History, Natural History & the Arts
Live Free or Die: The Life and Times Of John Stark (Page Publishing, 2025) by William Baker Jr. is the story of how one of the American Revolution’s best battlefield commanders triumphed over the self-interest of others to play a major role in securing victory for the new republic.
Most often referred to as the “Hero of the Battle of Bennington,” John Stark also played pivotal roles in the Battle of Bunker Hill and the Battle of Trenton. [Read more…] about The Life and Times of John Stark
The dramatic massacre at Fort William Henry on August 10, 1757 has been told in 18th century newspaper accounts, witness diaries, by historians, movie makers, and of course the famed novelist James Fenimore Cooper.
Another attack at Half-Way Brook a year later has been overshadowed by the carnage at Lake George. The events of July 28, 1758 were every bit as horrendous, bloody and gut-wrenching. That story has been largely overlooked. [Read more…] about That ‘Other’ Massacre: Blood and Chocolate at Half-Way Brook
The latest episode of the Lake George Battlefield Moments podcast features John Eric Nelson, French & Indian War historian and re-enactor, who tells the story (and myths) of the Battle on Snowshoes in March 1758. [Read more…] about The Battle on Snowshoes: History & Mythology
Native Americans began hunting and fishing on Rogers Island and along the Hudson River in what would later become the town of Fort Edward in Washington County, NY, at least 6,000 years ago.
Archaeologists working there have unearthed thousands of stone tools, pottery sherds and other artifacts as well as features like hearths from the Late Archaic, Transitional, Middle Woodland and Late Woodland Periods. These first indigenous inhabitants left behind their hearths, trash pits, stone tools, and pottery as they hunted, fished and traveled in the area. [Read more…] about Heritage Profile: Fort Edward & Rogers Island in the Hudson River
Robert Rogers, commander of Rogers’ Rangers during the French and Indian War (1754-1763), was the war’s best-known colonial military hero and, in the ensuing peace, one of the best-known Americans of any description, rivaling Benjamin Franklin in popularity.
He was revered in the colonies as an example of the self-made man based on merit, in contrast to the hide-bound, hierarchical British military establishment. Yet this American icon ultimately alienated his peers, fought as a loyalist in the Revolutionary War, ruined himself financially, and died in obscurity in London, estranged from the country of his birth. [Read more…] about Robert Rogers: The Rise and Fall of an American Icon
To Distress the French and Their Allies: Rogers’ Rangers, 1755-1763 (Black Dome Press, 2023) is the first volume in a new “Rangers of the French and Indian, Cherokee, and Pontiac’s War” series by Black Dome Press, that is expected to document for the first time the histories of all ranger units, from each of the colonies, that served in the French & Indian War and after.
Volume I begins with the most famous ranger unit of all ― Robert Rogers’ Rangers, which served in the major campaigns in New York and Canada, and then in the Caribbean, and continued to fight in the Cherokee and Pontiac’s Wars. [Read more…] about To Distress the French and Their Allies: Rogers’ Rangers, 1755-1763
In the early 1750s, the French were establishing trading posts and building forts along western the frontiers of the British colonies. In the fall of 1753, in part to protect his own claims on Indigenous lands, Virginia Lieutenant Governor Robert Dinwiddie had sent 22-year-old George Washington (then a militia leader and surveyor) to deliver a letter to Fort Le Boeuf at what is today Waterford in northwest Pennsylvania, demanding they stop. [Read more…] about The French and Indian War: A New York Perspective
A colorful figure of 18th-century America, Israel Putnam, “Old Put,” played a key role in both the French and Indian War and the American Revolution. In 1758, while serving with Rogers’ Rangers in New York, he barely escaped being burned alive by Mohawk warriors. He later commanded a force of 500 men who were shipwrecked off the coast of Cuba. He reportedly, and famously, gave the command “Don’t fire until you see the whites of their eyes” at the Battle of Bunker Hill. [Read more…] about Israel Putnam: Veteran of the French & Indian, Revolution Wars
In August 1758, during the French and Indian War Lieutenant Colonel John Bradstreet launched a secret military expedition against the French Fort Frontenac on Lake Ontario.
The expedition left from the Oneida Carrying Place, a several mile long portage where boats had to be dragged between the Mohawk River and Wood Creek. It is was located at what is now Rome, Oneida County, NY. [Read more…] about 1758: The Fall of Fort Frontenac
In February 1826 one of America’s seminal works of historical fiction, James Fenimore Cooper‘s The Last of the Mohicans, was first published. Last of the Mohicans has also been adapted to film at least eight times, most recently in 1992 starring Daniel Day-Lewis and Madeleine Stowe. The novel is one of five Cooper wrote that make up the Leatherstocking Tales series, all of them set in Upstate New York between the years 1740 and 1804. [Read more…] about Lake George Battlefield, More Than Just A Setting for Cooper’s ‘Last of the Mohicans’
A new historic marker will be dedicated at Rogers Island, in the Hudson River at Fort Edward. The marker commemorates the history of the site where Major Robert Rogers wrote his Rules of Ranging in 1757. [Read more…] about Historic Marker Being Placed at Rogers Island, Fort Edward
The 1940 early Technicolor Spencer Tracy film Northwest Passage is based on the 1937 best-selling historical novel by the same name, authored by Kenneth Roberts, from a serialized version that had previously run in the Saturday Evening Post. [Read more…] about Northwest Passage: A 1940 Rogers Rangers Film
In keeping with last week’s spruce theme — Sprucelets: An Original Adirondack Medicine — is a look at one of the most common drinks in early Adirondack history: spruce beer. Like the aforementioned Sprucelets, it was believed to be of medicinal value due in part to its vitamin C content. Several evergreens share those same properties, and their use dates back centuries. [Read more…] about Spruce Beer: An Old Adirondack Favorite
Few men contributed as much to the American victory in the Revolutionary War, yet have been as little recognized, as a New Hampshire farmer and lumberman by the name of John Stark. Although he is not well known outside of New Hampshire, a few words he wrote live on there today: Live Free or Die.
A biography by John F. Polhemus and Richard V. Polhemus, Stark, The Life and Wars of John Stark: French & Indian War Ranger, Revolutionary War General (Black Dome Press, 2014) help’s bring this remarkable man’s life into appropriate perspective. [Read more…] about ‘Live Free Or Die’: The Life And Wars Of John Stark
“The Care of the Fortresses of Tyonderoga and Mount Independence being committed to you as commanding Officer…” begins a letter written by General Philip Schyler as he turns over command of Ticonderoga to Colonel Anthony Wayne in the fall of 1776 was recently acquired by Fort Ticonderoga through generous donor support. [Read more…] about Recent Fort Ti Acquisition Reveals New Rev War Details
A piece of historic Fort Edward, site of the Great Carrying Place portage between the Hudson River and Lake George and prominent in the history of the French and Indian War and the American Revolution, is reported to have been brought up while dredging the Hudson River for PCBs according to the Glens Falls Post Star. [Read more…] about Pieces of Fort Edward Revealed During Dredging
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