Category: History

Recently I visited once again Massachusetts, New Hampshire and New York. Although this was a family trip, I added a few extra stops to see and learn more about history.

Dunbarton is a small town of a few thousand inhabitants. It’s a bit off the main roads so I doubt too many tourists visit it even if it has housed some great leaders of the past centuries: Major Robert Rogers lived there for many years and General John Stark – one of the great leaders of the American Revolution – had a sawmill.

You can almost read “Robert Rogers Rd” on the street sign!

The statue of Caleb Stark, son of John Stark. I assume this was the town center!

I always love to visit old cemeteries to see the tombstones of the people – and who knows, I might find “someone famous”… (no luck this time)

Later, we moved on to New York and the Catskills mountains. On the way, as we traveled through the Berkshires, I insisted on stopping by at Stockbridge, Massachusetts, one of the original homes of the Stockbridge Mohicans. I knew beforehand the museum closed for the season just a few days earlier, so had to look for other quick places to visit. I was with the family and they don’t always appreciate history the way I do.

It was a great surprise to us to come to a small town full of tourists! Perhaps the greatest attraction is the Norman Rockwell Museum which to me sounds like a billionaire family making rockets or something (yes, I googled him). The main street was jampacked with pensioners, buses, cars, etc. I am not a fan of crowds, thus our visit became time-restricted.

In our ~45 min stop I could really only find 39 Main Street, the place where the Stockbridge chief Jacob Naunauphtaunk lived back in the 1750s (check out the embedded StoryMap or the PDF!). This house was built 1845, so it’s not original to me, but it’s almost two centuries old anyway!

My summer travels took me to the Åland Island and more specifically, Kastelholm – the former local administrative base of the Swedish Kingdom in medieval times and the early modern era. This is a place where people such as the King Gustav Vasa visited. Finland does not have many castles and this is one of the few.

The construction started in the late 1300s and it was damaged, rebuilt, and expanded through the centuries until falling out of use around late 18th Century.

Today, it is a beautifully restored historical site with surprising large interior due to the sheer height. A lot of the interior has been fixed although one can see that many floors are missing from the original state. I doubt a lot of people were housed inside the castle and most troops were stationed around the area.

Supposedly, King Erik XIV was locked up in one of the small rooms inside the castle. The space is quite limited, so it is doubful his immediate family and servants were with him…

In one of the ceilings, coats of arms of all the “owners” of the castle were displayed. Quite a sight! It really makes visible what a long history this place has.

During the Russo-Swedish War of 1788-1790, a not exactly a large-scale engagement took place on June 16th, 1789 at the small village of Sulkava, in eastern Finland, then part of the Kingdom of Sweden. The “Gustav’s War” was one of many wars in history started for internal political reasons.

Approximately 2,000 Russian troops were trying to get ahead of the main defending Swedish army in the province of Savolax, as the main push came from another direction. 10,000 Russians were advancing in a three-pronged attack against some 4,000 Swedish-Finnish troops.

Blocking the Russians at Sulkava was a small detachment of ~200 men, mostly militia raised as part of the allotment system.

The map is “upside down”, south is on top – this was drawn by the invaders. The Russians were coming from the northeast and are thus depicted on the lower side of the map.

This was the setting for this local event to which I traveled 3,5 hours each way to learn more about our history. Before the action started, a retired history professor provided an overview of the events and officers in charge.

The Russians were lead by Major General Wilhelm Schulz von Ascheraden and opposed by the 26 year young Major Carl von Morian, a personal acquaintance of King Gustav III.

Our detachment today was even smaller, comprising of three separate historical societies, one for re-enacting the Swedish Carolineans (in Finland), another for artillery and the last one for gunboats of the local lake district.

We had a lengthy demo of drills and commanding the militia, where the common language was Swedish although it was unlikely that any of the soldiers spoke it. My 15 year old who was with me got quite restless – and not only because I guess he was expecting, if not hundreds of re-enactors, but at least dozens. Here they had like eight or so. But to me it was not only funny, but probably very historical as the foot soldiers were stumbling around, turning to the wrong direction and making other mishaps. It probably went just like that 300 years ago keeping the sergeant busy herding the soldiers around.

I hadn’t even realized the opposite side of the lake was part of the show too. The Russians were there and started to fire their guns across the lake with loud bangs. Then a boat approached. The Russian general had a parley with the Swedish commander and demanded a retreat to avoid bloodshed. They had thousands of men against a handful. But Morian rejected the offer and an angry general went back to his troops.

Firing intensified as the Russian boats started to approach. Cannon and musket fire was exchanged before the overwhelming Russian forces landed.

Russian troops land in force and throw grenades to clear the area. Swedish troops put up token resistance only and start pulling back.

They quickly captured the camp and the battle ended in another parley where the Swedish major accepted his defeat but stated that the war continues. Funnily, the young major was depicted by an old gentleman…

A really cool detail was the looting of the fallen (wounded were put out of their misery with an axe) – valuables such as boots were saved by camp followers or whoever they were…

There is also a short video on YouTube.

The past weekend I was able to join, for the second time, the “War College” at Fort Ticonderoga, NY, covering the Seven Years’ War – although the talks mostly cover the French and Indian War part of it (which I don’t mind at all). It was a quick trip to Upstate New York – I again didn’t have time for a more thorough visit this year, so had to keep it to a minimum.

Fort Ticonderoga has been hosting this event, which is a weekend seminar, for 27 years now. Matthew Keagle, the curator at the museum, presented their latest research and key changes in the collection. His talks are super interesting, not only because Matt is a great presenter, but the museum’s research always looks for a connection between the historical events and artifacts.

What great excuse to take a short trip!

The author Michael Laramie presented his research on the book “The Road to Ticonderoga: The Campaign of 1758 in the Champlain Valley”. There were a few things that kindled my interest and I need to crosscheck with other sources how they described specific events. Then I have to decide which source I will follow in the game…

I am really looking forward to his next book, “King George’s War and the Thirty Year Peace: The Third Contest for North America”, which should be out later this year. Getting his Ticonderoga book was a small ordeal, I had it on order from amazon.de for almost six months, then I found it at Adlibris, who delivered it to me swiftly (once they claimed they can do it!).

I picked up three of his other books and got them all signed 🙂

John Hayward’s talk titled “Give It to Them, Jersey Blues!” A look at the New Jersey Regiment, “The Jersey Blues,” in the French & Indian War 1755-1760” was quite interesting. It has been a bit difficult to find good sources on the colonial regiments in order to evaluate their performance during various campaigns. Ultimately, for my project, I doubt I learned much new.

To finish off this post, here are some fresh pictures from the fort and its surroundings.

The past weekend I traveled to Fort Ticonderoga, NY. As I flew into Boston, instead of e.g., Albany, I had to drive to get to the fort. This placed me to visit some historical sights in New England.

Last year I checked out Fort William Henry after many years, and the Rogers Island for the first time. This year I made it to the Fort No. 4 in Charleston, NH. On the way, I spent a night in Concord, MA, our old home town, touring some of the key sights there.

The Old North Bridge (Concord, MA)

Lexington and Concord should be something that every American recognizes (and I am not one!). This is where the revolution started and thus America’s bloody road to independence. Momentum had been building before the fateful April morning in 1775, but the spark – the shot heard round the world – was ignited there and then.

Concord Museum

Being a local several years ago, I ignored a lot of the attractions in the town, until now… First I wanted to go to the Louisa May Alcott’s Orchard House, but it was very busy and I was discouraged by the rain. So, I ended up down the street in the Concord Museum. Not a bad choice really! They had brought in the furniture used by Ralph Waldo Emerson and recreated his study shown below.

A special exhibition covered the events of April 19, 1775 with a great digital production of the British march on Concord and the eventual fight with the Minutemen who gathered from towns all around to fight off the British army.

No visit to Concord is complete without a cemetery. Right by the center is the Old Hill Burying Ground that we also visited quite long ago and happened to run into a man whose ancestors were buried there! People who lived their lives, many to an old age, rest in this cemetery. The oldest I could spot were from the late 1600s.

Fort No. 4 (Charlestown, NH)

Located by the Connecticut River, No. 4 was the northernmost settlement of the English colonies at the time and was settled in the early 1740s by families moving from congested parts of Massachusetts. Today it is an open air museum, a post-war reconstruction of the original site that was taken over by a modern development a mile or so away. I rate this as “a must visit” if one is interested in 18th century life on the frontier.

The staff was very friendly and explained quite a few things about the construction and history of the site. For instance, I was curious about the palisade and how sparse it was. There were several reasons for this: to prevent snow from piling up against the wall and allow the enemy to climb over it, blocking movement but still leaving the enemy exposed to musket fire, and to prevent burning down the wooden palisade as spaces between the timber would make it less likely to spread the fire.

I had taken an interest in No 4 for two key reasons: 1) a road was cut from Chimney Point (across the lake from Crown Point) by John Stark and the rangers to No 4 to speed up movement between these two regions by avoiding the long route via Albany, and 2) some of the survivors of Rogers Rangers St. Francis raid made it to No 4 on their arduous return journey. If I recall correctly, this was in the movie “Northwest Passage” (1940).

The cannon in the bedroom was actually to alert the people living in the valley that danger was looming.

Now I know what a murder hole is!

I had been eyeing this movie for a long time and finally was able to rent it via Amazon Prime using my backup US credit card (sometimes it’s hard to understand that big companies won’t accept our money – because we are “international”). I rented it for my 11 hour flight to Miami as I did not expect the onboard selection of movies would really cater for my interests.

So, for those who are not familiar with it, Northwest Passage is a “western” (that’s how it was classified!!) set in 1759 and loosely tells the story of Rogers Rangers raid on St. Francis and this is also the only movie I know that really shows Rogers Rangers in action.

Link to wikipedia page and the (missing) copyright text

Despite the slow, hollywoodish start, I really liked the movie! To me it contained all the key elements I had read about the rangers in the French and Indian war, and in full color: prepping and moving a large raiding party by whaleboat, avoiding the French and Indians, men dropping off along the way, crossing rivers, the lack of food, exhaustion, desperation, and so forth. Besides, it was historical enough for me.

I must say, this will become part of my digital movie library. I’d prefer a physical copy like DVD, but that might be a bit hard to find.

We had to stay in Turku, in southwestern Finland, for several days as we were sheltering from a storm in our boat. Among other places I had a chance to visit the Turku Castle again after many years – what a magnificent medieval castle! It is not only a never-ending walk to go through the whole place but it also has some interesting historical pieces in addition to the jaw-dropping dioramas of the long construction of the castle.

Construction started in the 13th century and its only “combat” was in 1318 when the Novgorodians sacked Turku…

A grapeshot below? That thing flying at you must have been a terrible sight!

It was one heck of a walk I have to admit, endless corridors with a lot of low ceilings.