It Happened Here -- Blockhouses

    The Stillwater Blockhouse, Rte 4, was built as a Saratoga Battlefield Park visitors center

                                   

A quick glance at Wikipedia will tell you that blockhouses are defensive fortifications that have been around since medieval times and that the original terms comes from their role in blocking access to portages, roads, rivers, etc; not, as I had always assumed, from their "blocky" shape, being usually made of squared timbers, etc.

Because blockhouses small size and typical wood construction made them vulnerable to artillery fire, they had become largely obsolete and uncommon in 17th and 18th century Europe, but in colonial America blockhouses were the most common defensive fortification. In America's interior, few roads and dense forest made attack by artillery unlikely, but blockhouses were a potent defense against musket wielding Indians, or colonial troops.

A blockhouse could be constructed with as few as a half-dozen skilled axemen in a few weeks time and could withstand the assault of hundreds of attackers, if they were unsupported by large cannon.  At the same time it could provide a secure garrison for perhaps a hundred men from which they could patrol or sally forth to attack raiding parties along a trail, or groups of batteaux at a portage. Larger forts could be constructed by building a stockade which utilized three or four or more blockhouses as corner bastions.

French Blockhouse near Ft.Carillon

British Blockhouses

guarding the road

to Fort Edward

                                                                                                                                                            

British Blockhouse

at the Wood's Creek/

Oneida Lake Portage

                                           The Schoharie Valley

                                  Upper and Middle 

                                           Valley Forts                                            Incorporated

                                           Blockhouses into

                                           their Stockades

Square timbers, though more difficult and time consuming to make, were preferred because they provided more uniform protection from musket balls or small cannon fire and were presumably more difficult for attackers to scale. The overhanging sections of the second floor enabled defenders to shoot down  through musket ports in the floor of the overhang at attackers attempting to build fires against the blockhouse wall, or do other mischief.

       Fort Anne's several forts undoubtedly had blockhouses*




 Sir William Johnson  appreciated the symbolism of British Military Power that the blockhouse represented to the Indians with whom he negotiated treaties. He had two stone blockhouses built along side of his baronial mansion in Johnstown. They also provided actual security, incorporated into a stockade surrounding the house during the last French and Indian War.

Rte. 30A, Middleburgh

For much of the American Revolution blockhouses were mainly refuges for
farmers and their families from Indian
raids on the frontiers of New York,
but toward the end of the Revolution
the blockhouse at Fort Plain took on
a new mission.

















 Following the devastating raids
in the summer of 1780 a new unusually
tall three story blockhouse was built.
 
From atop  this blockhouse near the crest of a ridge above the village, the Americans had a commanding view far up and down the valley. Smoke from any house or barn torched by the Indians and Tories along a wide swath of valley could be quickly spotted and militiamen and continentals under Colonel Marinus Willett,   garrisoned at the fort dispatched to oppose the raiders. It was from here that Willet marched to repulse an Indian/Tory/ British Regular attack on Johnstown on October 24, 1781, pursuing them 
to a skirmish at West Canada Creek where Tory leader Walter Butler was killed.

                                                                                                                                                       Concern about Indian attacks on New York's frontiers did not end immediately with the end of the American Revolution. Fur trader Oliver Stephens built his own blockhouse/residence/trading post in 1794 at the outlet to Oneida lake, next to the derelict Fort Brewerton.  Willsboro constructed a blockhouse in 1797 as a place of refuge from Indian raids.

U.S. 11, Central Square, NY

The reconstructed Blockhouse--home
to the Brewerton Historical Society

Essex Co. Rte 22, Willsboro

   

The War of 1812 saw the last use of blockhouses in New York State, although blockhouses would be used in the U.S. on the frontier in the Indian Wars until the 1870's.

Blockhouses at Sacket's Harbor

*This reconstruction, at Fort Anne, built as a gift shop in the 1950's, now occupied by a local bank may have a couple firsts for a blockhouse--a night depository and an ATM machine!



 Marker of the Week--

It started on a presumably hot summer's day in1820 when some of the locals were seeking refreshment, and trying to escape the heat in the old stone tavern at the north end of Schoharie.  It started when some wag made a humorous comment, now lost, at the expense of Josiah Clark, and Phillip Schuyler, the 2nd* roared out a riotous approval of it. As too often happens, the butt of the comment, Mr. Clark, took offense not at the comment or the wag who made it, but at Mr. Schuyler's degree of approval of it. Soon words were being exchanged between Mr. Clark and Mr. Schuyler, hotter than the day that brought the two of them together.  Before anyone could grasp its gravity, a duel was proposed and accepted; "seconds" were drafted among the crowd at the tavern; the rifles were prepared by these seconds; and presumably, the whole tavern emptied out, trooping down to the flats along the Schoharie Creek in back of the tavern.  Distances were paced off and counted as the two duelists marched away from each other, turned and fired. The valley, narrow at this point, echoed with the sound of the two rifles discharging simultaneously.  Clark collapsed, and Schuyler in shock and horror, still tinged with a residue of anger muttered 'He would have it so!  He would have it so!', and beat a hasty retreat from the scene of carnage to find composure in another tavern, in the center of town.  Some time later, from his vantage point in this second tavern, Mr. Schuyler looked out to observe a miraculous sight--Josiah Clark, walking down the street!  It seems that the seconds who prepared the rifles for the duelists had put an ample charge of gunpowder in each, but had neglected to put in lead balls, instead, holding the charges in with generous wads of soft natural paper taken from a wasp's nest.  Mr. Clark had probably been hit, full on, in the chest, with the wadding, and realizing he had received a "mortal wound" had fainted dead away!  Thus ended the Schoharie valley's most famous duel.**

Swart'sTavern,  Rte 30, Schoharie

*Phillip Schuyler, the 2nd was a scion of the venerable Schuyler family and grandson of the famous Revolutionary War general, Phillip Schuyler.


**You will probably not be surprised that this incident was reported in Jeptha R. Simms. The Frontiersmen of New York.
Vol. I, 348.