Fort Ticonderoga

On August 4, 1776, Colonel Arthur St. Clair wrote to Dr. Jonathan Potts with good news. French Canadian informants had brought explosive intelligence to Fort Ticonderoga: a French fleet had sailed up the St. Lawrence River, and the British troops at Fort Saint-Jean were fleeing north. The news must have been a relief for the garrison, but that relief would not last long. By August 6, 1776—250 years ago today—the illusion of the French fleet and the British retreat was beginning to crumble.

On August 6, James Wilkinson, now serving on the newly christened Mount Independence, wrote to General Philip Schuyler in Albany. If Schuyler was at all buoyed by the informants’ report, this letter brought him back down to earth. “A Scout has… arrived from Canada”, Wilkinson writes, “who justifies our suspicion of our French Informants by differing with them on the most essential representations.”

Wilkinson does not give details from the report of the Continental Army scout, saying that “as Mr. Cuyler was an Auditor of the whole narrative I shall omit mentioning particulars”. Mr. Cuyler was likely Jacob or Abraham Cuyler, both of whom served on Albany’s Committee of Correspondence. Schuyler could get the full report in person from Cuyler once he returned from Ticonderoga. This report was likely much closer to the truth: there was no French fleet in the St. Lawrence, and the British were still at Fort Saint-Jean with no sign of a retreat.

Wilkinson’s letter may have been a disappointment to Schuyler, but it likely wasn’t a shock. The reference to “our suspicion of our French informants” suggests that not everyone had trusted their story. Incidents like this were common in wartime. Scouts and informants arrived with conflicting information, truth mixed with mistakes and outright falsehoods. The job of the army’s officers was to find the truth and determine what to act on. In this case, the false story did not derail the Americans. Rather than relaxing, they continued to reinforce Ticonderoga’s defenses.

Learn more about this letter (object ID MS.2085) on the Ticonderoga Online Collections database: https://fortticonderoga.catalogaccess.com/archives/30090

Lieutenant Edmund Munro was no stranger to war. During Seven Years’ War, he had served on the New York frontier as an ensign in Rogers’ Rangers and done garrison duty at Fort Ticonderoga and Fort Crown Point. At the close of the war, he returned to his hometown of Lexington, MA, where he worked as a cordwainer (a maker of shoes) and ran a short-lived potash works. He married Rebekah Harrington in 1769, and the two had four children in quick succession, although their first child died in infancy.

In April 1775, war came almost literally to the Munros’ doorstep. As part of the Lexington militia, Munro was present on Lexington Green for the skirmish with British soldiers that marked the opening of the Revolutionary War. He largely spent the first year of the war at home with his family, but in July 1776, war came calling again. Munro joined Colonel Jonathan Reed’s regiment of Middlesex County militia as a lieutenant and quartermaster. He left Rebekah, 5-year-old Beka, 2-year-old Pamela, and 9-month-old Edmund Jr. behind to march with Reed’s regiment to reinforce Ticonderoga.

On August 5, 1776—250 years ago today—Munro and his regiment had made it as far as Charlestown in western New Hampshire, where he wrote this letter to Rebekah. The letter carries “no news that is of any consequence”, Munro claims, but is filled with expressions of his love for his family. “My dear,” he begins, “These lines wait upon you with as sincere Love & respect as ever warm’d the brest of man… I wou’d have you write me every opportunity. You may Send Every Week.” He sends love to “Beka, Pamy, & the only Son” and closes the letter, “I am your Loving Husband till Death”.

Munro was a veteran and had risked his life before, but when he served in the Seven Years’ War, he was a young man, unmarried and unattached. Now, as a father and husband just past his 40th birthday, he had more to leave behind. He could only hope and pray that he would return unscathed from his time at Ticonderoga.

Learn more about this letter (object ID MS.1963) on the Ticonderoga Online Collections database: https://fortticonderoga.catalogaccess.com/archives/29989

📜 1776 documents. 1776 the year. Some coincidences are simply too good to ignore.

Our Ticonderoga Online Collections database has reached a remarkable milestone: 1,776 archival records are now searchable and accessible to researchers, educators, students, and history enthusiasts anywhere in the world.

Among them are the very papers that shaped the Revolution in the Northern Department. Every one of these documents was written by people who had no certainty of the outcome. Today they are preserved, digitized, and free for all to explore as America commemorates the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution.

🔗 Not sure where to start? Discover a growing library of blog articles that provide content for dozens of #OTD archival documents from Fort Ticonderoga`s collections: https://northerndepartment.org/news/

#FortTiconderoga #1776 #AmericanRevolution #Archives #PrimarySources #America250 #RevolutionaryWar #DigitalCollections #HistoryMatters #NorthernDepartment

For soldiers stationed at Fort Ticonderoga, news was often hard to come by. Ticonderoga was a fairly isolated military post, and while most soldiers stayed in touch with family and friends via letters, those letters were often infrequent or lost in transit. Even when letters did arrive, or when the garrison obtained new military intelligence, soldiers faced the challenge of sorting facts from rumors or outright falsehoods.

On August 4, 1776—250 years ago today—Colonel Arthur St. Clair wrote a letter to Dr. Jonathan Potts. Potts, director of the military hospital at Fort George, and St. Clair, a Pennsylvania officer stationed at Ticonderoga, likely knew each other before the war and had friends in common. St. Clair begins the letter with pleasantries, thanking Potts for the gift of some lamb, before getting down to business: “I am obliged to send you a number of more Sick Men. I believe you have enough of them already… but my Surgeon is prisoner… and the Mate is dying.”

“To make amend for the last paragraph,” St. Clair shares some better news. According to the testimony of a group of French Canadians at Ticonderoga, “a French Fleet is actually in the River St. Lawrence, and…the English Troops have marched back for Quebec with as much Haste nearly, as we made in leaving it”. This news of French aid and a British retreat was heartening, but wrong. Whether the Canadians were incorrect or lying, St. Clair had been misled. Potts hopefully knew to take this and other news with a grain of salt. This was far from the first piece of false information the army had obtained from informants, and it would not be the last.

St. Clair ends his letter with a plea for Potts to “For Gods Sake send us some News no matter where it is, or if you have an old Letter that you have no farther occasion for, There are four or five of your Friends here that would be very glad of it.” For an isolated garrison with spotty postal service in a rapidly moving world, any news, even unreliable news, was good news.

Learn about this letter (object ID MS.1973) on the Ticonderoga Online Collections database: https://fortticonderoga.catalogaccess.com/archives/29817

When Rachel Hanchett’s husband Oliver said goodbye to her in April 1775, she couldn`t have known how long their separation would last. News of the Battle of Lexington and Concord had just reached their home in Suffield, CT. Oliver, a lieutenant in the local militia, marched to Boston to join the fight. As she watched him leave, Rachel must have wondered when and if she would see him again. The militia company could return in a week or two, or the worst could happen. Oliver might never come home.

Rachel would see Oliver again, but she had to wait. While she remained at home, caring for their three young children and trying to keep affairs at home running smoothly, Oliver was named a captain in the 2nd Connecticut Regiment and agreed to serve until the end of 1775. He spent the summer at the Siege of Boston, then volunteered for an even more dangerous duty, joining Benedict Arnold’s expedition to Canada via the Kennebec River and the Maine wilderness.

Oliver survived the journey to Quebec, fording rapids and slogging through swamps while facing food shortages. Then, on December 31, just as his enlistment was set to expire, came the Battle of Quebec. In an assault on Quebec City, General Richard Montgomery was killed and many men, including Oliver, were captured. Rachel must have been relieved to hear that he had survived, but a separation of unknown length stretched before her. Who could say when the British and American governments would agree on an exchange that would bring Oliver home?

Rachel, left to manage their home and children and find the money to keep things running, took matters into her own hands. She petitioned Connecticut’s government for a portion of her husband’s salary. On July 30, 1776—250 years ago today—the Committee of the Pay Table granted her request, allowing her 18 pounds from Oliver’s wages. The money would help Rachel make ends meet until their family was reunited. She didn’t have much longer to wait; Oliver was paroled that August, and by November he was home.

Learn more about the pay order (MS.7513, property of Robert Nittolo) on the Ticonderoga Online Collections database: https://fortticonderoga.catalogaccess.com/archives/31378