Fort Ticonderoga

How do you safely pack a 250-year-old uniform or archival document? Watch our latest video to get a glimpse!

We recently brought a selection of remarkable 18th-century pieces out of storage for a special tour, and now they`re going back. See our collections and curatorial teams handle some of the museum`s most extraordinary artifacts and prepare them for their well-deserved rest in storage (before they come out again for future exhibits, tours, and research!)

Which piece would you want to see up close?

Link to watch in bio ☝🔗

Fort Ticonderoga has elected three new members to its Board of Trustees: Mike Konzen, Chairman of PGAV and one of the most recognized figures in the global destination and attractions industry; James F. Sefcik, Sr., retired director of the Louisiana State Museum and a historian of the American Revolution; and Christie L. McEvoy-Derrico, an attorney and civic leader from Westchester County, New York. The three join the Board at the most consequential moment in the institution’s modern history.

The additions come as Fort Ticonderoga records its strongest season since welcoming its first visitors in 1909. Named Best Living History in America for the nation’s 250th anniversary by USA TODAY 10Best, and featured this year by The New York Times, Travel + Leisure, Smithsonian Magazine, and Fodor’s, Fort Ticonderoga is on pace for its highest visitation on record as REAL TIME REVOLUTION® brings the fight for independence back to life in real time, on the ground where it happened, 250 years later to the day.

READ MORE: https://fortticonderoga.org/news/fort-ticonderoga-welcomes-three-new-trustees-as-institution-reaches-record-season/

Anthony Marsh was one of the many soldiers who marched to Fort Ticonderoga and never came home. Two and a half centuries later, we know very little about Marsh. We know that on January 15, 1776 he enlisted as a private in Captain Silas Wild’s company of Colonel Edmund Phinney’s 18th Continental Regiment from Massachusetts. We know that he marched 70 miles from his home to Cambridge to join the regiment, likely putting his hometown somewhere in the southern tip of Maine, where much of the regiment lived.

We know that Marsh served with Phinney’s regiment for close to eight months, spending the spring and summer of 1776 in Cambridge and Boston, then traveling to Ticonderoga in late August. And we know that on September 7, 250 years ago today and a week after his regiment’s arrival at Mount Independence, Marsh died. The cause of his death is unknown, but it’s likely that he died from one of the diseases circulating through the army.

Much of what we know about Marsh comes from this inventory of his possessions compiled by his company’s lieutenant William Frost just after his death. The items he had with him were valued, then likely sold at vendue to other soldiers; Marsh’s surviving family would be repaid, and the goods would be put to good use by their new owners. Today, this inventory sheds light on what soldiers carried to war.

Most of Marsh’s things were clothes, including a pair of leather breeches, three shirts, three pairs of stockings, knee and shoe buckles, two coats, three jackets, a hat, and shoes. He had a few small, useful items with him as well, like needles and thread, buttons, a ball of yarn, a pocketbook, and a knapsack to carry it all. He had some money from several different monetary systems; the inventory lists “one five Dollar bill”, “one ten Shilling Bill”, and “3 Coppers”. The total value of Marsh’s possessions was 4 pounds, 13 shillings, and 4 pence. Combined with the wages he hadn’t received yet, the army owed his survivors 8 pounds, 3 shillings, and 5 pence.

Learn more about this inventory (object ID MS.2070) on the Ticonderoga Online Collections database: https://fortticonderoga.catalogaccess.com/archives/29811

By September 1776, some of the dangers of the campaign season had subsided for the garrison at Fort Ticonderoga. The number of smallpox cases dropped, and the British army was still 100 miles away. But soldiers who served at Ticonderoga, like Josiah Blood, were still risking their lives. Blood was likely one of the oldest soldiers at Ticonderoga. A resident of Hollis, NH, he was around 60 years old by the time he joined Colonel Joshua Wingate’s militia regiment. Despite his age, Blood made the journey to Ticonderoga with Wingate’s regiment, arriving sometime in mid- or late August. Soon after, though, things began to go wrong.

On September 4, 1776—250 years ago today—Blood wrote this letter from Mount Independence to his wife Sarah and his six children. “I take this Opportunity to inform you that I am in Somthing of Low Circumstances of helth at Preasant and by Reason of Old age I find my self unable to undergo the feteagues of a Campaign,” he began. “I intreet that you would hire a man and send up to take my place as soon as possible & furnish him with a horse So that I may Ride home if God Should be pleasd to Spare my Life So Long”.

Blood had signed up to serve for a specific period, likely 3 months. If he could not get a discharge on medical grounds, he needed to find a replacement who could serve out the rest of his term while he returned home. He stressed the urgency of the situation to his family: “Pray Spare no pains or money and I will See that is paid or Order the same paid as my life is at Stake if I Continue here Long.”

Blood found space in his letter for some more mundane requests, passing along one from a neighbor: “Thomas Patch Desires that if any man should take my place that he would Call at his house and Bring up a Cheese & pair of Mittens for him.” He also requested honey, which “would be of Grate Service here for hunting Be[es]”. The honey, the cheese, the horse, and the substitute would all be too late for Blood. He died, probably of a camp disease, between September 7 and 16.

Learn more about this letter (object ID MS.6005) on the Ticonderoga Online Collections database: https://fortticonderoga.catalogaccess.com/archives/30208

The fight for independence is unfolding in real time at Fort Ticonderoga, and on September 19 and 20, visitors can take part in it. During the REAL TIME REVOLUTION® Signature Event, “Lodging as the Nature of the Campaign will Admit,” guests of all ages will pick up a mallet or a saw and work beside soldiers of the Northern Continental Army to raise the wooden huts that sheltered an army atop Liberty Hill 250 years ago.

Two hundred fifty years ago this month, the Northern Continental Army held this ground with winter closing in and a British fleet somewhere to the north. Soldiers had to build shelter from what the landscape gave them, and finish before the weather or the enemy arrived. No one knew how the story would end.

This event falls during one of the strongest seasons in Fort Ticonderoga’s 117-year history, on the heels of its recent recognition as a “Best Living History” site for the nation’s 250th birthday by USA Today. Fort Ticonderoga was also featured prominently in Fodor’s, Travel + Leisure, and Smithsonian Magazine among other publications.

Learn more: https://fortticonderoga.org/news/visitors-pick-up-the-tools-of-1776-as-the-revolution-unfolds-in-real-time-at-fort-ticonderoga/

Where did Revolutionary War soldiers go to the bathroom? The 18th-century answer turns out to be a matter of military doctrine, discipline, and survival. In Fort Ticonderoga`s latest YouTube video, discover how the sweeping saga of building the Continental Army in 1776, included building, "necessaries".

Watch our newest video to learn more! Link in bio 🔗