Forsaken Graves

Volume 13 • Number 3 WINTER 2014 $4.95 Ticonderoga in Ruins ALSO INSIDE: Controversy in the Catskills XX-Rated Albany Freedom to Smuggle Women of Status 10 Forsaken Graves Hudson River School artist n America’s earliest cook, the ditches, now grass of Lake Champlain in upstate Russell Smith’s painting years, emotion became grown, and forsaken graves!! New York, was the site of shows the ruins of Fort the model for sentimen- All, every thing makes this several battles and much Ticonderoga in 1848. tal responses to both spot teem with melancholy bloodshed over the course of landscape and history, reflections.” May belonged to two great American wars. In Iparticularly at old battlefields. an emerging tourist class that 1758, during the French and Abigail May wrote during an sought out New York State’s Indian War, a massive British 1800 visit to Fort Ticonderoga: historic sites; her observations and provincial army moved “I wanted to know all, every provided one of the first reflec- against the fort in hopes of particular, of a spot that tions on Ticonderoga’s ruins. expelling the French from interested my feelings so Quebec. With his army out- much…the heaps of stones on Bloody History numbering the French garrison which the soldiers used to The fort, near the south end four to one, British General NEW YORK archives • WINTER 2014 11 Forsaken GravesBY THOMAS A. CHAMBERS Battlefield tourism at the turn of the nineteenth century was based not on the direct appeal of history, but on constructing romantic memories of a site. Inaccessible Fort Ticonderoga fit the bill: ruins surrounded by spectacular scenery, COLLECTION OF THE FORT TICONDEROGA MUSEUM and an emotional “hit” to engage tourists’ sense of place. James Abercromby ordered a body and very mortly wound- Canada, leaving the roughly must have been finished in frontal assault on outlying ed.” General Jeffery Amherst 1,000 men garrisoned there the dark...”, an “ancient French entrenchments before took the fort the next year to suffer from extreme cold, Golgotha or place of skulls— advancing his artillery, but his with little bloodshed. scant provisions, disease, and they are so plenty here that haste resulted in nearly 2,000 Ticonderoga also played a boredom. Even worse, the our people for want of other casualties, including over 300 part in the Revolutionary War. soldiers’ hastily built log huts vessels drink out of them provincials. It was, recalled a In the spring of 1775, patriots stood near the 1758 battle- whilst the soldiers make tent veteran, a “sorefull Si[gh]t to Ethan Allen and Benedict field, which contained the pins out of the shin and thigh behold. The Ded men and Arnold seized the old French unburied remains of six hun- bones of Abercrumbies men.” wounded Lay on the ground fort in an early-morning dred Anglo-American dead. In 1777, oncoming British having Som of them thir legs surprise attack. Allen was Colonel Anthony Wayne forces prompted an American their arms and other Lims captured that winter during called it “the last part of evacuation of the fort, but broken, others shot threw the an ill-advised invasion of God’s work, something that after the British were defeated www.nysarchivestrust.org 12 Abigail May began to visit feature, the French lines, had Ticonderoga in larger numbers. been hastily carved from the The key sites of the Revolution- forest and erected virtually ary War’s 1777 northern overnight from logs and earth campaign—the lower Hudson in 1758, but now only over- NEW YORK STATE LIBRARY River forts, Saratoga, grown earthen mounds and Ticonderoga—lay along the the crumbling walls of the stone increasingly popular Northern barracks remained. Visitors Tour, and a new genre of were allowed to wander guidebooks appeared that about, poking their heads into offered details on attractions, the fort’s remaining rooms and prices, lodging, and the forcing open locked doors; This engraving from 1818 shows at Saratoga in the fall they historical background of sites, one visitor in 1800 scrambled Ticonderoga in ruins. abandoned Ticonderoga. although tourists often com- over walls and through the Congress ordered the fortifi- mented on the challenges of guard room, bakery, gunpow- cations demolished, but after travel in an age of poor roads der room, and underground the Revolution Ticonderoga and improvised accommoda- chambers, where she found fell into disrepair, a battlefield tions. By the 1820s, the “some human bones in one that embodied vivid, unpleas- standard tour route allowed of the cells.” Ticonderoga’s ant memories for Americans travelers to sail up the “mossy ruins” and green Although Ticonderoga with its bleached bones and Hudson River from New York hillsides sloping down to the and its land had crumbling ruins. George City, gaze at the Catskill lake shore “were still and Washington, who spent many Mountains, visit Saratoga motionless as death.” Only become the property of the Revolution’s early years Springs and Lake George, “an old one Story, long stone worrying about Ticonderoga, head west along the newly house” provided rustic of the State of New made no comments about it opened Erie Canal to gawk in accommodations for visitors. York in 1785, the site during his July 1783 visit; a wonder at Niagara Falls, and By 1819, the once “vener- European traveling with return via Lake Ontario and able Ticonderoga” served as remained too physically Washington’s party noted only the St. Lawrence River. “a pasture for cattle,” and that they “went ashore” to see To reach the dilapidated attempts to develop the site remote to attract it. Thomas Jefferson and James ruins of Fort Ticonderoga, into a tourist destination fell visitors, and American Madison delighted in “the intrepid tourists took a carriage short of success. Visitor botanical objects which con- from Saratoga Springs north accommodations improved culture seemed to tinually presented themselves,” twenty miles, then sailed or slightly when wealthy New rather than in the “scenes of rowed thirty-two miles north York merchant William Ferris show little interest in blood” they passed during a on Lake George, then por- Pell purchased the fort’s ruins battlefields. 1791 trip. Although Ticonder- taged three miles around the from Union and Columbia oga and its land had become rapids that flowed into Lake Colleges in 1820 (to which the property of the State of Champlain. But all that they New York State had donated New York in 1785, the site finally encountered of the Ticonderoga in 1803). Meaning remained too physically remote fort’s original walls was a to construct a rural estate to attract visitors, and American stone base topped with logs accented with historic ruins, culture seemed to show little and backfilled with earth and he built a sizeable Greek Revival interest in battlefields. rubble. According to one house and planted ornamental tourist, a quick carriage ride gardens. By 1826, guidebooks “Mossy Ruins” past the ruins in 1804 revealed praised Pell’s “fine inn” at That view of history began to only “[t]wo Old bastions and Ticonderoga, which neverthe- change during the early nine- a pile of stone chimneys...” less housed no more than a teenth century, as tourists like The fort’s most famous few dozen guests at a time. NEW YORK archives • WINTER 2014 13 COLLECTION OF THE FORT TICONDEROGA MUSEUM Making History Personal become the Erie Canal, mused that instead of studying history, Thomas Cole’s painting, Gelyna: As tourism emerged as an about “how many hundred tourists preferred “reading A View Near Ticonderoga, American pastime, however, poor dogs have bit the dust in romances, as more amusing, ca. 1826, shows an emotional scene: an American officer Ticonderoga seemed to pos- attacking and defending this and at least as true.” rushes to the aid of a fellow sess what Americans wanted fortress.” He “could not Indeed, artist Thomas officer wounded at Ticonderoga contemplate this pile of ruins, Cole, considered the founder most: scenery combined with during the Seven Years’ War. history. “There are few sites without appreciating the most of the Hudson River School of in our country,” travel writer painful recollections, that landscape painting, based one Theodore Dwight noted, “that several of the companions of of his paintings, Gelyna: A can be compared with this for my youth...here lie moulder- View Near Ticonderoga (1826), a combination of natural and ing in the dirt.” Constructing on a romantic short story moral interest.” Battlefield memory involved direct per- itself based in fact, “Gelyna, a ruins offered stimuli for sonal interaction with place, Tale of Albany and Ticonder- musings about valor and war- which meant more than the oga” by Gulian Crommelin fare and “the great important details of a particular battle. Verplanck. Cole’s painting results arising from them,” Ideology or the causes of war seemed to embody the kind yet despite reminders that a remained secondary in these of romantic interactions with visit to Ticonderoga “will highly personal and very pain- place that tourists desired. A amply reward the patriotic ful reminiscences, emblematic beautiful heiress, Gelyna tourist who loves to visit the of an age when “a great Vandyke, fell in love with places consecrated by the many Americans wished to Major Edward Rutledge, blood of his fathers,” most carry little or nothing of the whose Royal American regi- battlefield tourists eschewed past with them.” Writer and ment marched on Ticonderoga these more formal histories in politician James Kirke Paulding during the disastrous 1758

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