Fort Ticonderoga recently launched a new online digital exhibition entitled “A Patriotic Service: Sarah Pell’s Enduring Legacy.” The digital exhibition is an exciting and important addition to the museum’s Center for Digital History. The exhibit focuses on museum co-founder Sarah Gibbs Thompson Pell. Using recently cataloged museum artifacts, integrated with our Online Collections Database, visitors can explore Sarah’s life and her work connecting Ticonderoga’s historic legacy to the struggle to achieve equality.
“We are excited to share more about Sarah Pell’s important and largely-unrecognized work in the early 20th century through this new digital exhibition,” said Dr. Matthew Keagle, Fort Ticonderoga Curator. “More than anyone else in our museum’s history, she understood how the lessons of Ticonderoga’s history were connected to the ongoing obligations of citizens to ensure a just and equitable world. Her spirit continues to guide us to this day and this exhibit allows others to understand her pioneering work for the United States.”
“This exhibit and efforts to research and catalog the museum’s Pavilion Collection is an extension of the process Sarah Pell began to preserve and document family heirlooms over a century ago,” said Meredith Moore, Fort Ticonderoga Curatorial Assistant. “Diving into the collections with her notes as a guide, it quickly became clear that the objects given the most prominence and attention were pieces connected to family members in public service, whether as diplomats, governors, or wealthy philanthropists. She had the same drive to serve, first by advancing the cause of suffrage and later in support of the Equal Rights Amendment. It is our hope that sharing her actions will continue to inspire all who learn of her deeds.”
This exhibit augments a physical installation that will be mounted in the entrance hall of the newly restored 1826 Pavilion, a national historic landmark, when it opens to the public in 2021.
Development of this digital exhibit was supported by a grant from the Champlain Valley National Heritage Partnership. Research on the Pavilion collection has been made possible in part by the support of the Decorative Arts Trust and the Transferware Collectors Club.
The Center for Digital History provides a platform for educational resources featuring: interactive live programs, museum artifacts through Ticonderoga’s Online Collections, and access to over 100 videos on Fort Ticonderoga’s YouTube channel, including the popular Collections Speed Dating series where Curator Dr. Matthew Keagle explores highlights from the museum’s collection.
See the many educational resources that have earned Fort Ticonderoga the reputation as the premier center for the study and dissemination of the military experience in the Early Modern Era (c.1609-1815) online today at https://www.fortticonderoga.org/center-for-digital-history/.
About Fort Ticonderoga:
Welcoming visitors since 1909, Fort Ticonderoga preserves North America’s largest 18th-century artillery collection, 2,000 acres of historic landscape on Lake Champlain, and Carillon Battlefield, and the largest series of untouched Revolutionary War era earthworks surviving in America. As a multi-day destination and the premier place to learn more about our nation’s earliest years and America’s military heritage, Fort Ticonderoga engages more than 75,000 visitors each year with an economic impact of more than $12 million annually and offers programs, historic interpretation, boat cruises, tours, demonstrations, and exhibits throughout the year, and is open for daily visitation May through October. Fort Ticonderoga is supported in part through generous donations and with some general operating support made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.