Powder House Day

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Powder House Day in New Haven, Connecticut, is celebrated annually to commemorate the events of April 22, 1775 when the Second Company, Governor's Foot Guard, under Captain Benedict Arnold, demanded the keys to the powder house in order to arm themselves and begin a march to Cambridge, Massachusetts, marking the entry of New Haven into the American Revolution. Although the New Haven town meeting had voted the day before not to send aid to Massachusetts, the Foot Guard decided overwhelmingly to go. They confronted the selectmen, who were meeting at a local tavern, and demanded access to the powder house. "You may tell the selectmen," Arnold reportedly said, "that if the keys are not coming within five minutes, my men will break into the supply-house and help themselves." The keys were reluctantly handed over.

The Governor's Foot Guard stages an annual recreation of the events on the Saturday closest to April 22. After a memorial service at New Haven's Center Church on the Green, the re-enactors march across the green to City Hall, where a member of the Foot Guard playing Arnold demands the keys to the powder house from the current mayor of New Haven, who plays his Revolutionary predecessor.

Source: Osterweis, Rollin G., Three Centuries of New Haven (1953), New Haven: Yale University Press.

Link: Script for Powder House Day celebration. http://www.footguard.org/script.html