Historical sights on the way to Ticonderoga

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).