The French at Crown Point

In 1730, the French erected a small wooden fort at Point a la Chevelure, now Chimney Point, Vermont, taking control of territory claimed by Great Britain under the Treaty of Utrecht of 1713. The following year, construction of Fort St. Frédéric began on the western shore of the lake, and by 1737 the fort was completed and garrisoned by about one hundred officers and men. For the next quarter-century, raiding parties from this post, including the one that burned Saratoga in 1745, kept British frontier settlements in a constant state of alarm. Fort St. Frédéric was also an outpost of French culture in the Champlain Valley, where soldier-settlers cultivated farms on both shores of the lake, the population steadily increased with encouragement from the French government, and the fort’s chapel served soldiers and civilians alike. Fort St. Frédéric and its surrounding settlements, the first European community in the southern Champlain Valley, were hastily evacuated when the British army advanced in 1759.

Crown Point, New York · United States