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Crown Point

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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A village of Essex county, New York, U.S.A., in a township of the same name, about 90 m. N.E. of Albany and about 10 m. N. of Ticonderoga, on the W. shore of Lake Champlain. Pop. of the township (1890) 3135; (1900) 2112; (1905, state census) 1890; of the village, about 1000. The village is served by the Delaware & Hudson Railway and by the Champlain Canal. Among the manufactures are lumber and woodenware. Graphite has been found in the western part of the township; and spar is mined. In 1609 Champlain fought near here the engagement with the Iroquois Indians which marked the beginning of the long enmity between the Five (later Six) Nations and the French. Subsequently Dutch and English traders trafficked in the vicinity, the latter maintaining here for many years a regular trading-post. In 1731 the French built here Fort Frederic, the first military post at Crown Point, and the place was subsequently for many years of considerable strategic importance, owing to its situation on Lake Champlain, which with Lake George furnished a comparatively easy route from Canada to New York. Twice during the French and Indian War, in 1755 and again in 1756, English and colonial expeditions were sent against it in vain; it remained in French hands until 1 759, when, after Lord Jeffrey Amherst's occupation of Ticonderoga, the garrison joined that of the latter place and retreated to Canada. Crown Point was then occupied by Amherst, who during the winter of 1759-1760 began the construction, about a quarter of a mile from the old Fort Frederic, of a large fort, which was garrisoned but was never completed; the ruins of this fort (not of Fort Frederic) still remain. At the outbreak of the War of Independence, on the 11th of May 1775, the fort, whose garrison then consisted of only a dozen men, was captured by Colonel Seth Warner and a force of "Green Mountain Boys," sent from Ticonderoga by Ethan Allen; and it remained in American hands save for a brief period in 1777, when it was occupied by a detachment of Burgoyne's invading army.