Fort Albany (New York)

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Floor plan, elevation and elevation of the fort, 1765

The Fort Albany was a British fort in the city of Albany, New York . It was initially laid out in 1676 as a wooden structure with surrounding palisades and was replaced by a brick fortress from 1702–1735 , which was named Fort Frederick after the British heir to the throne Friedrich Ludwig von Hannover . It was never directly attacked in either the French and Indian Wars or the American War of Independence . After 1784 it was canceled.

history

A fortress made of wood, 1676–1702

City map of Albany circa 1695 (after a contemporary map by John Miller)

Albany, founded by the Dutch in 1624 , represented the outermost outpost of European colonization in New York for the entire 17th century and well into the 18th century. Due to its location, halfway between New York and Montréal and directly adjacent to it the settlement area of ​​the Iroquois , Albany was of outstanding strategic importance for the British in all four French and Indian Wars.

A first fortified trading post, Fort Orange , was built right on the banks of the Hudson River in 1624, but was neglected after Nieuw Nederland fell to the British in 1664. As a replacement for the dilapidated fortifications, Governor Edmund Andros ordered the construction of a new wooden fort on a hill above the city in 1676, which was already occupied in July of that year. In 1678 Andros reported to London that the fort was armed with twelve cannons, which he thought was "sufficient against Indians". The location of the fort, however, as later observers noted, was poorly chosen, as it was surrounded by numerous even higher hills from which the fort could easily have been attacked.

The greatest threat to Albany was not the Indians (the Iroquois soon formed an alliance with the English, the so-called Covenant Chain ), but the French expanding from the north against New York. After New York became a crown colony in 1684 , however, resulted in the peculiarity that for the supply and remuneration of the garrison in Albany as one of the four "independent companies" ( independent companies rather than the British army, but the government had come up the colony) of New York, which is a chronic underfunding result would have. In 1687, Governor Thomas Dongan reported that the Albany garrison had 9 artillery pieces, rifles for only about 40 men, four barrels of powder and some shot. The garrison was also neglected in the following years. In 1700 it was reported to Governor Richard Coote that the soldiers in Albany did not even have enough clothing and that even the Indians were mocking themselves about it. During an inspection in October of that year, he found that half of the soldiers had neither shoes nor socks and that the fortifications were “terribly weak”.

“When I left, the people of Albany gathered around me and told me straightforwardly that if the king did not immediately build a fort to protect them, they would leave the city at the first news of a renewed war between England and France and go to New York Would seek refuge instead of having their throat cut here. "

His successor Edward Hyde, Viscount Cornbury , found on his arrival in New York in 1702 that the government owed the soldiers of the four "independent companies" since 1691 a good £ 20,000 wages. He found the fortress in Albany in a sorry state; the garrison again lacked clothing and provisions; the palisades were so rotten that he could knock them over with his own hand. After the outbreak of the War of the Spanish Succession (which found its counterpart in North America in the Queen Anne's War ), he actually ordered a new building, but the construction of the new, brick fort was interrupted several times due to lack of funds and dragged on until 1735.

For the burghers of the city, who were mostly Dutch-speaking until well into the 18th century , the fort represented a city within the city for a long time. Contact with the English was avoided as far as possible. In fact, there are statements in the papers of Andros and Dongan that suggest that the English were anything but certain of the loyalty of their Dutch subjects and that the fort served not least to rule the “foreign” population of the city .

The stone fort, 1702–1784

Fortifications of the City of Albany, 1765

The stone walls of the new fort surrounded two rectangular buildings, one of which was the garrison barracks , and the Governor's House , where the Governor of New York stayed on his visits to Albany. The ring of fortifications around Albany was supplemented by new palisades, partly walls and a series of massive log houses . During the King George's War , Albany's firepower was increased by six eighteen pounders. But the new fortifications were soon neglected again. The Swedish traveler Pehr Kalm observed in 1748 that the city had no city gates and that the residents went in and out through holes in the city wall. A participant in the Albany Congress in 1754 reported that the soldiers often appeared on guard duty with bare hands due to a lack of rifles.

However, with the construction of more settlements and fortresses in northern New York, Albany's protection against any attacks from the north gradually improved in the course of the 18th century. In fact, the city (unlike Schenectady, for example ) was never attacked directly during the French and Indian wars, so that the fort never had to face a test. However, some British campaigns began here, such as William Shirley's expedition against the French Fort Niagara in 1755. The British garrison slowly changed the character of the still mostly Dutch- speaking city ​​of Albany until the revolution in 1776. Some British soldiers settled in Albany after the end of their service as craftsmen or innkeepers (and subsequently mostly settled in the southwest of the city near the fort), some married into Dutch families.

After the end of the Seven Years' War, the British garrison was withdrawn from Albany. In 1765 the abandoned fort was bought by the city administration. Many of the fortification stones were subsequently removed by the residents and used to build new houses and roads. Even during the American Revolution , there was no fighting in Albany itself. During the War of Independence, the city was in the hands of the insurgent " patriots " from the start . An advance by British troops from Canada to Albany failed in the Battle of Saratoga in 1777 , so that the fort, which was already barely suitable, did not have to prove itself in this war either; however, it was used as a prison in which mainly loyalists were held. After a decision by the city council in 1785, the fort was demolished. The stones were reused to expand State Street and build new buildings. The hill on which the fortress stood was also leveled in the 19th century, so that today there are hardly any archaeological traces of the fort. Only a cellar made of pine planks could be exposed in 1973 during excavation work. Only a memorial plaque reminds of the former fort in Albany.

literature

Web links

  • Fort Frederick - Information on the New York State Military Museum website.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Bi-Centennial History of Albany , p. 381.
  2. ↑ Timothy J. Shannon: Crossroads of Empire; Indians, Colonists, and the Albany Congress of 1754 . Cornell University Press, Ithaca 2000. p. 124.
  3. ^ Stanley M. Pargellis: The Four Independent Companies of New York . P. 92 ff.
  4. ^ Bi-Centennial History of Albany , p. 383.
  5. ^ Bi-Centennial History of Albany , p. 383.
  6. ^ Bi-Centennial History of Albany, p. 386.
  7. ^ Stanley M. Pargellis: The Four Independent Companies of New York , p. 106.
  8. ^ Bi-Centennial History of Albany , p. 387.
  9. ↑ Donna Merwick: Possessing Albany , p. 266.
  10. ↑ Timothy J. Shannon: Crossroads of Empire; Indians, Colonists, and the Albany Congress of 1754 . Cornell University Press, Ithaca 2000. p. 125.
  11. ^ The Fort at Albany - New York State Museum.
  12. ^ David R. Starbuck: The Great Warpath: British Military Sites from Albany to Crown Point . University of New England Press, Hanover, NH 1999. pp. 8-9.
  13. ^ Fort Frederick - The Historical Marker Database.

Coordinates: 42 ° 39 ′ 7 "  N , 73 ° 45 ′ 32"  W.