Fort Ticonderoga: A Short History

by Stephen H. P. Pell

The engineer who laid out the Fort, de Lotbiniere, followed the plans and specifications of the great French engineer, Vauban. When the work of restoration was started Mr. Pell obtained from France the original manuscript of Vauban’s “Traite des Fortifications.” The book is a fascinating leather bound folio containing many illuminated illustrations of bastions, demilunes, moats, and all paraphernalia of eighteenth century fortifications. This book is one of the most priceless possessions of the Fort library today.

The Fort itself is about 530 feet in diameter from point to point as seen on the various plans. The wall on the north is comparatively low, the fort on this side being approached by a glacis, but on the west could be approached from the level along a grassy slope which ran to the top of a wall at the Fort about 4 feet and 6 inches high, which formed a counterscarp. To the south, a wall guarded the entrance to Lake George and was of a very considerable height, and below this existed the French Village. The French Village of traders and settlers had been behind a stockaded wall, protected by the guns of the Fort. The houses were built on either side of a center walk, and consisted of small stone dwellings, sutler’s stores, warehouses and a blacksmith shop. On the east side a wall approached very close to the bastions and it was from about this point a wide covered way (which was never completed) extended through the rock to the Grenadiers’ Battery, an outlying fort located at the extreme end of the promontory.

The Place d’Armes in the center of the fort was surrounded on three sides by barracks and on the fourth or north side by a bomb-proof. The bomb proof was of arched masonry construction where the garrison kept stores that would be damaged by weather.

Of the barracks, the most important was that located towards the west, and it was here that Ethan Allen found Captain Delaplace at the time of the capture. The ground floor of this building was divided up into a mess room with a kitchen at one end and a scullery at the other. The oven in the scullery when excavated was found to be in perfect condition, the iron doors and dampers still being in their original position.

Entrance To Place D’Armes

In the second story a number of rooms existed which could be approached by the exterior wooden staircase, and these are now used as a library and office. The outer sides of the various barracks were protected by the curtain walls and the walk behind these was generally at a level of about 8 feet above the Place d’Armes.

The drinking water for the barracks could be obtained in the usual way from a military well located about one hundred yards to the north of the fort, but under the northwest bastion and under the south barracks are two large stone cisterns about 18 feet deep to which all the rain that fell upon the roofs of the buildings was directed by means of underground drains. The one under the bastion was found to be in perfect condition with its pump and plunger as good as when last used.

The accumulation of a century had to be excavated from between the walls of the various buildings. The courtyard of the fort was between six and seven feet below and in the west barracks, particularly under the bastions, the excavation necessary was over 16 feet to get down to the original surface. Everything that was found during the restoration period was kept for the museum, and the workmen in handling this showed particular interest, and all of the time this work of excavating continued most interesting finds were made, such as pottery, firearms, pieces of hardware and buttons. So many of the numbered buttons have been found that it is possible to trace by them the name of each of the regiments that was stationed at the Fort.

Some of these buttons belong to regiments of which no other account has been found of their residence here, such as the Twenty-first, and in this case it is inferred that they belonged to British prisoners of war who were brought down from St. Johns. One of the most interesting relics was a piece of a punch bowl of white china decorated in blue, and across the bottom of which is inscribed, “Success to General Amherst.” This in all probability must have been a presentation piece made either before the General left England or at some point on his way to take up his command at the Fort, and left behind when he departed. This has come down to us in as good condition as it was in the day it was made.