Fort Ticonderoga

Fort Ticonderoga recently received a grant from the South Lake Champlain Fund of the Vermont Community Foundation to support a regional youth maritime expeditionary learning program Maritime Artificer’s Apprentice for student and scout field trips, and as virtual or in-classroom outreach, during the 2025-2026 school year.

This inquiry-based maritime trades program illustrates the construction of the American fleet in the southern points of Lake Champlain. The students and scouts that participate in this program examine Lake Champlain’s role within the Revolutionary War, discovering the urgency with which American artisans assembled wooden vessels for war. Using reproduction carpentry, sailmaking, & rigging tools at Fort Ticonderoga, looking on the water from the shore of Lake Champlain is a formative experience for regional students and scouts.

The Maritime Artificer’s Apprentice program invites youth to consider networks of trade across the Atlantic world that supplied vital naval stores for the American fleet in 1776 as they delve into the interconnection between skilled trades employed in vessel construction. Connects names and dates with real tangible skills, materials, and tools, this program provides a multi-sensory experience that reaches students when traditional textbooks and classroom lectures cannot. This program engages students in the southern Lake Champlain region with local maritime history and its national significance, by integrating geometry, geography, economics, and applied physics through hands-on or eyes-on instruction in maritime trades.

READ MORE: https://fortticonderoga.org/news/fort-ticonderoga-receives-funding-to-support-regional-youth-programming/

What did Fort Ticonderoga look like when it was captured by American forces in 1775?

How was it different from the fort today... and what is hidden beneath the walls?

Explore what Ticonderoga was like in 1775 as the Revolutionary War began and how the veteran fort evolved from the French and Indian War to the present in our new specialty evening tour "Ramparts or Ruins?" beginning this Wednesday, July 9 at 5pm.

To sign up, or for more information, see our website:
https://fortticonderoga.org/ft_events/?_sft_ft-event-category=ramparts-or-ruins

In a letter Benedict Arnold wrote to the Continental Congress dated July 11, 1775 detailing the situation of the Army of the Northern Department, he wrote that it has been six days since he left Crown Point. In all likelihood his trip up Lake George towards Albany, where he wrote this letter, would have begun after a day of travel from Crown Point to Ticonderoga placing his date of departure from the Champlain valley on the 6th of July. For his next trip up north he would blaze an entirely different route up the Kennebec river in Maine but fall back to Ticonderoga with the rest of the Continental Army in the summer of 1776.

As news of the capture of Fort Ticonderoga spread across the colonies, so did rumors, as each participant put their own spin on the story. In our July 1 post, we shared a newspaper that published the story of the capture according to Colonel James Easton, fierce rival of Benedict Arnold, which inflated Easton’s role and erased Arnold.

Easton’s story did not have staying power. A letter from Arnold to the Massachusetts Provincial Congress arrived at their headquarters in Charlestown, MA on May 22, five days after Easton did, providing a more accurate account of the capture. However, Easton was not the only one spreading false stories involving Arnold. 250 years ago today—July 6, 1775—Arnold had to make an attempt to set the record straight.

In this letter, addressed to “The Gentlemen at Charlstown”, Arnold tries to combat a rumor from an unknown source spreading in Massachusetts. “Gentlemen,” he begins, “Col. Hinman has Just shown me a Letter, Dated at Charlston June 30…which Seems evidently Calculated by Cpt. Coughran, or some other Person, to Asperse my Character by Intimating I gave orders or rather Countenanced the Plundering [of] Major Skene’s House”. The house of Loyalist and British officer Philip Skene had been captured along with his settlement at Skenesborough on May 9. While Skenesborough was an acceptable target, stealing the Skene family’s personal goods would have been seen as ungentlemanly and against the accepted conventions of war.

By the time Arnold wrote this letter, he was no longer in Massachusetts’ employ. He had resigned his commission on June 23 rather than serve under another commander. But his reputation as an officer and a gentleman was personally and professionally important to him—he was out of military service, but he had ambitions for the future. To defend himself, Arnold provided hard evidence. “To Convince you of my Innocency in the Matter,” he writes, “herewith you have a copy [of] my Orders to Capt. Herrick, the Officer I sent to take Possession” of Skenesborough.

Learn more about the letter (object ID 2001.0084.002) on the Ticonderoga Online Collections database: https://fortticonderoga.catalogaccess.com/archives/29425

Today and tomorrow, as part of Independence Day weekend, listen to the fifes and drums of Colonel Hinman’s Connecticut regiment play the patriotic songs which the fight for rights and the everyday tunes and marches that regulated army life at Ticonderoga in 1775!

https://fortticonderoga.org/ft_events/real-time-revolution-living-history-event-independence-day-weekend/

250 years ago today—July 4, 1775—the Continental Congress was a year away from adopting the Declaration of Independence, but this year, the day was ordinary for most Americans. Big questions of independence or reunion with Britain aside, there were encampments to defend, structures to build, troops to supply, strategies to plan, and bills to pay.

One bill that Connecticut owed was to Josiah Stoddard. This pay order, signed by Oliver Ellsworth and Thomas Seymour of the Connecticut Committee of the Pay Table on July 4, 1775, directs treasurer John Lawrence to “Pay Mr. Josiah Stoddard of Salisbury the Sum of Seven pounds, ten shillings, and three pence money in Bills for what he paid out & Expended in the late Expedition to reduce Tainderoga & Crown point”.

Stoddard was part of the party authorized by Connecticut for the capture of Ticonderoga. As a resident of Salisbury, CT, Stoddard may have known former Salisbury resident Ethan Allen and his family. At least two of Ethan’s brothers, Levi and Heman, still lived in Salisbury in 1775. Levi joined the Ticonderoga expedition with Stoddard, and the two reunited with Ethan, now leader of the Green Mountain Boys. Stoddard likely returned to Connecticut by mid-June, but had to wait several weeks to receive his money.

Each of the men who signed this pay order would have further roles to play in history. Stoddard returned to the military, becoming a Continental captain of dragoons before his death in 1779 from a lung disease contracted in service. Thomas Seymour served in Connecticut’s General Assembly, directing its Congressional delegates to vote for American independence in 1776. Oliver Ellsworth joined the Continental Congress later in the war and was one of the originators of the Connecticut Compromise during the Constitutional Convention, giving the nation its bicameral legislature. 250 years ago today, though, the men went about their typical days, taking the everyday actions that kept the colony and the army running.

Learn more about the pay order (object ID MS.7614, property of Robert Nittolo) on the Ticonderoga Online Collections database: https://fortticonderoga.catalogaccess.com/archives/31496

During the American Revolution, women were not just supporting the war from the sidelines. In cities like Philadelphia, they were filling cartridges by the thousands, arming the fight for independence.

This small paper object speaks volumes about this essential and often overlooked contribution.

Watch our latest video to explore this artifact from "A Revolutionary Anthology: Subjects, Citizens, Service."

Link in stories.

#WomenInHistory #AmericanRevolution #FortTiconderoga #RevolutionaryWar #MuseumExhibit #America250