Address of Acceptance of Tablet by James Austin Holden, State Historian and Treasurer, New York State Historical Association
The tablet was formally accepted for the New York State Historical Association by State Historian James A. Holden of Glens Falls, who is ex-officio a member of the committee in charge of the Crown Point Reservation, as well as Treasurer of the New York State Historical Association. He spoke briefly as follows:
Your Excellency, Tercentenary Commissioners, Representatives of New York and of Vermont, of France, of Patriotic and Historical Societies, Ladies and Gentlemen: It is with great pleasure that I accept on behalf of the New York Historical Association, the official custodians of the Crown Point Reservation, this beautiful and distinctive tablet which has just been presented by the Society of Colonial Wars to the State of New York, through you, its Governor.
It is especially gratifying to the Association to receive it from your hands, for it is to you, and your broad and patriotic conception of the duties of the chief executive of the State, that our hearty thanks are due for the generous and welcome local appropriations which you lately have approved, making so largely for the preservation, the maintenance and popularity of the reservation.
On this torrid July day whose sun’s rays reflected from these crumbling walls are full as deadly as any of the bullets which blazed forth at them in days of old, my words of acceptance must be brief indeed.
This expressive addition, then, to these historic walls, whose story is rife with actions of emprise and derring-do, around which still hover the historic spirits of the olden wars, connected with which are the inspiring deeds of the knightly souls of Montcalm and Amherst, of Warner and Burgoyne, yes, even of Arnold the patriot, not yet the traitor, full of the memories of the now shadowy hosts of white coated Bourbons, the red attired British, and the buff and blue covered Revolutionists, we accept and assure your Excellency that it shall be our earnest endeavor to prove worthy in every way of the confidence reposed in us in making this Association the State’s representative for this reservation.
On behalf of the Association I now turn over to the Secretary of the Association the formal care of the tablet, thanking once more your Excellency and all who have been concerned in the presentation of this memorial, for giving to the Association this further opportunity to prove its historical usefulness, and to justify its being, and for providing this occasion to exemplify practically the purposes for which it was founded.
Tablet Unveiled at Fort Amherst, July 5, 1912