This might go down as my favorite year of reading. I made it a goal to read more the last two years, and the momentum from 2018 definitely carried over into 2019. Reading inspired my travel to new places and offered side trips of meaning in places I’ve been many times before. It kicked me…
I was thinking about Jeffrey Amherst yesterday. Or rather, Amherst was thrust upon me as I walked through the National Portrait Gallery in London and his face jumped out at me in three paintings. Two were “face in the crowd” works that ensured you knew that yes, HE was there, so was that other HE……
During the French and Indian War the British looked at Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island and saw a threat. The Acadians, original settlers to this area from France, had been allowed to remain for 40 years after France had conceded this territory after the capture of Port Royal in 1713. But the…
The northeast United States is dotted with old forts that once played a critical role in our history. Four of the most famous during the French and Indian War and the Revolutionary War were Fort Duquesne, Fort William Henry, Fort Niagara and Fort Stanwix. They were famous because they each occupied a critical point…
A couple of weeks ago I stopped at Rogers Island Visitor Center in Fort Edward, New York. I knew the place wasn’t open but I wanted to at least stop for a moment, look around and give a nod to the legacy of Robert Rogers, who used this island as a launching place for much…
During the French and Indian War the pristine Lake George saw some horrific battles for control of the lake. The British and French continued attempts to push each other out of the region with force. The Battle of Lake George in 1755, the siege on Fort William Henry in 1757, the Battle on Snowshoes in…
When you stand along the shore of Lake George and look to the northeast on a quiet April day as I did recently, you’re struck by how beautiful the lake is. Lake George still looks pristine, surrounded by conservation land and state parks. The Adirondacks rise up in the distance. Lake George, like the finger…
There’s an almost unbroken stretch of navigable water from New York City up the Hudson to Lake George to Lake Champlain to the St. Lawrence Seaway, which in turn leads back to the Atlantic Ocean or deep into the interior of North America to the Great Lakes. The “almost” part is a couple of stretches…
Robert Rogers Robert Rogers was born in Methuen, Massachusetts – twenty minutes from where I currently live. His family moved to what was then the wilderness of Dunbarton, New Hampshire a few years later. Rogers is famous for leading a group of colonists in the French and Indian War. There are some who will point…