The Colonial Village Site at Crown Point: French or English?

Summary

The French built Fort St. Frédéric on Lake Champlain in 1734 in an effort to stop illegal trade and the smuggling of English goods from Albany to Montréal. However, the French at Crown Point, with repeated wars and with supplies from France increasingly difficult to obtain, themselves could not resist the temptation to sell and consume English goods. Louis Franquet, visiting Fort St. Frédéric in 1752 and 1753, found many irregularities and recommended that only the commander of the fort be allowed to operate a canteen on the King’s Domain for the soldiers at a distance remote from the fort. In 1759 the British captured Crown Point, began construction of a huge new fortress, and established a small village southwest of the forts. Between 1956 and 1958 the present author participated with a group of teenagers in excavations at a “French village” site about a half mile southwest of the French fort, near the British fort. Maps of 1768 and 1774 clearly identified the area as the site of the English village, which was burned in 1776. But the artifacts, while most are English, could date entirely from the 1730s to the 1750s, while refined English creamware or Queensware that would be typical of an English occupation until 1776 was entirely absent, an observation confirmed by further excavations in 2008 and 2009.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2014   •
• More than Ramparts and Redoubts: Forts and Families of New France

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): SYM-21,03