- Hi, I'm Matt.

- And I'm Nicole.

And we're here today in the WMHT Tape Archives.

- It is so cool to look around at all these old tapes.

It's really amazing.

It's kind of reminding me a little bit of the archives at Fort Ticonderoga.

- Yeah, just a treasure trove.

And at Fort Ticonderoga, they have all of these pieces where they study so that they can apply it to their living history that they do right there in the fort.

- Come take a look and see what Dr.

Matt Keagle showed us.

(upbeat music) (light rhythmic music) Hi.

- Hello, welcome.

- I'm Matt.

- Hi, Matt as well.

(laughing) - Nicole, nice to meet you.

- Well, thank you for coming out.

So this is just a bit of the selection of the archival collections here at Fort Ticonderoga, which cover many, many years of 18th century history but focused, of course, on the American Revolution as it unfolded here on the Hudson River, on Lake George and Lake Champlain between 1775 and at least 1777.

(air whooshing) This is an actual uniform coat from the Revolutionary War, making this an incredibly rare survivor.

There are not that many uniforms that survived from the Revolution period, really none to my knowledge from service here at Ticonderoga.

But the museum, over the past century, has collected really the biggest collection of 18th and early 19th century military dress in North America.

This is actually the uniform of a Loyalist.

So this is an American who served with the British during the Revolutionary War.

So this was worn by a man named Jacob Schieffelin.

He served as a lieutenant in a volunteer company that fought for the British to preserve British control alongside Native Americans against American forces.

And in fact, he was captured by Americans, or more specifically, Virginians.

Survived in captivity, managed to escape the jail in Williamsburg with another officer that he was held with.

They snuck across the Chesapeake Bay.

They hid out on the eastern shore for nine weeks together, only speaking French in public so they wouldn't be identified as British officers, before they finally got a ship to take them back to friendly British-held New York City.

- Oh my god.

- These are two different muskets that likely saw service during the Saratoga campaign of 1777.

The top one is a British musket.

It's called a short land service musket, marked to the 20th Regiment of Foot, which was one of General John Burgoyne's regiments.

The musket below it is a French 1766 pattern musket marked to a New Hampshire regiment.

They are both flintlock muskets.

So this, the lock right here is where you start a spark that will ignite gunpowder.

In the jaws of this piece here, which is called the cock or the dog, there would be a flint, so the sharpened stone.

And the idea is that when that's pulled back under pressure from a spring and released by pulling the trigger, it smashes forward and the flint strikes this face right here, which is called the hammer.

And that has a thin face of steel on it.

And when the flint strikes the steel, it scrapes off a microscopic superheated piece of that steel in the form of a spark.

And the spark then falls into this pan where you put a small charge of gunpowder, and you can see the hole right there that's drilled through the barrel where the main charge of gunpowder is located.

And when a spark hits that gunpowder, whoosh, it goes off, that flames jets through that hole, ignites the main charge of gunpowder, and sends the bullet downrange along this barrel.

- Amazing.

- Wow.

- This is part of our tool collection.

We have over 1,400 tools that have been recovered from the site- - Wow.

- At Fort Ticonderoga.

And what's special about this is that this is literally the stuff that was used to build this place.

- Wow.

- In the 18th century.

You have French pieces, English pieces, American pieces of all different kind.

This drawer here, this whole cabinet is really almost entirely spades.

And we've actually had a conservation assessment done of them all, because this is the best way because the way that this has been treated is there to prevent further oxidation of the metal.

And so that's why we have this looking like this.

Now, one of the other things that's kind of remarkable about this is that that particular spade's handle survives.

- Oh.

- Wow.

- So this is the actual handle for that spade as it was found, and you can see where it went into the socket there.

And there's a hole right there where it was nailed onto the head to keep it in place, all the way down to the little tenon on the end where a kind of T-shaped handle was attached to this.

- Oh.

- And a peg driven through there to hold it on.

Now, for something like this organic wood to survive is incredibly rare.

- Yeah.

- But here at Fort Ticonderoga, we do have examples of this.

And this helps us better understand what the types of tools were that were used here so that we can recreate them to actually do the things that we do on a daily basis.

- Amazing.

(air whooshing) - These are documents from the 18th century.

This particular one was penned right here at Ticonderoga on July 21, 1775.

This was written by Philip Schuyler, who has been appointed a general in the Continental Army to command what is initially known as the New York Department, what evolves into the Northern Department of the Continental Army, which is responsible for all of the military actions in this theater of the world.

He writes here that a sentinel hailed him, and you know, the guard kind of runs out and he said, "To go and awake the guard, who were so closely embraced in the downy arms of sleep that he had no success."

- Wow.

- So the men who were supposed to be guarding the posts here are fast sleep, which is not good when you're starting to launch this campaign.

And Schuyler, of course, is going to whip this army into shape and prepare it not just to defend Ticonderoga, but ultimately to launch an offensive into Canada.

So this one's an interesting little letter.

It's an interesting contrast to this other document, also from Ticonderoga, from August of 1776.

Little smaller paper.

- Mm-hmm.

- Maybe not quite as neatly laid out, but you know, it's written in a hurry.

And this is actually from a Massachusetts militiaman.

And what I find really compelling about this is I think that something that anyone can empathize with is that he's writing to his wife at home.

And there's not a lot of information in here about what they're doing at Ticonderoga.

He's letting them know that the Lexington men are in good health.

He's from Lexington, Massachusetts.

And he's saying here that he really wants to hear from them, and he says, "I shall not rest easy 'til I hear from you by the next post."

- Aw.

- And then he's saying, "My love to our little ones as you and they are never out of my mind."

- Aw.

- Wow.

- I think something we can all empathize with.

(regal music) - Thank you for joining of us on this episode of "Field Trip," where we got to dive into the treasure trove of Fort Ticonderoga's archives.

- That's right, and remember, you can visit Fort Ticonderoga too and visit wmht.org/fieldtrip.

And don't forget to let us know where you think.

- We should go next.

(upbeat music) - Wow, that was so cool.

I mean, remember, (laughing) we have to first say the website.

(laughing)