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Orwell Vt.

Discover the Hidden History All Around You

You wouldn’t want to see one of New England’s historic buildings, landscapes or icons without knowing about its hidden past, would you?

New England has plenty of landmarks with obvious history, from taverns and meetinghouses to mill yards and monuments. But New England is even more drenched in history than you might imagine.

That road you take to work might have once been trod by French soldiers during the Revolutionary War. A child might have gone to the gallows by that statue you just passed. A world-famous architect, now forgotten, might have designed that pretty church you saw.

The New England Historical Society has regularly posted a feature listing six such noteworthy items, hidden or otherwise. Each New England state gets one. The Six Oldest Houses. Six Mysterious Stone Structures. Six Landmark Signs. Six Irish Landmarks. You get the picture.

New England’s Hidden Past

Now, New England Historical Society authors Dan and Leslie Landrigan have compiled 60 lists of six landmarks into a book called, New England’s Hidden Past: 360 Overlooked, Underappreciated, and Misunderstood Landmarks. If you travel anywhere in New England, this would be a handy book to have around. Looking for a scenic drive for some leaf-peeping in fall? You could take an old Indian trail. Fascinated by the Underground Railroad? Here are six stops.

Trying to find one of each hidden landmark in each New England state can be tricky, especially when Vermont and Rhode Island are so small. But a list of revolutionary forts takes you to the top of Mount Independence in Orwell, Vt., for one of the largest, least disturbed revolutionary sites in America. A list of places where gallows once stood takes you to the spot on a Rhode Island sidewalk where 26 pirates met their maker – all in one day.

New England’s Hidden Past takes readers to the grave sites of revolutionary heroines, Loyalist houses, stagecoach stops, historic department stores, ghost towns and Little Italys. Anyone who loves New England history will love this book.

Order it here and you’ll help local bookstores and the New England Historical Society.

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Fighting for Independence During a Smallpox Epidemic: Lake Champlain in 1776

Throughout the first six months of 1776, the soldiers of the American Northern Army in Canada fought against two deadly enemies: smallpox and the British military. The British turned out to be the less lethal of the two.

Mount Independence and Fort Ticonderoga. Photo courtesy of the author.

Development of a vaccine has now largely eradicated the highly contagious smallpox virus. But the disease could be so virulent it was known as the ‘speckled monster.’ Symptoms began with vomiting and high fever, followed a few days later by pustules in the mouth and on the tongue before spreading across the body. Recovery could take up to three weeks. Once infected, a person had about a one in three chance of dying.

The American army did not beat those odds.

The Invasion of Canada

In September 1775, the Continental Congress sent two expeditions to invade Quebec. One initially consisted of 2,000 men commanded by Brig. Gen. Richard Montgomery. They sailed up Lake Champlain toward Montreal, where they captured Fort St. John. Then they marched to Quebec, where they joined the second expedition led by Col. Benedict Arnold.

Arnold’s forces had dwindled to 600 men from the 1,100 that started out in Cambridge, Mass. It had taken months to reach Quebec through the Maine wilderness, and a third of Arnold’s men turned back during the grueling trek.

Map of the invasion of Canada.

Quebec

Montgomery’s forces joined Arnold’s in Quebec in early December. They launched an attack on the British fort in a howling snowstorm on New Year’s Eve – a disastrous mistake. Montgomery died in the battle, as did 50 men. Another 34 were wounded and 431 captured. The British lost only five killed and 14 wounded.

The Death of General Montgomery in the Attack on Quebec, Dec. 31, 1775, by John Trumbull

Smallpox had already begun to kill soldiers. The remaining forces under Arnold besieged the city for the next few months as the smallpox spread.

When reinforcements bolstered the British in May, the Northern Army began a disordered retreat. The army moved west from Quebec City toward Fort Ticonderoga, hindered by a staggering number of soldiers debilitated by smallpox.

Smallpox Misery

Dr. Lewis Beebe of Sheffield, Mass., arrived in Quebec in May. He kept a journal about his time in the army. In his entries we can see firsthand the misery caused by the epidemic. From Chambly, outside of Montreal, he wrote on May 26, “If ever I had a compassionate feeling for my fellow creatures… I think it was this day, to see Large barns filled with men in the very heighth of the small pox and not the least thing, to make them comfortable…”

Fort Chambly today. Photo courtesy of the author.

On June 17, as the army moved south toward Lake Champlain, Beebe wrote from Isle aux Noix:

Scarcely a tent upon this Isle but what contains one or more in distress and continually groaning, & calling for relief, but in vain! Requests of this Nature are as little regarded, as the singing of Crickets in a Summers evening. The most shocking of all Spectacles was to see a large barn Crowded full of men with this disorder… one nay two had large maggots, an inch long, Crawl out of their ears, were on almost every part of the body. No mortal will ever believe what these suffered unless they were eye witnessess.

Inoculation

Smallpox had no cure. But those who survived an infection would be immune. This led to soldiers seeking inoculation — intentional infection through the blood. This involved making an incision in the skin and applying pox to the wound. Those who were inoculated usually came down with a milder — though still harrowing — case of the disease with a much lower mortality rate. When recovered, those soldiers would have an immunity to future infections.

But inoculation violated regulations. Officers feared that inoculated soldiers would spread the disease to their comrades. If the soldiers all inoculated at one time, they would be too weak to defend against the enemy.

Nevertheless soldiers were surreptitiously inoculated. In May of 1776, Josiah Sabin served with the Green Mountain Boys at Quebec. Later in life Sabin recalled inoculating himself with smallpox. Then he also inoculated some of his comrades, blindfolded so as not to know who administered the inoculation. Nevertheless, Sabin was found out and only saved from severe punishment by the intervention of his commanding officer, Seth Warner.

Soldiering On

Finally, Benedict Arnold, in temporary command, issued an order allowing for inoculation. That lasted one day. Then Gen. John Thomas arrived, sent by Congress to take command of the army in Canada. He threatened execution for anyone performing or receiving inoculation. Thomas himself died of the disease in early June and the surreptitious inoculations went on.

Benedict Arnold

Later that summer, George Washington approved inoculation for the Continental Army.

Colonel Jeduthan Baldwin, an army engineer from North Brookfield, Mass., took inoculation on May 17, 1776. He described the progress of the disease in his journal. In six days he began to suffer symptoms including headache and pox. Over the next three weeks he suffered more headaches, sore throat, chills and, of course, painful pustules on his skin. But Baldwin continued to do his job the best he could, helping the retreat.

Crown Point

The army moved south on Lake Champlain to Crown Point and the large, damaged fort built by the British following the French and Indian War. Beebe arrived on the 26th of June. “The Regiment is in a most deplorable Situation,” he recorded in his journal, “between 4 & 500 now in the height of the small pox. Death is now become a daily visitant to the Camps…”

Crown Point today. Photo courtesy of the author.

Three days after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, John Adams wrote a letter to Abigail in which he reported on affairs in the north. “Our Army at Crown Point is an Object of Wretchedness, enough to fill a humane Mind, with Horror,” he wrote. “Disgraced, defeated, discontented, dispirited, diseased, naked, undisciplined, eaten up with Vermin—no Cloaths, Beds, Blanketts, no Medicines, no Victuals, but Salt Pork and flour.”

This army was charged with defending the newly minted United States of America from the 8,000 fresh British troops preparing to move south on Lake Champlain. The Americans had one advantage. The previous year, after capturing Fort Ticonderoga, they had also captured some gun boats. If the British tried to move south on the lake, the mini American navy could blow their troop ships to smithereens. Before the invasion could continue, the British needed to build their own war ships. This gave the Americans time to heal and prepare.

Philip Schuyler

From his headquarters in Albany, Maj. Gen. Philip Schuyler had command of the entire Northern Department, including this ravaged army. In early July he traveled to Crown Point to get a firsthand look at conditions there. With the consent of his general officers, Schuyler drew up a plan to handle the situation.

Philip Schuyler

First they needed to separate the fit soldiers from the ill, otherwise reinforcements would refuse to mingle with the infected. The sick were transported to Fort George at the southern end of Lake George.

Next Schuyler and his officers decided it would be a mistake to try to defend Crown Point. They did not have a large enough force to cover the long, narrow peninsula. It would be too easy for the British to sail cannon around the deep bay to the west and get the Americans in a crossfire. And it would be much more difficult to bring supplies and reinforcements.

But where to make a stand?

On July 12th, Schuyler answered that question in a letter to George Washington. “I am just returned from Crown point,” he wrote,

to which place I accompanied General Gates — On our Way to that place we stop’d at Tyconderoga and left Colonel Trumbull to take a View of the Grounds opposite to it and on the East Side of Lake Champlain…

Trumbull returned with a favorable report, wrote Schuyler, and on July 9 he and his general officers checked out the ground. They found it, “so remarkably strong as to require little Labour to make it tenable against a vast Superiority of Force, and fully to answer the purpose of preventing the Enemy from penetrating into the Country to the South of it.”

Mount Independence

The strong ground Schuyler referred to would soon be named Mount Independence, a 300-plus acre peninsula projecting northward from the Vermont shore. As a keystone to the defenses that included Fort Ticonderoga, the Mount would in a few short weeks buzz with activity as the Americans prepared to meet the British head on.

View of Mount Independence by By Zeph77 – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0.

Meanwhile, the steps taken by Schuyler paid off. The smallpox epidemic waned. By the end of August, Gen. Horatio Gates — in command of the Lake Champlain forces — could report to George Washington that the smallpox “is now perfectly removed from the Army.”

Dr. Beebe returned home at the end of July to recuperate from dysentery. He traveled north again at the end of August, intent on rejoining his regiment. he passed by Fort George, the smallpox hospital set up by Schuyler in early July.

“Visited the hospital,” he recorded on the 28th. [He] “found the number of sick to be about 700, viewed the burying place counted upwards of 300 graves… the appearance of which was melancholy indeed, to see such desolation made in our army.”

Bibliography

Cubbison, D. R. (2010). The American Northern Theater Army in 1776. McFarland.

Dann, J. C. (1999). The Revolution Remembered. University of Chicago Press.

Fenn, E. A. (2002). Pox Americana. Macmillan.

Frederic R. Kirkland, ed. “Journal of a Physician on the Expedition Against Canada.” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography. (Volume LIX, Number 4). October 1935.

Wickman, Donald. (2017) Strong Ground: Mount Independence and the American Revolution, Mount Independence Coalition.

Zeoli, Stephen. (2015) Mount Independence: The Enduring Legacy of a Unique Historic Place, 3rd Edition. Self published.

Stephen Zeoli spent two summers in his younger days as caretaker at Mount Independence State Historic Site in Orwell, Vt. Today, Steve is the president of the Mount Independence Coalition, the friends group working with the Vermont Division for Historic Preservation to interpret the historic site. He is also the author of the self-published book Mount Independence: The Enduring Legacy of a Unique Historic Place.

This story last updated in 2022.

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Six Revolutionary Forts

Scattered throughout New England are dozens of revolutionary forts. Some, like Fort Halifax in Maine, date to the French and Indian wars. Others, like Fort Washington in Massachusetts, rose during the American Revolution.

Revolutionary forts range from the extensive remains of Mount Independence in Vermont to mere traces of earthworks in Rhode Island. All are sited along waterways and harbors, making them pleasant summer destinations today.

Here are six revolutionary forts, one for each state. If you know of another revolutionary fort worth visiting, please mention it in the comments section.

Black Rock Fort

Black Rock Fort, one of the revolutionary forts captured by the British.

In early 1776, Connecticut built a three-gun log fort and blockhouse on a rocky point in New Haven Harbor. Called Black Rock Fort, it stood on the site of an old fort built around 1657.

In 1779, British general William Tryon and 2,600 troops ravaged New Haven, Fairfield and Norwalk in Connecticut. They captured Black Rock Fort after its 19 defenders ran out of ammunition. Then, when the British forces withdrew, they burned the fort’s barracks. They’d already torched manor houses, barns, ships and supply houses.

In 1807, the abandoned fort was rebuilt and named after Connecticut hero Nathan Hale. Fort Nathan Hale II was built during the Civil War, but saw no action. Named a historic site in 1921, it grew neglected and overgrown after World War II.

But then came the nation’s bicentennial and the reconstruction of Black Rock Fort and Fort Nathan Hale. Today they belong to Fort Hale Park, and they include a drawbridge, moat, ramparts, earthworks, powder magazines and bunker.

Fort Nathan Hale Park has a sandy beach, picnic tables and spectacular views of the harbor.

Connecticut is also home to Fort Griswold in Groton and Fort Trumbull in New London.

Fort Nathan Hale Park and Black Rock Park, 36 Woodward Ave., New Haven, Conn.

Fort Halifax

Benedict Arnold and his troops occupied this abandoned fort on the way to Canada.

At the outset of the French and Indian War, Maj. Gen. John Winslow built Fort Halifax where the Sebasticook River flows into the Kennebec. Winslow’s great-grandfather, Edward Winslow, came to Plimoth Plantation on the Mayflower.

The British built Fort Halifax as a series of fortifications along the rivers to prevent the French and Indians from attacking English settlements. (Other significant pre-revolutionary forts from that era: Fort Pownall in Stockton Springs, Maine, and Fort Frederick in Saint John, New Brunswick.)

Like so many revolutionary forts, the American rebels took over Fort Halifax from the British. They decommissioned it, but then Benedict Arnold used it as a way station for his troops on his failed expedition to Quebec.

revolutionary forts-inside-halifax-blockhouse

Inside the blockhouse at Fort Halifax.

A single blockhouse survives, the oldest blockhouse in the United States. The fort was gradually dismantled to build the Town of Winslow, Maine, which grew up around it. The townspeople used it as a boathouse, a storehouse, a cow barn and a chicken coop.

In 1987, the Kennebec River flooded and washed the blockhouse downriver. Searchers found 22 original pine timbers, and they were used to rebuild the blockhouse. Hundreds of people came to the rededication ceremony in 1988.

Today Fort Halifax belongs to a municipal park, open to visitors in the summer.

70-98 Bay St., Winslow, Maine

Fort Washington

Washington fortified here.

Fort Washington Park in Cambridge, Mass., contains the remains of the only surviving fortification built by Gen. George Washington during the Siege of Boston. It’s also the oldest surviving fortification from the American Revolution.

Diagram of Washington’s battery, courtesy Library of Congress.

In November 1775, Washington wrote to Joseph Reed, “I have caused two three gun half moon batteries to be thrown up for occasional use.” About 50 or 60 men could find protection behind the earthworks.

Washington had quickly realized his soldiers needed training to fend off the professional British forces. He ordered his men to build the small batteries as a way of training them to build larger fortifications. They later built a battery at Dorchester Heights in Boston, fortified them with captured cannons and forced the British to evacuate.

After the war, seven people held the property in common. They deeded it to the City of Cambridge in 1857 on the condition that it ‘shall forever remain open for light, air, and adornment.’ Today the fort belongs to a park, and it includes three cannon and grassy embankments.

95 Waverly St., Cambridge, Mass.

Fort Constitution

Fort Constitution saw action just before the Revolution.

Before 1632, the British built a stone fort, then called the Castle, in New Castle, N.H. It stood at the mouth of the Piscataqua River. The Castle protected Portsmouth Harbor and stored the colony’s munitions. Then the colonists renamed it Fort William and Mary around 1692.

In 1774, a rumor spread in Boston that the redcoats were on their way to seize powder from Fort William and Mary. Only a handful of troops manned the fort, and they reported to the royal governor, John Wentworth.

Paul Revere then rode 60 miles to Portsmouth in a less-famous ride to warn the patriots of New Hampshire.

Four hundred men mustered to attack the fort, guarded by six troops. They broke open the powder house and captured the British soldiers. They also took 100 barrels of gunpowder later used in the Siege of Boston.

Fort William and Mary was the only manned fort in New Hampshire during the American Revolution, but saw no action.

When it was rebuilt in 1808, it was renamed Fort Constitution. It’s the ruins of the 1808 fort that are still in evidence at the state historic site, open year-round. Fort Constitution is a great spot for picnics, though it is unstaffed and not pet friendly.

During the Revolutionary War, Fort No. 4 in Charlestown no longer existed, but General John Stark gathered New Hampshire militia at its site en route to the Battle of Bennington in 1777.

25 Wentworth Road, Off NH Route 1B at US Coast Guard Station, New Castle, N.H.

Fort Conanicut

Edward Bannister painted this landscape of Fort Conanicut.

Fort Conanicut, first built as Dumpling Rock Battery in 1776 near Jamestown, R.I., had eight 18-pound guns.

The British captured the battery in late 1776 after they landed at Newport. They then expanded it, building Beaver Tail Fort, Beaver Head Fort and Fort Conanicut. As the French drew near, the British spiked the guns and destroyed the battery. Then they retreated to Newport.

The French occupied Fort Conanicut until 1778, when the British fleet appeared. A hurricane damaged both fleets and the French abandoned the fort. They didn’t return until 1780, but then left for Yorktown in 1781.

In 1790, a tower was built on the site and called Fort Dumpling. The military abandoned the fort in 1824 and then dynamited it in 1898 to make way for Fort Wetherill. Rhode Island now runs the site as a state park.

Some remains of the earthworks still exist, and an interpretive sign explains the fort’s history. The park sits atop 100-foot granite cliffs, a favorite spot for viewing Tall Ship events and the America’s Cup races.

Fort Wetherill State Park, Fort Wetherill Road
Jamestown, R.I.

Mount Independence

One of the most extensive of the revolutionary forts, Mount Independence.

Mount Independence in Orwell, Vt., is one of the largest and least disturbed Revolutionary sites in America. After the abandonment of the fort, livestock grazed on land that held unmarked soldiers’ graves.

Fort Ticonderoga stands across from it on the other side of Lake Champlain.

Rebel soldiers built the fort on a mountaintop to prevent the British from invading from Canada. They began building in July 1776, a week after the return of the disastrous Arnold Expedition to Canada. They called it East Point or Rattlesnake Hill until July 28, 1776. On that day Col. Arthur St. Clair read the Declaration of Independence to the soldiers and then renamed the fort Independence.

A year later, the Americans retreated. British and German then occupied the fort until November 1777.

Today Mount Independence has a museum and six miles of hiking trails. The museum includes exhibits about the fort and artifacts such as timbers, a cannon and a powder horn.

Hiking trails pass the remnants of blockhouses, soldiers’ huts and a general hospital. Trails lead to the remains of the fort, the Great Battery and the Horseshoe Battery. Re-enactors also stage encampments and the Seth Warner Mount Independence Fife and Drum Corps performs at civic events.

6 miles west of State Route 22A, Orwell, Vt.

Images: Black Rock Fort by 2112guy – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3319905. Fort Halifax, blockhouse interior By Magicpiano – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=28017965. Mount Independence By Zeph77 – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=27483591. Revolutionary Re-enactors, By Zeph77 – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=27521852. Fort Washington By Daderot – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5275220. Fort Conanicut By Swampyank at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20434654.

This story about revolutionary forts was updated in 2021.

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