industrial mills to farms things to somebody said what do you argue i'll just do it look like they did just about everything from his research in the revolutionary war battlefields in upstate new york where he has applied it's nice to be coming from new york an invitation of vermont i guess getting over the old feelings hard feelings for a long long time ago so get a little bit of history from that time period dan i used to work for the public archaeology facility i'm still connected to them somewhat of the public archaeology facility is what's called a culture resource management firm do archaeology on a contract basis or by con grants and usually like a department transportation was to build a new room or build a new bridge we'll have archaeologists come in ahead of time make sure there isn't a site that could be destroyed and if there is try to mitigate whatever damage could happen so then that's how we get to cover a lot of things i usually spy specialized in what's called the historic period so basically that's kind of the time period where there was a written document three evidence or historical record before that we call that either prehistoric or pre contact kind of before the europeans came to north america but we were called in by the american legion raymond harvey post in forty and they had received a grant from the national park service american benefit protection program to look at the battle for dan  not a lot of people had looked at it it kind of it's dropped out of the main narrative about the saratoga campaign and the local community or came today recognize that it had a valuable history it was significant to the nation's history and they wanted some recognition for it and then that fit right into the national park services american battlefield protection program it's a program that fits in with the overall national  its own thing and it's it's an outgrowth from the ninety's when if anybody remembers disneyland bought property outside of the bull run battlefield and they were going to turn that into a theme park and so yes i think people kind of had those fears that of like confederate donal's or union goofy so people the public stepped in and asked congress to do something about it congress went in and bought a parcel so that disney couldn't do that and they preserved battle will run at least parts of it but then congress and we can't do this for every battlefield we need to figure out how this is going to last how can we preserve this in the long run so they set up the american battlefield protection program and so their goal ultimately is to protect america's battlefields its sites with the kind of the armed conflicts that influenced our nation's history this can be before the us started before the revolutionary war so they do stuff with the  war even they do stuff with the indian wars out west all the way through kind of the battle of midway in world war two it's just any place that americans were in conflicts or even before america that's on american that the best way for preservation is from the local community up they realize they're based in washington d c even if they they realize if they come out to a community and say you need to preserve this is probably not going to work they realize they want the local community to come together see their significance in the history of their community and actively plan to preserve these battlefield and that and part of that is just to raise awareness so activities like this public tox presentations i don't know if you saw that p b s documentary that was out of central new york  i don't know it was kind of based out of the syracuse p b s but that was funded by the american battle for the protection program just kind of programs to get people to realize these battlefields are still here they're important and what people hopefully when people realize the is pretty much standard for a lot of archaeology and i think a lot of people here probably been to a historic lecture and so this is more of archaeology once a little bit different but a lot of articles is to check kind of not just tell this historical story but also to get to the material aspects of what happened at that battlefield that landscape and then also how we can we preserve that i would say that the historians always give up right when it's getting interesting and fun  so our first step is we have to locate the battlefield some battlefields are famous like gettysburg everyone has a really good idea where kids were is some smaller battlefield some skirmishes people might have some oral traditions or folklore of where it may have been but we need to go out and actually pinpoint where it was exactly we have to once we find kind of the general area of the battlefield we have to find the landmarks that are tied to that battle if there was a ridge was that ridge used in the battle for or maybe people avoided it we also landmarks don't have to be natural landscape features they can be cultural so if you have a  building down in new york there is the old stone fort kind in there between cooperstown or albany and in this go harry valley that was a church and it still has a cannon ball hole in it still to this day from when one of the loyalist johnsons that arrayed through that area so right there that's a landscape feature even though it's a structure and also because these battles specially the revolutionary war for dan is just celebrated two hundred fortieth anniversary that means there's been two hundred forty years where people have used that layered between the battle and today there's obviously going to be some changes to landscape so we have to kind of step in and see what's left and what can be saved and after we've realized what's still left of the battlefield what can be saved help communities kind of decide what plans they can do to help preserve that landscape so our specific goals for the for nature project how to just do an inventory of archives related to the battlefield four and that's because the kind of fell to the wayside of a lot of people's narratives about the saratoga campaign usually in the big books of the secondary histories of saratoga it's like just a couple sentences like oh yeah something happened at forty and  so we had to go through and find out what were records out there were that people write their journals or diaries about the battle and where were these located what archives and then from that kind of associate from the documents to the real what's left of the world right now what were the landscape features that people used during the battle that we could pinpoint today and from that information so we had to pinpoint where the boundaries of the battle for words to see if it was really on this property and also show that the battle was significant that if it was kind of an unimportant battle and it wasn't really on this property then it probably would have been more open to be developed so basically their ultimate goal swore to show the significance of ford and and also define the boundaries of the battlefield us and the current condition what was there anything left of the battlefield to say so there's a side of for forty and if you go in through forty and right now so yeah those are kind of our big project was to because it was under threat with the land owner and to see if it was a battlefield was it there or was it not and also if there was anything left to preserve so kind of more of the history of forty and forty and is in a place that historically is in kind of a crossroads of trade but also conflict it's right at the boundary between the champ valley and the hudson valley so there's kind of two ways main ways you could go you could go down lake george which is a nice watery pathway to go or you could do more of a land route that also has some streams wood creek that goes from south bay of lake champlain and crosses over there because it was at a crossroads the british like to always keep some sort of for fortification there to see who was crossing fortifications were up both mainly to purposes one for observation kind of seeing who's going in areas and with that you could help defend an area you could know where to send people so if people the french were coming down this day's journey from each other so it would only take you about a day to get from one force to the other that way too if you get if you're low on supplies and you had to stop here you could be easily ambushed but if it's a day away you could usually make that and you'd be safe so that's why there's a lot of series of forts in this area and then seventeen o nine the british built the second fort a little off to the side of the original fort that gets quickly abandoned after an epidemic but then there was a quintana where it gets its name because it was funded by queen anne of england and seven to eleven they build a new fort to replace the disease fort and then it goes into disuse it's kind of a hiatus in the conflict between the french and the british up until the seventy years war the french and indian war and then seven seven the british reoccupied ford and they also built fort george fort george if you go there it's on the south face of lake george there there's only one bastion built  because the british they were going to attack fort carry on now is later on for ticonderoga and they thought it was going to be a kind of a long campaign to take down the french but the french actually  kind of fell pretty easily so they didn't have time to finish building fort george so that's why there's only one bastion constructed there and then after the british when the seven years war they don't need this because they also own canada they don't really need these forts right here so they abandon them they're not used and they fall apart decay but then with the start of the american revolution the americans of the continental start occupying these old forts  but it was more just used to help supply troops as they went up through this area and also as a weight as a waypoint as they either went from new england and up to fort ticonderoga or down to four  also just to keep watch of who's coming down between the champlain valley and the hudson valley so i kind of go back so but it also because it was a way station it helped on the continental attack when they went up to canada and took over captured montreal and they try to capture quebec city didn't work out so well for them and then in seven hundred seventy six they get pushed back by the british and that c core island which they lose benedict arnold which kind of has they say is the start of the u s navy out of white what is now white hall but it's gainsborough at the time  and that could have been a time where it was the british troops at the back campaign were led by carlton out of canada and right after valko island he figures well it's getting really late in the season we don't have enough time to push against further against the continental us so he stops is advancing goes back to canada one of his lower officers to general john burgoyne was on that campaign and he gets really upset that carlton abandons the campaign so he goes back to england that winner of seventy six to seventy seven because his wife had died and so he has to manage as a state while he's back in england he comes up with  idea kind of to usurp against guy carlton's authority in canada and also to just kind of promote himself as a leader but his plan was basically river like ontario and through the mohawk valley down to albany now kind of the people say that he wanted general how out of new york city to meet him up in albany but he doesn't really detail how he wants to use that campaign nobody's talking to how it at this time so how are ready has his plans to go he's so outside of this plan he's not even on this map but his pla around new jersey up the delaware river and capture philadelphia but he's in new york city with these plans and nobody's talking to him in england talking to or george germain in the king and they all really excited his plan because you see if you capture albany you can kind of isolate new england from the rest of the colonies and how england at this time sees that new england are the troublemakers causing all the other colonies to get upset so if you isolate new england the rest of the colonies will fall in line and hopefully it will end the war so even if how doesn't come up they're hoping that general clinton house second officer would come up from the hudson island and help we're going if needed and he has a really detailed plan about how he wants us to work and one of these things that he know is that it is natural likewise to expect that he got a major general philip schuyler who is head of the army's northern department basically the head of the continental army for this region so it's natural likewise to expect that he schuyler will take measures to block up the road for ticonderoga albany by the way of schemes borough by fortifying the strong ground at different places and therefore applied to the king's army to carry the weight of artillery with it and by falling trees breaking bridges and other impediments they basically saying in a strategy for all the cities like if i take a water only route i'll be ok if i take more of a land based route the continentals are going to wreck the roads they're going to block my way for whatever creeks i can take so it's better if i take a water leave route so we'll see what happens so at first he forgotten outpost by the continental congress they don't really send up troops a lot of troops at the time of early summer seven hundred seventy seven there's about two thousand continental troops here a lot of them are sick because measles epidemic it's not a great fortification for what the continentals want to use it for because it was originally built by the french it's set up to defend against invasions from the south continentals are using it to defend against invasions from the north so it's kind of the opposite direction of what it should be and also because it had been abandoned after seven years war it's basically falling apart t now congress isn't giving them enough resources of the army enough resources to build it up so they really have to pick and choose what they want to use to defend the fort and at this time too general major general arthur st clair sinclair shows up just a couple weeks before its army shows up so he's just new to his outpost as well and he really has to prioritize once he what he wants to defen so he defends mt independence which is off the photo that way they built some of the earthworks up out here they put a giant boo so walk any boats but they leave mt to finance empty and kind of the thought was well it's a really steep hill and nobody's going to put any artillery up there but the british when they first come down here there are some resistance but it falls back fairly easily realizes what's happening on that night evening of july fifth seventy seventy seven and he just orders before abandon and that's where he splits up his true groups the main canell army goes off over mount independence  in the other one pair slowing they all sneak out in the middle of the night on a small beto south on lake champlain toward skins burrow and here's schemes burrowed today that's kind of in south bay lake island but this battle schemes burrow the continentals kind of rush through in the middle of the night from july fifth of july sixth they arrive in skins burrow in they were loaded off loading the boats getting people to safety and two hours after they landed we're going to armies right behind him and arrives so it's kind of a mad dash trying to escape the british and they just couldn't do it we're going to navy basically parts the continentals boats the continentals are also in such a panic they scuttle a lot of their own ships are going to was also able to offload some of his troops and they were out flanking the continental so at that point the continentals think everything's lost they've lost their material there are so many supplies from the continental ships floating in the bay that the british troops they basically could just throw hooks out and drag in the supplies so they had barrels of pork and stuff that were the continentals that are now we're going to arby's so they meet the cutouts also meet up with a company of the third new hampshire under captain james gray who is positioned at skins borough but they quickly realize because they're going to be surrounded that they need to move on so they move on what creek on the little we're able to kind of counterattack the british at some point but ultimately have to fall back and that's on july seventh at the same time basically after so at the trek down to fort and they haven't had time to really stop at rest at all so they arrive for an in the early evening out early morning hours of july seventh so captain james gray of the new hampshire where they picked up  regiment of foot kind of pursue and track down the retreating continentals they were able to capture some of the bateau that had some of the women and six soldiers and take them prisoners but wink so these troops really in the early hours from the continentals arrive at four am and they notice that the british the knights regiment a foot or so arrived shortly right after them but they decided for it that they're not going to retreat anymore they're going to take a stand and push back against the british so captain james gray arrives at the fort after marching all night at six am july seventh and he immediately pushes back at least the ninth regiment a foot the british and the kut metals were able to quickly surround it pushed the british up on top of what's called battle hill today and most of the fighting a fourth in is on battle hill  very little activity around four am the fort itself some of the but it's a quick day if they spend the entire day fighting each other over this hill about six hours and then finally the continental say will k we it's getting dark we've had enough let's go back to ford and rest so so the casualties for the first day of the continentals had about one killed and three wounded and there were three british killed during the first day of four dan the second day it gets more complicated at this point  under the command of colonel van rensselaer and they come up and helps and they are about four hundred troops with the militia and that warning at the british camp probably around here and some camps probably two on top of the ridge still a desert or suppose a desert comes up to the british camp from the continentals and says oh i'm deserving and he asked how strong the british army is right there he tell him it's like oh we have one hundred one hundred ninety troops he tells the british that there are about one thousand american troops there and so now the british are panicking they they definitely can't take on a thousand troops and right after they sent up a request scout to go back to oprah going to maine army to ask for reinforcements the desert or disappeared on to land so he can make this trek down to florida and and so he's really held up there's also a rainstorm holding us troops up so he's unable to say and reinforcement dan so the continentals captain james gray again comes out leads the troops up here after the british camp and the kind of the militia takes the circular way to kind of outflank the british too and so the british are woken up in their camp with an early morning surprise attack in the woods on battle hill are really thick to cut all the british have accounts that basically they can hear the continentals around them they know they're surrounded but they can't see them so they have no choice but basically to retreat up back to battle hill and try to make a stand there  so that the british are up on top of the ridge and they're kind of unable to really make a strong attack against the continentals the continentals again are not really able to overcome the british position so they're kind of in  stalemate they go for six hours and they fight spend those six hours fighting it shooting at each other constantly one a british officer captain money shows up later said it was the heaviest fire fighting he saw during the entire saratoga campaign about the afternoon the continentals are running out of ammo the british are running out of ammo and kept in money all ober going was unable to send really supplies down or reinforcements he was able to say and kept the money which is kind of weird because captain money was his quartermaster not sure why you're trying to offload all your supplies you send your quartermaster down to the front lines but that's what we're going to do it and he had with them a large component of native american allies and so most kept the money shows up with the native american warriors outside they hear the battle going on because it's a really ferocious firefight the native americans don't not want to be a part of this fight so they leave except that money is just there by himself he doesn't know what to do but he is apparently been trying to his in person nation of indian war whoop and so we call he tries out of the indian war whoop and the continental army running low on ammo think that it kind of it evading force of nature america warriors are about to attack them or ambush them they figure it's not worth it so they leave the hill and come down back to fort and they have a council of war realize well as start really worth it let's we've done what we need to do because the cut the militia when they were sent up by schuyler schuyler said i don't care if you keep for dan it was more he wanted this to be a holding action to hold the british in place while he's taking supplies from all the other forts like for george and kind of the other forts in the area and consolidating all its resources at fort edward because he knew the british were on their way he couldn't stop them but he needed to consolidate his resources in its troops in one spot so he just wanted the militia with the continentals four days to hold them for twenty four hours they did that and so the kind of said let's find we'll move on and abandon for dan and make our way to fort  there's kind of a noted captain was shot captain my governor of the british army he gets shot kind of on his way to trying to go up the hill but he's mortally wounded he's captured by the continentals but at this time they don't really have p o w s they basically get furloughed and he gets furloughed in new york city because it's occupied by the british and that's is gravesite he's buried in trinity church the and he was mortally wounded but he died about a year it took a year for his wounds to kill him and also the continentals were pushing the british back they or they come across the women  soldiers that were taken prisoner on wood creek and so they freed them it's one of the few cases in the continent or the revolutionary war with that where prisoners were rescued in the middle of a battle but also this is kind of a so the british were able to come in but skiing that's why it's called white hall today because after the war you could maybe you want to keep the towns named after a loyalist who actually fought against the continental army so they changed it to white hall that's why he's been forgotten in space so that's so kind of what's the outcome of the battle for dan  c there were the british suffered about thirteen killed twenty two wounded they had two other people captured one was that captain gomery they also have one of their surgeons were captured the continental suffered about fifteen casualties and the second hampshire lost their colors which i think ultimately after the war were returned back to new hampshire i think they're housed at hampshire historical society but so i mean it looks like it's a small skirmish but it really changes the trajectory up we're going to campaign and if because it took this land  route back he did send some of his troops over lake george which is more of the water lee route that he said he wanted to do before in draws him along this land route which  recall is plants he said well if i do that i'm going to be my plan strategy is going to fail so i didn't take his own advice and so what happens is after forts or schuyler comes he consolidates all those troops and forces for edward and he calls up the militia and what they do they do what we're going said he would do they tear up the roods in this whole area they cut down trees and logs and fill up the creeks obstruct them and so that just immediately slows down burgoyne so here it goes from just late june and then july fifth and six and he's like boom boom boom going to fast he gets to for dan and he just stops another key point it has time for to end it is the jane mcrae massacre happens and jane mcrae it was from fort edward and she was going up to meet her loyalist fiance who was stationed at four am when she was killed and that kind of gets the loyalist to not want to side with we're going to army and we're going was really reliance on loyal support he was told that he was going to be welcomed with open arms by the loyalists who are in hiding in the hudson valley that they would come out to support him a lot of this was told by the johnson family at mohawk valley who took at the same ship over to england to meet with were going that winter or he came up with a strategy i think it's the same ship that ethan allen seld over on his prisoner when he was taken prisoner to england  so it's a small world but the loyalist especially because of the jane mcrae they loyal sluts they'll kill her they'll kill any of us there's no support or loyalty to their so they didn't come out to support grigori also to have a lot of native american warriors allies to support him but because of jane mcrae he kind of lectures the native americans and tells them they can't fight the way they're doing their traditional fighting  so they get really upset with that they also get really upset with this slow progress and then americans during a war day they like siege tactics they like more just action ablow show fighting and then his low get getting lectured by br going in the british officers and also to taking a long time to get to where they were going a lot of his native american troops abandoned him during his campaign and so by the time he gets down to saratoga he's taken so long he's out of troops he's not getting local support he's run out of a lot of resources he has a really long supply chain reaching from these lower forth all the way up through the hudson valley lake champlain up to canada and then the continentals a raiding his supply lines behind him and so that's why he goes to bennington to try to get more supplies that fails and ultimately in september or october  that shows the significance of ford and so we need to show kind of what's left of the landscape for dan so we went through historic documents we looked through journals letters historic maps such as this one so i could see their schemes borough and ford and down there this just more of a property parcel map and we also did a walk over and an archaeological excavation we also did a lot of we call it koa it's anybody here been in the military it's based off of what they've they train it's it from the army manual for military terrain analysis they use a different order for the word so it's a different acronym i think it's a koala like that but it's basically so we go through the historic records in their historic documents like maps journals diaries letters to see how people are describing landscape features and then we and the parish were trying to defend it and then we have zero for observation or field of fire and those are areas that are open to observation from a point or areas that are under fire so if you're within an area that c reached by a musket or a rifle that's within the field of fire we have to do cover concealment so landscape features that high troops from observation or fire so the woods in the trees that were on battle hill and so the british couldn't see the continentals that's considered cover concealment obstacles lionsgate features that limit movements so parts of battle hill because of the terrain associate that could be get to the battlefield and what they used to get away so a lot of traditionally people looked at mostly these upper ones for the battlefields where people shooting at each other were this approach kind of exp that to cut a secondary landscape features like avenues of approach retreat what areas maybe not of had direct fighting but were actually pivotal or influential for the battle so how do we do after he was shot but he had died and she was applying for a pension and social as part of a pension you had to show explain where you were your relatives fought in the war list what campaigns  battles they were in and sometimes these pensions are very detail as this one has it so what we're looking for is in the red so look at the file or past passport and or buy a ledge of rocks on his left  direction and then would creek with a thick swamp on his right and then a distance upward of twenty miles so right there we have distance of how long you took to get someplace descriptions of the terrain off like rocks and wood creek and swamps so this gives us a really good description of what the landscape and terrain was like during the battle and kind of the move his movements during the battle through this landscape here's from a british officer major gordon forbes of the knights regiment and again so kind of direction so front what body past the creek on the left and we have to do some kind of tweaking because not everybody's saying we're going to say like would creek some might just say creek some might say would creek so you kind of have to standardise the descriptions and then i think would across the creek on the left flank of the regiments again it gives you direction from where he's standing to where the attacker movements happening and then where eat where they retreated to so we took post on top of the high hill to our difficult because we also want to find out who is actually at ford and so i can tell us where to look for if there was an officer or a soldier to see if they wrote a diary or a letter or journal captain james gray wrote a lot letters he also did a day by day synopsis of what happened every day on the back of his muster roll for his company that's the front of it and so we could also use the muster old to figure out counts of who was there because for  such a chaotic retreat you have a mixed group of troops of fort ticonderoga at the get merged with the troops from schemes borough wasso get merged with the fifteenth massachusetts who are stationed at ford and so it's really difficult to figure out who was there so we have to go this is what we put together on the british are pretty easy they're all the knights regiment of foot under colonel hill about one hundred ninety soldiers the first day we have the second new hampshire with about six hundred troops one hundred fifty soldiers that are injured from fort ticonderoga and also other mixed regiments we have james gray's third regiment from new hampshire with about fifty the fifteenth massachusetts with about forty four troops and then the six doesn't really show up the eighth but they bring up another four hundred soldiers so from there we can get a get a total number of troops for each side and you can see what the cut aside it's very mixed not kind of one central military unit there and we also use historic maps which are very useful so we have this seven hundred seventy seven campaign map which shows generally what like the larger topographic features are where generally where the forts were and the rivers we can match set up so this one's like from the mid eighty's hundreds and you can see already they've called that battle hill  what we do with we can in put these maps in g i s we actually can tie them into modern day maps inch stretch and shrink the these historic maps to fit an overlay of the current maps that can help us find were that confuses a lot of people but then in forty six better hold it back up to the other side of the creek and so you can also see use these maps to see what because we're also looking for what changes that happened after the battle and so you can see the champlain canal kind of cuts into wood creek there there's a railroad that goes there that cuts into things we get in the forty's forty  built up a lot so there's a new road that goes there too along with the road so there's a lot of transportation routes because just as in the seventeen hundreds it was a good transportation crossing even today it's a good transportation crossing   this is on top of the ridge is kind of an area where the british troops probably positioned selves after they retreated from the base up to the top to get away from the continentals on this is kind of shows the  battle hill so this is up around there would be where the british were retreated to and this is basically kind of generally where the connell's were standing again another piece example the it's a very steep hill this is taken from on top of it looking out towards the village of florida and you can you can see just how rocky and steep hill is of a from a continental position looking at where the british were up there and just again how much this was in the early spring where there was a lot of undergrowth it's a lot thicker with the undergrowth and trees during the summer months and it kind of an overall view just to rocky and steep again so some of the artifacts we found we found quite a few musket balls what the it was interesting we with the british troops  based on an account from one of the privates the british troops apparently were getting lazy and they didn't want to use their ramrods to load the muskets so instead they would just bash the butts of their muskets on the ground instead of using rubber and the officers really did not like that because basically it doesn't do a really good load and it can lead to a lot of misfires and if you're in the heat of battle it's hard to hear if your guns actually misfiring so  get a lot of times is soldiers just keep reloading and reloading even though there was a gun has it actually gone off so this is a fireball musket ball musket balls are larger than rifle musket ball with like three to four buckshot like little tiny b b and that basically turns your must get into a shotgun and and here's another that's the same one we also found one of these which somewhat is kind of a unique type of bullet where they found someone or so these at monmouth battlefield and they say that basically the it was there we also found this this is a gun flints and go flits are pretty fragile because they're just stone like listening to a so they can easily fracture so what they would do to protect it and it's hard to see in this one but this is a this outer thing is a piece of lead and lets pretty soft that's way with the musket balls when they fire they get all bushed up and that's all we can telephone musket ball is fired or it sometimes soldiers would just drop musket balls and we can find those and then you could tell they still have the seams from the molds and they're really nicely round the ones that are fire kind of smashed but let's pretty soft and in this one two between the lead and the gun flint is a small piece a leather with it was still intact and that they put that in the  what's in the hammer of the musket when it fires down it doesn't break your conflict so that we don't have to replace it and this one we found was pretty exciting as a rifle ball so kind of make a safe assumption that if we find a rifle ball there was probably fired by abolishing because militia people had to supply their own weapons and so they were usually just bring their rifles that they had at home anyway model so if you're standing at ford and everything in this green you could see all the stuff in pink you can't see so kind of the computer goes through so if there is like a hill in your way it realizes you can't see through hills so it'll turn that into the pinks showing that you can't see it so forty and they had a pretty good view of cut at least the south side of battle hill and so again you could see the fort was to see who could was coming in through this pass along what creek and so they get a good idea of who's coming in and out there if you're in the british position after they retreated up top of work battle hill that's what they have little red dots are hypothetical british positions that's what they could see they could see way out in the valley but not down here where the continentals were standing so these red dots are kind of hypothetical continental positions so from these red dots they could see pretty much the base or the sides of battlefield they couldn't see really the top where the british were so you can see why there was such a standoff or still make neither side could really hit each other or see each other which feeds into kind of we did a range of fire analysis which basically like the view shed but it kind of does it with different arm types so this is based on mus ets and muskets were very inaccurate they could only reach basically fifty yards for accuracy so again for hypothetical british positions along the top what could they reach and just in the peak they couldn't really reach much downslope and this is from the continental positions where they could hit with a musket and again they can hit the sides but not the tops where the british so the others that's why these battle battle took so long without a lot of casualties even though they were firing a lot they just couldn't reach each other either side now because the militia had rifles we did rifle the rifles could get up accuracy up to like three hundred yards they're a lot more accurate over a longer distances again you could get further distance but still not top of the range where the british were so we also go and look after we have a aerial photo from the thirty's shows kind of there's that canal that went and straightened out what creek so that did a lot of damage just along the path of the creek there's a railroad and road that goes that way and if we do an aerial it today the most the landscape has really changed from the thirty's to today the biggest change is kind of an updating of the road that new york or us for that goes through the road they carved right into battle hill and so there's a steep kind of rock wall right on the side of us for and it was a plaque commemorating battle hill and i think so we're volunteers bravely put flags on the market but yeah see what creek is generally a meandering creek but canals don't do well with miranda or so they straighten out like here or does make a more straighter pa again they're kind of just chopping up those oxbows and it reaches all wade out to fort village or fort in and this is what it looks like after they cut straight out to the big rock face  there's also other interesting things of revolutionary war veteran who i don't think he fought for and but he fought other battles he cut after the war lived in florida and then when he died he had himself buried within the boundaries of the battlefield so it is part of the battlefield now kind of a post battle  feature there's also some like us rock wall is actually marks a property line for on the hill battle hill but besides that there's not a lot of historic evidence of use for the battle there there's  railroad it cuts into along wood creek in the canal so you can see railroads do a lot of impact that's what ford and looks like today and it's accurately with the a t m machine so yeah that's a total reconstruction probably not really reflective of the original one but pretty close and i think the fort it's probably a pretty impact a lot so would be hard to find evidence of the actual fo pretty close i mean it wasn't large it was probably meant to house about thirty troops when it was in regular use during the battle because you had all these people from fort ticonderoga stuff you had close to a thousand troops probably outside of it more than in the fort old enamelware tin cans scattered throughout so there could still be battlefield stuff below that but it we use a lot of metal detecting for battlefield research and this metal kind of masks any battlefield r really as you probably can't preserve all of it a lot of the stuff's already impacted because it's either like us fours a lot of that and there's another road down there so that's already kind of taken out but there's still local stuff you can keep preserved and actually the landowner after discussions of seeing the significance of battlefield for dan and he actually sold this property and donated a lot of it  to the civil war trust and the town afforded him and i think the long term plans is to turn it into a park so it's a kind of a happy ending as far as preservation there's a closer boundary of battle hill and kind of a more what's called potential partner area but basically what could be put on the national register of historic places there's kind of more of a updated map and  whorehouses that's a bad word but out bill he's related to ford in so like there's a sawmill and different out aspects that were kind of tied to the general landscape of the battle but weren't actually skins false is kind of off to the side but that we didn't find any evidence of the troops currently crossing in during that battle they tried they burned it after they had the cardinals burned it after they left the battlefield of forty and by their kind of no direct here i mean they're they're different you can usually like especially if it's more modern you can usually tell the difference just because they change but i think we're fairly confident that it's for the battle i think it's close to fifty acres  their funding for grants because of battlefield protection program they do like archaeological and historic research grants but they also do like real estate grants for either a land acquisition or easements but up until recently they only could do that so they only have the authority to do that for civil war battlefields a couple years ago they changed they updated the law to also apply it to rev war and war way to twelve battlefields so when they first start the civil war trust first started as they can only preserve civil war battlefields that's where they get their name and i think i think they've been talking about maybe updating that a they do have a sub program with this award cross called camp paid seven hundred seventy six yeah yeah yeah it's even during the revolutionary war they would do the spell i mean because spelling during the revolutionary war is there was no real standard spelling so some people spell things one things one way but  to for the revolutionary earth up until the end of the revolution for and what the e u has considered the official spelling and then it i think eighteen zero seven the village in the tower drop to eat it's the story now it's become more myth that it's hard to get the truth but there's like a fight between the two of there who is going to claim credit for capturing him so they end up killing well jane mcrae and her friend and it becomes a big that the continental to use it to rally against her going invasion if you know yeah so basically more like the british or britain look what the british are doing they're bringing these native americans to kill us we need to protect our people and that's why we need to stand and fight and so it becomes kind of a propaganda thing to watch the continentals and then the loyalists are like well she was tied to a loyalist and they killed her they could kill us and then the hubbard and that law which led to benny the battle of bennington and if it's true from my research it's true that they had to disobey skyward you said forget about it and they said i don't think so because all stores are v we're going once them so we're going to defend bennett and early defend it but they really you know slaughter them so that's one number two when you say native americans can you tell the truth to tell us what tribes because are allied with the british and they were neither with the continental us but that's a little bit later and what kind of it starts about this time but it's out in the mohawk valley more than here where that the kind of buy starts up  because some people within a tribe would ally with one versus the other so i could delaware if you look out west new york you had some that were fighting with the british but they also have some that are  from his leadership role the northern part one replaced by horatio gates a lot of that's kind of tied into politics between new england in new york where they also see him because of his dutch background they don't like that the new england continental congress don't like that and they use that as an excuse there's even some accusation that he's a tory think those are for granted at all so i think that was just the excuse to get rid of him books mugs and eighty picking up a christmas present early present for someone in your family looking around the room unfortunately our speaker is probably the youngest person in the room along with our camera operator and we do have some young children's books out there about four or five titles of those that you might want to take a look at we have we'll randall's biography to be thin and also the new book my traveling america is also out there so again thank you for coming enjoy your thanksgiving everybody