Seeing Red
Visitors to our Founding Fashions exhibit in the Mars Educations Center are often confused by seeing three scarlet uniforms lined up in the gallery. Nowhere else in North America can you see so many 18th-century uniforms in one place, but you might ask, why only redcoats? What about the Americans? In fact, only one of […]
Daniel Dwight’s Powder Horn
One of the most interesting genres of American art that survives from 18th century America is the engraved powder horn. Horns fashioned for carrying gunpowder were supplied to military troops in both the French & Indian War and American Revolution. Soldiers often engraved or carved designs on their horns, perhaps as a way of memorializing […]
Robert Fairchild and His Powder Horn
Powder horns are unique artifacts in that they have the ability to speak to a single person’s 18th-century military service unlike most other objects. Muskets, swords, and other similar items, though important, are rarely able to connect people today nearly face-to-face with an individual person from the past. What makes powder horns so interesting, and […]
Portraying a Citizen Army: 1775 at Ticonderoga
We all can picture the minute men of Lexington green on April 19th 1775. The image of armed patriot citizens, spontaneously fighting for their rights is indelibly burned into our collective memory of the American Revolution. This summer at Fort Ticonderoga we’re looking at the next chapter, what happened in the rest of 1775? How […]