CHAPTER ELEVEN The Restoration of Fort Ticonderoga

by John H. G. Pell

After the Revolution, all crown lands reverted not to the national government, but to the States in which they were situated. The Garrison Grounds at Fort Ticonderoga and other pieces were designated by the State of New York for educational purposes on March 31, 1790. On Sept. 12, 1803, the Garrison Grounds were deeded to Columbia and Union Colleges jointly by the State.

William Ferris Pell, a New York business man, spent these years in Burlington, Vermont. He made many trips between Canada, Burlington and New York. While traveling up and down Lake Champlain he was struck by the beauty of the point of land on which the Fort stands, and the romantic interest of the ruins of the Fort. He determined to build a house there, if ever able to do so.

Returning to New York he organized the firm of Pells and Company, importers of mahogany and marble. This firm flourished for a hundred years. Mr. Pell leased the property from Columbia and Union Colleges and shortly thereafter built a house which he called “Beaumont.” The house was situated below the Fort between the garden laid out by the French officers in 1756 and the shores of Lake Champlain. Mr. Pell was much interested in horticulture and he restored the old garden and imported many plants from Europe and from the nurseries on Long Island to embellish and beautify it.

In 1820, he undertook to secure the deeds to the Garrison grounds and they were purchased by him from Union College on July 28, 1820 and from Columbia College on September 4, 1820.

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The Pavilion—Built in 1826

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In addition to building a house and replanting the garden, he tried to stop the depredations which were occurring to the Fort. The two buildings that were standing after the Revolution, the South and West Barracks, were ruined by the early settlers, who removed everything movable—doors, windows, floor boards, etc., and eventually the very beams themselves. Thousands of loads of stone were carted away for foundations. Some men had repaired the French lime kiln and were burning the walls of the Fort for lime. Mr. Pell had to buy up the numerous squatters’ rights but he eventually succeeded in stopping the destruction. He fenced in various earthworks and redoubts to prevent them being plowed under and did his best to preserve what was left. He was a man of vision. Had it not been for William Ferris Pell and those who came after him not a stone in Fort Ticonderoga would be in place today. Every one would have been carted away or destroyed.

In 1825, “Beaumont” burned and in 1826, he built “The Pavilion” which is still standing and occupied by his descendants. “The Pavilion” was built on the edge of “Le Jardin du Roi,” a garden laid out by Captain de Pontleroy, an engineer officer stationed here during the French occupation, and renamed “The King’s Garden” by the British, which name it has borne ever since. Mr. Pell spent his summers here. His oldest son, Archibald, had decided to be a gentleman farmer and took over the management of the place, but was killed by the explosion of a cannon he was firing as a salute to his father who was coming up the Lake, April 19th, 1838. Thereafter William Ferris Pell could not bear to live at his beloved Ticonderoga. He died intestate and no will was ever found, but he was a good business man and it is unlikely that he failed to make a will, but safe deposit boxes were unknown in that day and wills were kept in desks. Family tradition is that one of his sons found and read the will, was dissatisfied with his share, and destroyed it. At any rate, the property then passed in equal shares to his ten children. None of them could afford to keep up “The Pavilion,” so it was rented to various people who ran it as a boarding house and hotel for many years. However, seldom a summer went by without some member of the family spending time at “The Pavilion,” James Kent Pell, son of William Ferris, managed the property for his brothers and sisters for many years and struggled to preserve it. He was shocked on coming up one summer to find that the breast-high wall running from the Fort to the lake, and a large part of the Pontleroy and Germain Redoubts had been carted to the lake front and thrown in for a steamboat landing. The farmer in charge said that the contractor told him he had permission. It was too late to do anything about it.

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Fort Ticonderoga and The Pavilion—1827

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When James Pell died, John Howland Pell, a grandson, managed it for some time and later Howland Pell, a great-grandson, ran the property for a great many years. Howland always hoped that some member of the family would some day take it over and if it had not been for Howland it would have passed out of the family. Some people offered almost as much as the whole property was worth for fifty acres between the Fort and the West shore of the Lake. They wished to build a hotel, but he refused to sell.

Towards the end of the century, Stephen Pell, a little boy of eight and his brother, Howland, were sent up to visit their grandmother who was spending the summer at Fort Ticonderoga at “The Pavilion” which was then rented as a hotel. Filled with self importance at being intrusted with tickets and money for such a long trip alone, the boys finally arrived at Fort Ticonderoga. It is not hard to imagine how the Fort at once captured their interest. Little boys of eight and ten have vivid imaginations and with a doting grandmother who told delightfully the old tales of capture and recapture, these imaginations soon ran riot. They were in turn Montcalm, Allen, Arnold, Burgoyne (always a successful officer). They ran up the hills and over the walls, demanding the surrender, or holding the fort. Thrill of thrills came one day when Stephen found the bronze flint box, containing a flint. It is typical of little boys that an argument resulted—Howland claiming that it was half his as he had dislodged the stone, under which it lay, as he climbed up the hill. It was a beautiful little box that had belonged to a man of means and of distinction. One can see them standing there after the first raptures of finding it were over, eyes shining, picturing the Fort in all its past glory, with the proud walls standing, the flags flying and men in bright uniforms on the parade grounds. The lives of men are swayed by seemingly unimportant things and in Stephen Pell’s life always there was the little flint box and the youthful dream. As he grew older the imagination became an obsession, and the obsession became reality as stone by stone, timber by timber, wall by wall, he repaired and restored the Fort until it stands the old Fort Ticonderoga, all built from a flint box, a little boy’s vivid imagination and a man’s hard work, research and intelligence.

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SIR HENRY CLINTON’S DISPATCH.

THE SILVER BULLET.