Fort Ticonderoga

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 🔗

Tens of thousands of enlisted men served at Fort Ticonderoga during its period of service, but relatively few of their letters and journals have survived. Often, only one or a few letters survive from a much larger correspondence. Archelaus Tay of Woburn, MA, a soldier in the Massachusetts militia who marched to reinforce Ticonderoga in the summer of 1776, left his mark on the historical record through four surviving letters to his family.

At the time of his first letter, written from Winchester, just south of Woburn, on July 28, Tay was likely preparing to march. Looking ahead to the campaign, he wrote, “we are all in good health and good heart, we desire the prayers of all the good people of amarica”.

By August 19, Tay and his regiment had made camp at Mount Independence. He reported that “my Captin is sumthing poorly… Benjmian Thompson was [carried] off with the small pox to lake [George] yesterday”. He was not worried about smallpox himself, stating that “ther is no Danger as of the small pox Spreden in the camps”. The British were more concerning, as he had heard (incorrect) reports that “the [regulars] are within twenty miles of Crown pint, it tis expected that they will bee along soon.”

On August 27, 1776—250 years ago today—Tay wrote a third letter from Ticonderoga. “We are to be stationed this place for the present and I don’t think that we shall go any further but fortify this place as strong as possible”, he wrote. The campaign was beginning to wear on him. “I do not like soldiering,” he declared, “I do determine to come home as soon as my time is out.”

Tay never got that opportunity. On October 14 he wrote a final, panicked letter to his parents, saying that he was in “a poor and languishing state of health” and begging them to “come…and fetch me home. Fail not of coming, let the cost be what it will. If you don’t come quick I never shall come home.” He never did, dying on October 22, a week before his 25th birthday.

Learn more about Tay’s letters (object IDs MS.2082 and MS.7079.3) on the Ticonderoga Online Collections database: https://fortticonderoga.catalogaccess.com/archives/30088 https://fortticonderoga.catalogaccess.com/archives/30599