General Hospital – 1777

At Mount Independence, a shallow dry-laid stone foundation marked the site of the largest building there, a 250-foot-long by 24-foot-wide, two-story wood-frame General Hospital ordered in 1777 to hold six hundred sick people along with rooms for the director and other hospital officers. The idea for the hospital arose in November 1776 after two Continental Congressmen inspecting medical care at Mount Independence and Fort Ticonderoga found shocking conditions and urged investigation and improvement, leading Congress on November 29 to resolve that a general hospital be erected on Mount Independence. Chief Engineer Jeduthan Baldwin drew plans on March 12 and recorded the cutting and gathering of timber through March, laid out the ground on May 5, and saw the north wall raised on May 27. On June 14, Rev. Enos Hitchcock wrote that the hospital was about one third covered, but on June 25 Gen. Philip Schuyler complained that not one single room was yet finished, and as the British approached, construction stopped while efforts shifted to strengthening the fortifications. The American evacuation on July 5 and 6 left the unfinished structure intact, and the British completed the shell, supplied it with medical staff and equipment, and by mid-July received British and American wounded from the July 7 fighting at Hubbardton, Vermont, and Fort Ann, New York. When the British withdrew on November 8, 1777, they packed the medical supplies onto a vessel bound for Canada and burned the hospital.

Orwell, Vermont · United States