Coon Tree Tablet

After British General John Burgoyne surrendered at Saratoga on October 17, 1777, several members of the British army were captured and brought to Cambridge. Some of the officers were then sent to Pepperell “on parole” and boarded with local families or houses.

Sergeant Edmund Bancroft, for whom Pepperell’s Bancroft Street is named, arranged for these paroled men to meet once a week “for friendly conference.” The location where these conferences took place, on the corner of Townsend and Bancroft Streets, is today marked with a granite monument.

Its inscription reads:

AFTER THE SURRENDER OF
BURGOYNE AT SARATOGA, IN 1777,
CERTAIN BRITISH OFFICERS,
PRISONERS OF WAR QUARTERED
IN THIS VICINITY BUT RELEASED
UPON PAROLE, WERE PERMITTED
TO ENJOY, IN ALL THEIR MILITARY
FINERY, A “TRYSTING PLACE”
AT THIS SPOT.