In June of 1781, the army of the French general, the comte de Rochambeau, on its way to join George Washington and fight in the Battle of Yorktown, camped at what was later called Rose Farm in Bolton. Between June 21 and 25, 1781, four regiments of the French soldiers spent one night each at the camp, which was the fifth French army encampment of their journey from Newport, Rhode Island to Yorktown, Virginia. The farm was part of the land originally owned by the town’s first minister, Reverend Thomas White and at the time of the Revolutionary War, the property, called the Minister’s Farm, was owned by Reverend George Colton, who was Bolton’s minister from 1764 to 1817. The farm still has numerous stone walls, built by early settlers who initially cleared the land. Many of these walls were noted on a map made by Rochambeau’s engineer. The minister’s house, originally built in 1725 by Rev. White and where Rev. Colton entertained Rochambeau in 1781, has been significantly altered. Once believed to have been replaced by a new Greek Revival-style house, built around 1840 by Reverend James Ely, it is now thought that the core of the later house is the original colonial structure, much altered and added to in later years . The farm was owned by the Rose family in the twentieth century. It was saved from the building of an expressway in 1994 and in 2000, after a campaign to save the land from development, it was purchased by the town of Bolton and is now the Bolton Heritage Farm.
