The Guns of Fort Ticonderoga

Hello, hello! How are you doing? I've had a great week, and I can't wait to share it with everybody.

The first thing we did was go on a family field trip to the Great Escape. That has nothing to do with the Revolutionary War. But on the way there, I read this book called One Dead Spy. It's about Nathan Hale. He was the most famous American spy during the Revolutionary War. I like that it was really funny and it looks like a comic book. I liked it so much, I read it again the next day.

  

I had a chance to read it the next day because we went to Fort Ticonderoga. The book talked about Henry Knox (you might remember him from another blog post) taking guns from Fort Ticonderoga on the Knox Trail to Boston. It was nice to read about something before I went there! If you're interested in this book, you can look up Nathan Hale's Hazardous Tales. It's a series from all different wars. 

Fort Ticonderoga is really important because it had a lot of supplies, especially cannons. Benedict Arnold and Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys of Vermont won the first victory for the Americans there in 1775.  Then Henry Knox delivered the cannons to George Washington. 

The fort has been around ever since the French and Indian War (that was before the Revolutionary War), but the British won it from the French. (Interesting information: George Washington used to be a British soldier. He is the one who started the French and Indian War!)

Fort Ticonderoga is next to Lake Champlain. The view there is amazing! These are some views from outside the fort buildings, but inside the walls.

This is the parade grounds in the very middle of all three parts of the fort.  

 

 Speaking of three, the fort was blown up three times. It was blown up once during the French and Indian War and twice during the Revolutionary War. It was never blown up by the winners, but always by the people who lost the fort! They did that because they didn't want the other side to be able to use the fort. 

This is a sleeping quarter. And again, speaking of three, three thousand soldiers lived at the fort during the French and Indian War. It would have been really crowded!

 

We got to see the cannons go off in the afternoon. We watched a four pound shot cannon. Some of the cannons at the fort were eighteen pounders! This is a four pound shot.

 

This is a sloooooooow motion video of the cannon. Don't be alarmed!

Across the lake is Mount Defiance. It's how far some of the cannons could shoot. In this picture, the arrow is where it could shoot and the ball is the cannon. The arrow is pointing at a flag pole, which you cannot see. It's really far away!

These are some baby cannons. (* They're called "mortars.") We're going to call them baby cannons. 

  

Here are some other weapons, including a gun and sword.

 

This is a "gabion." The French weaved them and filled them with dirt to make the walls. They didn't use tacky glue (haha!).

 

These are some models of the fort when it was first being built. It was all tents. 

Remember that book we talked about? This is a model of Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold taking over Fort Ticonderoga.

And here's the same spot in the real fort.

This is a famous painting of "Knox the Ox" bringing the cannons back. (Knox the Ox is a nickname people from the war called Henry Knox.) They also had a model of the painting.

In one of the rooms, they had a cannon pulling machine. We failed horribly to lift the cannon. It was real and it was heavy!

The last stop at Fort Ticonderoga was the King's Garden. This is where they would grow all their crops. It didn't look as nice as it does now. The picture on the right is a picture of a tadpole. They had tons of them in a fountain! The tadpoles were cute. The picture on the left is a picture of the beautiful scenery. I think my grandma is going to like that picture!

 

Thank you everybody for reading this blog post. We already have our next adventure planned, so keep watch for that. Peace out, guys!

Bennington!

How are you guys feeling? You're getting two posts in one day! Yesterday, we went on an hour drive to the Bennington Battlefield. The Bennington Battlefield was where they had a battle outside the border of New York and Vermont. The British got there first, led by General Baum. He was going to try to get supplies for the British army. The British army needed supplies because they were getting supplies from Canada, but they were getting further away from Canada. It was a long journey, and they were running out of supplies. In Bennington, VT there was a Continental storehouse. General Burgoyne heard the storehouse wasn't very protected. But he was wrong!

General Burgoyne sent General Baum to get the supplies. John Stark was a general from New Hampshire. He led American soldiers to save the supplies in Bennington. This is a map of the hill that the battle took place on.

It's made out of copper (that's the same type of metal that the Statue of Liberty is made out of). The arrows show you where all of the Americans, British, and Indians (who helped the British) went to battle each other. John Stark sent his soldiers in different directions. He sent 100 soldiers to the front of the hill to be a diversion. In the meantime, he sent the rest of his soldiers around the back of the hill. That group split up, so one group went to the side of the hill and the other group went up the back. The British were surrounded! They were defeated by the Americans. General Baum was wounded and died in a house nearby.

The British lost, so they didn't have enough supplies. They went back to Saratoga. General Burgoyne's horses grew tired, and they used too much of their supplies. They didn't have enough supplies for the Battle in Saratoga. Burgoyne surrendered to the Americans at Saratoga two months after the Battle of Bennington.

Here are some more pictures of the battlefield.

Memorial to John Stark

Memorial for Massachusetts Soldiers

Close up of the map

Close up of Gen. John Stark's camp on the map

After we went to the Bennington Battlefield, we went to the Bennington Battlefield Monument. We had to enter Vermont to do that. (My mom went to college there at Bennington College*. I got to see it, but I don't have any photos. It was a good place. I kind of want to go there when I grow up.)

The Bennington Monument is located where the Continental Storehouse was. That's what the British were aiming for. This is a memorial.

 

The Bennington Monument is 306 feet and 4 inches tall.  Do you see those fish-gill lines close to the top? That's where we were. We got there by elevator. It took a little while to get there. The view was amazing. It was beautiful. It was the most spectacular view ever. I could see into New York!

Bennington Monument

View to New York and the battlefield

Here's a picture of a solider carrying a gun outside the monument.

Inside, on the first floor, there's a diorama of the Battle of Bennington. It was really cute. I think it was cute because the soldiers are little. But it does not look like it would be fun to fight in a battle and get wounded.

 

Another cool thing was this kettle. The kettle was left behind by the British on the field at the Battle of Saratoga. A farmer claimed it as his own and then gave it to the Bennington Monument.  It's now called "General Burgoyne's Soup Kettle." The tour guide told me I could fit inside of it. I would feel steaming hot about getting eaten for dinner. Ew!

Outside the monument is a statue of John Stark. 

The last picture is my favorite part. The Moose! He's funny and cute. He is right outside of the Bennington Battle Monument. He has nothing to do with the battle, but I like him.

 

Well, that's all for now! See you guys next time!

*I attended Bennington College for one semester after high school.  Unfortunately, it was financially impossible to continue after that. I still remember the school fondly and loved getting the chance to go back and visit the gorgeous campus.

The Knox Trail & Shays' Rebellion

Sorry everybody! It's been a few weeks and we've been away on trips. One of my trips was alone without Mom or Dad. I went to Lee, MA for horse riding camp. I stayed with my Grandma and Grandpa. They knew I am writing blog posts about the Revolutionary War, so they decided to take me to some places that had to do with Henry Knox and the Revolutionary War.

First, I learned about Henry Knox. (I remember hearing his name from "Hamilton" when George Washington says, "And Henry Knox wanted to hire you." Hamilton said, "To be his secretary, I don't think so!") Henry Knox traveled on a trail to get cannons from the British for the Americans. That trail is called the Knox Trail. We saw a house that Henry Knox stayed at on the trail. It was this yellow color, and it had the British flag on it and the American flag. We didn't get to go inside. I think somebody actually lives there.

After we saw the house, we saw a monument of the Last Battle of Shays' Rebellion. This happened after the Revolutionary War. The big result was the Constitutional Convention to help people by making the government better.

I don't have any pictures because I forgot about my camera. That's an "oopsy!" But I enjoyed it anyway. See you guys next time!

Trip to the Cemeteries

Hello again, my friends! It was a busy week, so we didn't have time to write the blog post until this morning. We went away on a trip to CT. We went there to see my family.  My mom grew up in Stafford Springs, so we were visiting there.

She noticed a cemetery that she used to go to when she was a kid (about my age, I think). The cemetery was founded in 1724. It was before the Revolutionary War.  Here's a picture of the sign. (I used my own camera I got for my birthday to take all of the pictures.)

The cemetery is hidden in a forest on a back road. I've never gone to a cemetery before, so I got really nervous. I wasn't nervous after about five minutes because I knew that we were just there to look around and not touch anything. I thought I could handle it pretty well.

The cemetery was calm and peaceful.  The ground was covered in moss.  It felt kind of springy. It was a little blanket to keep everybody warm.

We couldn't read a lot of the gravestones because that cemetery is really old. The gravestones are so old that some of them had moss on them. They weren't all perfectly in one piece. Some were broken. Sometimes you would see one broken in half and the other piece was a foot away.

We found a lot of Revolutionary War veterans buried there. Here are some pictures of their graves.

 

 

My mom recognized a few of the names because some of the streets are named after them. Converse Street is named after Josiah Converse. We even found some information about him on the internet.  You can read it here.

This is his grave.  It's cracked because it was so long ago.

Another cool thing about Stafford Springs is that Lafayette and Washington stayed there during the Revolutionary War. We couldn't see the building they stayed in because it's now nothing. Mom is disappointed because it's gone now. 

On Friday, we went to the Albany Rural Cemetery, but that was when the big storm was rolling in. So we didn't have much time. We will revisit it pretty soon. We managed to find Philip Schuyler's grave,

We also found Margaret Schuyler's grave. (For Hamilton fans: that's Peggy!) Surprisingly they weren't buried anywhere close to each other. Margaret was married to a Van Rensselaer, so she was in the Van Rensselaer section.

We also found the grave of Chester Arthur, our 21st President. (He was President a long time after the Revolutionary War.) His grave was really pretty. There's an angel on it. Here's a picture.

I think it's important to remember these people who fought in the war for us. I kind of felt weird and a bit happy going to the cemeteries. It's weird to feel sad for the people you don't know in the cemetery. But you feel happy to know that they might be standing right next to you. I think that they would be happy to know that people are actually visiting them, even though they don't know us. It probably feels good to be remembered.  Let's have a moment of silence for all of them.

Adventure to the Schuyler Mansion

Hi everybody! Thanks for the comments on the last post. I feel great about getting comments from you guys. I'll try to respond to everyone. Okay, now onto the important stuff....

We first went to the Albany Visitor Center to get information. We were at the Visitor Center museum when we took this picture.

Then mom needed to go to the bank to get some money. It was next to Albany City Hall, and there was a statue of Philip Schuyler.

"War hero Philip Schuyler loses his seat in the Senate to young upstart, Aaron Burr." (I remember those lines from Hamilton.)

I learned today that he had one of the biggest houses in Albany during the Revolutionary time period. Important people stayed there, like Benjamin Franklin, Hamilton, George Washington, and Marquis de Lafayette (America's Favorite Fighting Frenchman!).

We went to Philip Schuyler's mansion next. This is the parlor for special occasions. It's where Alexander Hamilton and Eliza got married. Eliza lived there because she was Philip Schuyler's daughter.

Now there is a painting of Hamilton hanging there.

This is Philip Schuyler's office. This is where three of the Federalist Papers might have been written by Hamilton. John Jay and James Madison helped him to write the Federalist Papers, but Hamilton wrote the most.

This is a baby cradle that has been passed down for many years in the Schuyler's possession. I wonder how many babies slept in that cradle?

Sewing time! This is Eliza's sewing box. We don't know much about it, but I think it's cool to imagine that you are the person who used it.

Story time class! (I don't remember the story, so Mom will tell it.)

According to legend, this mysterious mark on the staircase is the result of a Native American tomahawk being thrown at Peggy Schuyler's head during a Loyalist attempt to kidnap Philip Schuyler. Peggy was trying to save baby Catharine, the youngest Schuyler child.  The failed kidnapping attempt is well-documented, however, no accounts of tomahawks being thrown at heads were reported until the 1830's. 

 (Take it away, Eily!)

Thank you Mama! Okay, this is the mansion from the outside. I know, I know, there's a lot of construction. But it's still nice.  I like the clouds.

After we went to the Schuyler Mansion, we had a picnic at Lincoln Park. We loved to gaze at the clouds. Oh, how I love clouds!

After our picnic, we went to Crailo. This is where Catharine Van Rensselaer grew up. She was Philip Schuyler's wife and the mom of Angelica, Eliza, AND PEGGY!.(That was for Hamilton fans.) Some people call it Fort Crailo. Mom will tell why.

It's a fortified house, so if anyone attacked the area, people would come to the house and lock themselves in. Do you remember how they protected themselves?

Yes, I do! Do you see this hole right there, sort of like a key shape? Well, this room didn't exist. They built an addition. Before that, this was the outside wall. Let's all pretend that we're intruders! Then we see a gun poking out. KABOOM! This is called a "gunport."

This is a gunport in the front of the house from the inside. Now we can pretend that we are protecting the house. KABOOM! KABOOM! KABOOM!

Crailo is right next to the Hudson River. I was pretending that I was a beautiful princess at the edge of a shore. (Okay, that might have been a bit embarrassing to say!)

I'm sad that I didn't get a picture of the parents' bed at Crailo. It was so small because they used to sleep sitting up. I don't think that would be very comfortable! I probably wouldn't be able to sleep.

We also forgot to take a picture of the kitchen. It smelled so good, even though it was in the basement. Yuck! Spiders!

Overall, the trip was quite good. Thank you for reading! We'll post again after next week's adventure!