over the boulder and an adjacent patch of lawn. Cars go by only occasionally. On the morning of the anniversary, four deer emerged from a reed thicket next to the lawn, and two Canada geese flew by. At 7:11, the sun came up blazingly over Long Island Sound, breaking through places in the previously all-dark tree line.
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