good morning everyone good morning. what a gorgeous day. welcome to the 20th annual seminar on the american revolution. my name is beth hill and i'm the

president and ceo of fort ticonderoga gha. we're so delighted to have you here with us today and we're also thrilled to have c-span to here with us recording welcome and. thank you for being here at forte con droga we are thrilled to see so many friends here with us. last night we had our opening session and we asked attendees how many were here? 20 years ago at the first seminar. can we see a hand raising of how many were with us? the first seminar, a good number. thank you. we appreciate your loyal support and how many first time attendees. great. oh, we love that. we love having new friends and we hope you really enjoy your weekend here at fort ticonderoga with us. it's such a spectacular sight. i don't need to tell you coming in this morning and looking at the sun shining beautiful lake in the mountains, it's really a special place. and i know we feel the power of

place. we walk on to the property and if we don't feel it, certainly by the time get to the sally port and read the sign about all of those and in the footsteps of greatness of those who have been here. it is. it is really special place. and we hope you take time to enjoy all that. fort ticonderoga has to offer beyond the seminar. our exhibits, our living history programs, our gardens, our boat tours and mount defiance. on a day like today to go to the heights of mount defiance and, see the spectacular region and this living of this defying ring place that helped shape north america is is really special so i encourage you to do that and a special thank you to our conference presenters. we appreciate you coming here from far and wide and sharing your your your and your. yeah. your information. yes. so the is not working online, but the mikes on.

okay well, i'll keep going and and also a special thank you to our seminar patrons. tim potts, reed boyd, peter way and don weiss. we're very thankful to you for your support. so that's been a round of applause for them. also a big thank you to. our members, many of your members of fort ticonderoga and help support our mission and we're really grateful to you for a big thank you to our wonderful and talented and hardworking staff. a special thank you to richard strum. our director academic programs. you'll be hearing from quite a bit throughout the conference and rich is a phenomenal coordinator and leader for all of our academic programs. rich, we're very appreciative to you. our curator, dr. matthew cagle, and our other team members who are helping coordinate as well as our volunteer hours. give them a thanks, too. and you see them fort ticonderoga is owned and operated by the fort ticonderoga association. we are nonprofit, educational

organization or historic site where a museum are cultural destination and center learning both on site across our 2000 acres as well as across the globe through our center for digital history. i'm sure many of you enjoy our online learning programs from our author series, which we monthly to our fort fever and many of the other programs that we do. the mission of the for ticonderoga association is to preserve, educate and provoke an active discussion, the past and its importance to, present and future generations. we foster an ongoing dialog surrounding citizens, soldiers and nations through america's military heritage. this amazing mission is a direct, acknowledged and the significant museum collections we have, and it really forces us to look far beyond this remarkable site and and look more deeply at the international

scope of the wars of the 18th century and the conflicts that shaped political and cultural geography of the united states during that time rooted in mission is its is is the fundamental pieces of preservation and education. we have made tremendous strides the past several years and many of you receive our material and see the progress that we are making to increase access and awareness to our rich collections and our educational resource. by doing so, we have extended educational impact far beyond the site where we reach about 70,000 thousand visitors and 15,000 youth to nearly 800 k through 12 affiliates, school programs across the nation and nearly 200 universities internationally. so that's really exciting. you know, fort ticonderoga, i don't need to tell you in a rural location, albeit location, and we everybody to come here to visit us, we want to ensure that we are providing our educational

content to audiences far and wide to be able to have access to them. and we have big plans for the future to make that even more accessible. we offer more than 2500 programs annually shops, conferences, seminars, outreach into classrooms and other activities that are flourishing to serve as a source of inspiration for people of all ages. we have embarked over the past several years on a transformative initiative multi-phase initiative, and will continue through this 2/50 period, this national america 2/50 commemoration and first and most fundamental is the preservation of the site. without that without the preservation of our collections and at the physical site as well as our structures we would be amiss and we're really excited to see major progress in that area from the preservation of the 1826 national historic landmark, the pavilion. many of you enjoyed our there

last night and we're delighted to see that $9 million restoration completed as well as major investment in the fort ticonderoga walls as and the structures we're completing a $3 million project on the north demi lune check it out where we're making good progress there and just received a major grant from federal government to support the south wall and south bastion and we're going to continue to march forward with the preservation of the historic walls and many them were built during the restoration and even the restored walls are now structures. so we're really excited to do that. also, our expanded collections of you are familiar, but those who are in fort ticonderoga embarked on a major collection acquisition. the robert nittolo collection, which is considered single most important private of 18th century military. and it has been a phenomenal journey and legacy making to be able to acquire and add this to

our collection more than 3000 objects that span the military of the long 18th century or the home stretch with the funding for it, and raised about 10 million of the 12 million of that. and i can't think of a more endeavor during this 2/50 period than to ensure these are here for posterity and it's not only preserving these treasures is a remarkable honor and opportunity but it's also share them and making them accessible to scholars and researchers and students all ages, putting them on exhibitions and and online for researchers. very, very excited about that programmatically during 2/50 period, we have a lot in store for ticonderoga is always ambitious and audacious with our goals because we want to best serve this mission and serve it with all of our might. we have what we're calling a

real time revolution during our 2/50 period and what this means. it is following the of the american revolution ticonderoga day to day, month to month, year, year through this to 50th period revolution in real time at ticonderoga so this year it is 74, 20, 24. it is the british garrison at ticonderoga, the 26th regiment were pulling the curtain back on the year right before the rebellion or revolution began. and will follow sequentially the programs and the years, the moments that took place. so we look forward to you coming back several times during this 2/50 period. please mark your calendar next year is, the anniversary, the 2/50 anniversary of america's first victory of the revolution, an event we call no quarter may 9th through the 11th with 10th

being the day thank you benedict arnold and ethan allen for making it on a saturday to honor 50 years ago. it works out well with our calendar and we're so excited it won't be three in the morning but it will be nine at night so the stage will be in the fort and the curtain pull back and the americans coming in and capture the fort from the british regiment. and it's going to be spectacular. but really sets in motion all of these anchor signature moments that help shape the course of the revolution throughout that period. so stay tuned. we're very fortunate at fort ticonderoga figure because we do have so many moments, not a one hit wonder and we're really excited through our robust living history to bring this life through daily programs, special events. i also thrilled to announce the 2/50 northern department, many, you know, the northern department of the continental army was this theater of the war

established in june. of 1775. next year the 2/50 of the establishment of the northern department in fort ticonderoga is fortunate to have a resources to be able to take a lead in this heritage tourism trail of the northern department during this 2/50 period. thanks part for some support from the state of new york. i love new york and other donors. this includes a website the northern department highlights our partners in the hudson, champlain corridor from saratoga. all way to our friends in canada, parks canada on both sides of lake champlain are vermont state new york state sites as well as tribal partners. and we've identified places people can visit to bring people to the region and really see the scope of this conflict in the northern department as well as enjoying all that this region has to offer. so definitely check that out and add a few stops. we to be the hub of the northern

department at a few stops along the way to experience the vastness and significance of this during the revolution. last but not least, please check out our new exhibition. we have a really incredible new exhibition series called a revolutionary anthology, and just as an anthology has many chapters, we will have five chapters over the next five years. this it's power of place and the exhibits are right here in the mars education center. power of place looks at key geographic locations that were shaped by and helped shape the war of american and featured in the exhibit over 100 objects, many of them never before seen. and it's it's really stunning. many of robert nettles objects. robert passed away about a year or so ago. and i know he would just be so thrilled to see his legacy continue here, an inspiring president and, future generations. we are grounded and are rich historical past as we press

forward, a transformative new chapter as our vision and plans begin to come into fruition here at fort ticonderoga. we do this not only to that, we are meeting our audiences today, but that we are best for the future. most importantly, we do this because it is vital for our nation as we work together to expand historical literacy, which is so fundamental to an engaged citizenry and vibrant democracy. we ever grateful to all of you for your which is truly critical the fulfillment fulfillment of our mission and plans and to ensure this remarkable remains as a touchstone for generations to come. thank you all very much.

thank you, beth. beth has given us the big overall picture. i get the job talking about the day to day things that make a weekend like this work. and the first thing to talk about is the lunch. those of you that are veterans of our know that we'll be passing a lunch list just check which of the four choices you'd prefer. and i'll ask larry and john to start that process here. we'll send it that i'll and bring back up this way and that way our lunches will be ready for us at lunchtime today. i'd like to welcome those joining us online today through zoom and just to remind people attending on zoom that they can ask questions of our speakers. well, just use the q&a button, the bottom of your zoom screen. dr. caygle will be moderating the incoming questions and we'll be asking those questions to our speaker after each present nation. just a note with. questions in the room, please wait. you may think you're loud enough, but please wait till the

microphone gets to you to ask the question so that our online audience can hear the questions and our two audience can also hear the questions. so please wait for the microphone to. get to you at the question time and just to make sure that our online audience hears the questions, i'll ask the speakers to repeat the question as they answer that as well. with that said, we're going to dive right in. so welcome to the anniversary of the seminar, the american revolution. and we begin this morning with sarah evanson speaking on archeology archive making and interpretation military kitchens at fort ticonderoga fort ticonderoga was sophisticated globalized, populated, military and civilian center through the majority the 18th century. it also the center of a massive system needed to provision and feed the many men, women and who labored and lived at fort

ticonderoga, the world in which these individual individuals lived was a world of color, noise and flavor, just as it would be a world of military conflict. this presentation explores the material culture of food preparation and eating at fort ticonderoga and the ways in which kitchens were spaces of cultural exchange these kitchens facilitated the adaptation of traditional and the creation of new culinary labor practices to fit in the military setting as evidenced by the archeological architectural and written record. sara evanson is a phd candidate at, the university of albany, and was the 2023 omaha institute ticonderoga fellow. good and welcome back, sara. thank you, rich. it is a pleasure to be back.

when i first started thinking about what to discuss for this talk, i was really reflecting upon the seminar theme and the theme we just heard about the power of place that kind of underpinning this year of programing at fort ticonderoga. and i started thinking about what place means for us today as 21st century scholars gathering here and then mars education center at fort ticonderoga as museum. what does this mean when we study past and perhaps most importantly, what does this place mean for the historical individuals that we study. how does our of place over the last just about 250 years express or represent the ever shifting and oftentimes invisible systems power that are related to empire to identity and also to the production of scholarship. and why are gathering here here geographically about a two and a

half hour drive from montreal about four and a half hour drive from new york city and just shy of two hour drive from albany, new york, driving up from new york's southern tier this morning, certainly made me feel that this place while scenic, is also remote, but that is just one morning's experi of this place. and it is certainly not of the power that port tech honda roja as a place has exerted over time. oh, i can do that. just. yeah. yeah. thanks. so i did want to acknowledge first and foremost that the power fort ticonderoga is truly transformative live. and i wanted to make that point, noting that i am presenting today as the result of a fellowship that i was awarded in 2023 by fort ticonderoga conjunction with the omaha institute. and this, in and of itself speaks the significance of the and scholarly space that is fort

ticonderoga. i'm assuming that most folks here are familiar with the om 122, but if you are less familiar with it, the institute is housed in williamsburg on the campus of william and mary and it aims to, quote, connect early america. and it is one of the preeminent sources scholarship relating to early american history. many of you working in the academic field or otherwise have relied on the scholarship published by the o-i, perhaps in the william and mary quarterly, or through their robust digital programing. and the fact this partnership exists, the fact that this partnership enabled to spend a month here in the collections at fort ticonderoga really amplify ties. the fact that we have this colonial capital in virginia inherently connected to this colonial site here in rural upstate new york that was a mammoth that was truly instrumental and a key to the continent the 18th century.

this partnership exists to amplify the history and collections here at fort ticonderoga. and there is confidence that scholars like me and those who have come before and come after me can and will uncover of immeasurable value here in this place. this research also takes place in an kind of scholarly place. we all in this room kind of come at our scholarship from different areas and we produce scholarship for different audiences. and my research in particular is very intensive area and it privileges material culture and the study of public history using an archive that is not always central to historical research. i appreciate the written record always. tend to look at material culture. i tend to like the stuff, the objects and that is what i will be talking about today. i'm incredibly grateful to the staff of fort ticonderoga for

the ability and the encouragement to think creatively about this study of the past and for the space to do so. that is a privilege that not everyone has, and i am very grateful for that. and i would particularly like to extend my gratitude to margaret stouter without my research would not have been possible here. so when i proposed this project, this to two rich, i knew i wanted to explore the material culture of kitchens. and for me, i think of kitchens as cultural spaces, not necessarily physical spaces, but spaces in which culinary labor was. so for this talk, kind of remove yourself from the idea of what you think of traditional kitchen maybe and kind of work beyond that a little bit. i assumed, as i think many scholars assume my research would be straightforward, that i would analyze how kitchens created and used outside of

domestics. and that is one of my chronic shortcomings. it comes to historical research. i never a properly account archival serendipity for many unexpected twists and turns that come during the process of research. and i'm sure that some of you hopefully most of you have experienced something similar this unanticipated of your work despite your best intentions and your solid lead developed to research questions. so after my here was complete, i was left with questions about the relationship between the archive making the physicality of place and how we interpret these and these ideas in a modern museum setting. and specifically, i began to be really interested in, as it relates to people who the people and the individuals who was who were populating for ticonderoga over its many occupation, where they came from, what brought with them. i also found myself becoming very interested in fort

ticonderoga as geographic location and how this site developed during the 18th century, but also how it grew into a heritage, tourism attraction and subsequent museum. i began to become really in place as it relates to the ground to earth because i was working archeological collection items and their time spent in ground is is a part of their physical and material story. so i began to really think about the ground as a place. these artifacts that i spent four weeks with had spent over 100 years, sometimes many more years in the ground. and i began to think about the ways in which, like quasi permanent in this in the earth and the archeological excavation, those objects impact, our understanding of the past. so for context, i was working

with the un cataloged collections here at fort ticonderoga this collection is vast, is enormous. and i was working with just a portion of that. i was looking at items that were related to food production or food consumption and. now this vast collection was excavated across the museum campus during the first half of the 20th century, at a time when standardized archeological methods that we're used to today were not quite as common practice. so the result is that items were excavated sometimes without their geographic being documented or their location within the strata of the soil being documented. and at first, when i encounter this it seemed like an insurmountable to my work because their place without knowing where items came from i did not understand that how i could come to understand them or their role in a historical narrative. but the more that i worked with objects and the more i saw them and more i learned, the more i

came. understand that the depth and breadth of this collection had told a story that could be understood and appreciated without. this documented context. in fact, the broadness of this collection actually helped to articulate a story of global consumption, of interconnectedness in ways a more classically curated collection not have been able to. and so this too, was also part of my approach with my research here fort ticonderoga. i wanted to experience history of fort ticonderoga unfold organically as i worked my way through this collection. so to that end, i did allow my to meander a little bit to learn as i went and to proceed without too many previously held conceptions about what i should be looking for, about or about what i find. and the conclusion that i drew from my time with this archive of which there's a sampling here, was that despite appearing on the surface, perhaps be a

remote military outpost was actually a vibrant art and whimsical and varied material place. i had known what to expect in many ways. i had read about global trade networks of the 18th century. i've seen ledgers and i've seen receipts. i've done my archival research. but i hadn't held these items in my hands in the way that i did researching here. i hadn't had the opportunity to hold something and wonder about how it came to be here. if you look at all of these items, the bottom corner is a fragment of punchbowl. how did this fragment of a punchbowl come to be at fort ticonderoga buried in the earth anexvated in 19. you know whenever or how did also come to be packed from wherever it was created shipped overseas, putn meone's personal luggage and then here

with them. these are the stories thai began to be really, really intrigued by. so one of my questions was about the people who peopled and question could be its own presentation. it be its own book. so we will not get too deeply into that. so for brevity sake will summarize by saying that fort ticonderoga and its environs were home to a variety of cultures, and each of them is represented in some way within this archeology record that i was working with in some way. these people, the men, women and children who lived here and, worked here, brought with them their unique foodways and lifeways. and in many ways they did adapt to the location here. and so one of the first times that i encountered the vibrancy of the multiculturalism that was present at fort ticonderoga over the 18th century was when i was in the basement of the archives and i opened up a box of metal

pot fragments and i encounter this on your right. as someone who predominantly british north america. this first box presented a little bit of a puzzle me. i understood that the items was seeing were kettle sweet. many of these items. let me see if i can annotate real quick. or just these feet. just these feet. here not connected to a pot, a kettle base. and if you look, they're very unique. they're a little stylized. they look like a little cloth. there's fluting on these edges. and for a moment, i was like, what? this. i have never seen a cattle foot like this in all my days. but that was because i was used to looking at pots like this. british pots. this part that we see here, this kettle is a french kettle

called, marmite. these cast cooking pots may have had three or up to four of these beautiful fluted. and i found hundreds these in the collection here as i was looking through boxes. so we know that there were many, many types of this kettle in use here at fort ticonderoga. you can also see that this has a distinctly flat edge and, a flat base. there is one seam along the bottom for its casting and in comparison, this british style pot, which is much round belld,ind of like this classic, wch kettle that you might think of, it is very different and they also would have functioned differently. so if you sit one over the fire, the french kettle would have been more ideal for things like braising. and oftentimes these kettles did also have lids. these round bellied kettles would have been very, very good for boiling. so we can learn a little bit about how process of cooking was undertaken using different vessels. unfortunately, this photo was

not the best, but you can also see that the foot on this kettle is just straight, unadorned and is also sticking out at a little more of an angle. this pot here, the feet are a little bit more straight up and down, so these pots what we can learn is that there were a multitude of cultures here bringing with them their own cooking infrastructure. well, we have hundreds of these feet in the collection, the belonged to perhaps one pot, three or four to each pot. but again, we know that there was quite a quantity of these available here and being used here. i next went on from metal fragments into pottery fragments. and so this multicultural and globalized sensibility is reflected in a much more decorative form as well. so i've included here a selection of, my favorite pieces of some of the ceramics that i worked with. and i want to do a bri owhat i