Tks.
Well a couple of more posts to close this one out and let it scroll on down the boards....
Finally this year I got to pay a call on Jim (Evil Twin)
A brief one and with very little notice (same day actually), the problem being its difficult for me to schedule anything in advance on account of we're talking three different households among teenagers most of whom have summer jobs on visits where I myself rarely know exact dates I'm gonna be there.
...and a bittersweet reflection on an era coming to a close: Four of 'em were already gone elsewhere in college (three of whom are on various scholarships obligating them to military service), and in just a couple of years the rest will aslo be on their way to their various destinations. I will never regret the time and effort spent visiting them as they grew up, but on the bright side, I might actually get to go OTHER places on vacation now
Anyways, taken as a group, the guys at least are ALL wannabe Historians to varying extents, about like their Uncle, and with an unexpected free day to get together and go somewhere a long trip to see some historic destination is always good, even if there ain't much there.
One of the most historically important corridors in NY State is the north-south Lake Champlain/Hudson Valley axis. Lake Champlain drains into the St Lawrence to the north, and of course the Hudson drains into the Atlantic. Without checking I'm gonna WAG a 250 mile north-distance, and back in the days you could float all but 16 miles of it. That sixteen miles being fortified in the F&I War by Fort Anne on the north (Champlain) end, and by Fort Edward in the Hudson River some distance about Albany.
These will be familiar names to those who have watched "Last of the Mohicans" a bunch.
No trace of either fortification remains above ground today beyond the names of adjacent townships. and the fairly flat portage was long ago spanned by a canal around the time the Erie Canal was dug.
Of note is the island adjacent to the Fort Edward, Rogers Island, formerly the home base of Robert Roger's Rangers, for whom he devised his famous code of rangering. Pretty much overgrown today, with a fishing club/restaurant or some such on the south end, and a couple of fairly recent and already neglected monuments to Rogers and his Rangers.
My guess is that these things were erected twenty and thirty years ago when the pastime of recreational reenacting was at its peak, interest in which along a popular interest in history in general has fallen off considerably since that heyday. There was a fine museum adjacent too, but entirely deserted other than ourselves when we visited.
The town of Fort Edward does contain three famous graves, all relocated at least once.
Major Duncan Campbell, of the 42nd Regiment of Foot, mortally wounded before the walls of Fort Carillon (AKA Ft. Ticongeroga}, July 3rd, 1758.
Now here's a guy who could have told some stories. In 1758 the future Black Watch really was composed of non-English speaking tribal Scottish Highlands, and Cambell was born into the middle of that setting, in Scotland, in 1703.
Even so, he might be mostly forgotten today except that Robert Louis Stevenson wrote a short story about Major Campbell and his premonition of death, one hundred thirty years after the fact.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duncan_Campbell_(British_Army_officer)
The exact provenance of Sarah Fraser Gordon Cambell McNiel is less certain. Her first husband was likely an Uncle to Duncan Campbell, and more to the point she seems to have been a cousin of British General Simon Fraser and of Jane McCrea, both of who would die during the Revolutionary War in connection to Burgoyne's 1777 Saratoga Campaign.
When Burgoyne invaded with the intent to take Albany and link up with Howe in New York City he brung with his 7,000 odd Hessian and British troops a pack of Indians, of various tribes but especially from the far interior. Burgoyne, badly misjudging the character of your average American at that time, publically threatened to unleash these Indian allies upon the White settlements if the Americans did not come to terms.
It backfired, allowing the American press to demonize Burgoyne as barbaric. It also PO'd a lot of fence-sitters enough to take down the flintlock over the fireplace and go gunning for redcoats. Didn't help any that Burgoyne's Indians included many of the then-remote Ottawa, notoriously unreconstructed cannibals.
Worse for Burgoyne, the Indians could not readily distinguish between Tory and Patriot, and likely there was a considerable language barrier between them and the British officers anyway.
Young Jane, jest seventeen and reportedly the fianc� of an American Tory Officer, and her cousin Sarah were captured together by raiding Indians. Sarah was returned to the British and a reward of ransom paid. Unfortunately for Jane a dispute of some kind broke out between her captors, settled by one Indian (Huron or Ottawa dependent upon source) who solved the argument by bashing her Jane's head in and salvaging the scalp (reportedly distinctive because of her log red hair).
The tragic incident had enormous repercussions on both sides; further enraging the Americans and giving a field day to their press, as well as appalling the British, especially Burgoyne, who promptly dismissed most of his Indians, thereby being left without eyes and ears going into the Battle of Saratoga a few weeks later.
Birdwatcher