Colonel Henry Knox was just about ready to begin moving the Noble Train of Artillery (a phrase he coined, incidentally). He’d have everything he needed to move by the 20th or 21st of December, and then just seventeen days later, he’d be marching into Cambridge.

As we all know, he was wrong about how long it would take. But that sort of thing happened frequently.

What we don’t know is why he said he had the animals he needed to transport the materiel when he didn’t. And even though there are numerous images of the Noble Train of Artillery involving oxen, there weren’t any at all: everything was moved using horses.

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On a personal note: today would have been my grandmother’s 103rd birthday. A lot of things have changed since I was born, but a lot more things changed from the time she was born. The mind boggles.