Keeler Tavern’s Cannonball

On April 25, 1777, British forces landed in present-day Westport, marched inland, and destroyed Continental Army supplies stockpiled in Danbury. Approximately 600 local militia members and Continental Army regulars pursued the 2,000 British troops and met them, two days later, in Ridgefield. In the ensuing fight, perhaps 50 American and 60 British soldiers were killed, though there was no accurate count. It was the only inland battle fought in Connecticut during the Revolutionary War.

The British may have targeted T. Keeler’s Inn on Main Street because it was an important community gathering place. Or the British may have known that the building’s owners – Timothy Keeler, from Ridgefield, and his wife Esther, from Norwalk – were Patriots.

The building remained a lodging place into the 20th century, when it became a private home and then, in 1966, a museum – with the cannonball remaining across the centuries as a memorial to the British attack.

Keeler Tavern Museum & History Center is located on Main Street in Ridgefield.