Blacksmiths were integral personnel at frontier fortifications in North America during the 18th century. These iron smithies not only forged military items like swords, knives, musket barrels, and other lethal objects, they likewise crafted kettles, plates, ax heads, hammers, shovels, nails, and other metal tools.
So, it was not surprising in 1954, that during excavations in the Village of Lake George at Fort William Henry Museum, that a blacksmith “shop” was unearthed by archaeologist Stanley M. Gifford’s diggers.
Blacksmithing began 3,500 years ago with the Hittites in Anatolia, an ancient land that is part of present-day Turkey. This skill of forging metal utilizing an anvil, hammer, and a stout ironmonger essentially started the Iron Age (1,200 to 600 BCE).
The smelting process, the extracting of metal from its ore using intense heat, was fueled by a new type of accelerant, charcoal. The porous combustible is a derivative of wood, fired with minimal oxygen.
On August 29, 1954, the Albany Times-Union newspaper published an article informing the public that the blacksmith forge had been discovered along Fort William Henry’s east barracks.
The British stronghold was located at the south end of the 32-mile-long Lake George. The fortification was constructed in late 1755, during the French & Indian War (1755–1763). The frontier fortress was burned in August 1757, after being captured by the French and their Indigenous allies.
Reportedly, the 1954 archaeological excavation in the blacksmith workplace revealed several historic artifacts including a Rogers Rangers’ hatchet, nine ax heads, a shovel, a 24-pound cannon ball, a ladle for making lead musket balls, and several finished iron pieces used on cannon carriages.
There were other artifacts found near the ironworker’s smithy. Among that assemblage were cannon balls, exploded French mortar shells, chisels, padlocks, “scores” of musket balls, and enough nails and spikes that filled several bushel baskets.
Later during the archaeological dig at historic Fort William Henry, numerous 18th-century bricks were uncovered from the east barracks’ cellar.
In 1955, some of those historic bricks were sent by E. J. McEnaney, president of Fort William Henry Corporation, as gifts to President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Great Britain’s Sir Winston Churchill.
In 1956, retired Colonel Charles Briggs, then the resident archaeologist at the museum, told a Rotary Club group in nearby Queensbury, that excavations revealed the outline of Fort William Henry, a Vauban-style fort. Moreover, the remains of burnt logs in the east barracks confirmed the structure had been put to the torch after the British surrender.
Additionally, Briggs announced that below the fortification’s charred remains were discovered lithic (stone) tools and projectile points (aka arrowheads), fashioned by Indigenous Peoples long before Caucasians arrived at the head of the waterway in 1755.
Over the summer of 1957, archaeologists also reportedly exhumed six human skeletons from the fort’s east barracks.
Read more about blacksmiths in New York State.
A version of this article first appeared on the Lake George Mirror, America’s oldest resort paper, covering Lake George and its surrounding environs. You can subscribe to the Mirror HERE.
Illustrations, from above: An artist’s depiction of a British blacksmith, similar to that at Fort William Henry from 1755–1757 (courtesy Fort William Henry Museum); and Syracuse-based archaeologist Stanley M. Gifford’s book on Fort William Henry, 1955, now long-out-of print.
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