Henry Knox and "The Noble Train of Artillery"
A Fort Ticonderoga Bibliography
Current: August 22, 2000
These works in the Fort Ticonderoga research collections in
the Thompson-Pell Research Center may be studied by appointment on weekdays. The
library collections do not circulate. The condition of certain volumes may
prohibit photocopying.
Most of the unique manuscripts in the Fort Ticonderoga
collections have been reprinted in The Bulletin of the Fort Ticonderoga
Museum, published since 1927. The Bulletin may be found in state
historical society libraries in the Northeast and in major university libraries.
Some back issues are still available.
As a private, not-for-profit educational institution, Fort
Ticonderoga welcomes contributions to support the expansion of its research
collections and services.
Sixty tons of artillery (59 cannon and mortars)
hauled from
Crown Point and Fort Ticonderoga. 
Route ran from Fort Ticonderoga to Lake George "down the
west bank of the Hudson as far as Albany, then to cross the river and down the
east Bank as far as Kinderhook, from whence to turn due east across the
Berkshires, through Great Barrington, Monterey, Otis, Blandford, Westfield,
Springfield, and so to Cambridge." (The route from Fort Ticonderoga to the
Massachusetts state line has been traced with 30 granite historical markers,
installed by the state of New York in the late 1920s. The inventory of 30
historical markers placed along the Massachusetts portion of the route is found
in Fiore and Schruth, Noble Train, p. 54.)
Five markers are in Ticonderoga area: (#1) Fort Place
d’Armes; (#2) dock near King’s Store where the cannon were loaded
onto a gundaloe on 6 December 1775 "to get them to the bridge"; (#3)
near Lower Falls in Ticonderoga village, where the cannon were transferred from
water to land carriage, "from the bridge to the landing at Lake
George" on 7 December; (#4) near Mossey Point at Lake George where
Knox had loaded "the scow, Pettianger, and a Battoe" by 9 December; (#5)
Sabbathday Point.
Arrival in Cambridge 24 January 1776; 300 miles in two
months.
Memorial granite markers showing the route were placed in the
summer of 1927. The Bulletin of the Fort Ticonderoga Museum, vol. I no. 2
(July 1927), pp. 1.
Maps
American Heritage, vol. 6 (April 1955), p. 14
North Callahan, Henry Knox, pp. 44-45.
Secondary Sources
General Henry Knox and the Ticonderoga Cannon, Worcester,
Massachusetts, Worcester Historical Society, 1929. [FTA #P-2064].
George Athan Billias, George Washington’s Generals, New
York, William Morrow & Sons, 1964 [FTA #1511].
William L. Bowne, LCDR USNR (Ret.), Ye Cohorn Caravan: The
Knox Expedition in the Winter of 1775-1776, Schuylerville, N.Y., NaPaul
Publishers, 1975. [FTA Res. File]
North Callahan, Henry Knox, 1958 (reprinted 1990 by
the "Friends of Montpelier," a group striving to preserve Knox’s
home in Thomaston, Maine). [FTA #1234].
North Callahan, "Henry Knox: General Washington’s
General," New-York Historical Society Quarterly, vol. 44 (April
1960) pp. 150-165.
Donald B. Chidsey, The Siege of Boston, New York,
1966. [FTA].
Jordan D. Fiore and Susan E. Schruth, "The Noble
Train of Artillery,": 200 Years Ago and Today, Massachusetts
Bicentennial Commission, 1976 [FTA #1990.5].
Alexander C. Flick, "General Henry Knox’s Ticonderoga
Expedition," Proceedings of the New York State Historical Association,
vol. XXVI (1928), pp. 119-135. [FTA #4825].
Richard Frothingham, History of the Siege of Boston,
Boston, 1873.
Edward Pierce Hamilton, Fort Ticonderoga: Key to a
Continent, Boston, Little, Brown, 1964, pp. 129-131.
Lillian B. Miller, "The Dye is Now Cast": The
Road to American Independence, 1774-1776, Washington, DC, National Portrait
Gallery, 1976, pp. 187-189.
Stephen H.P. Pell, Fort Ticonderoga: A Short History,
Ticonderoga, Fort Ticonderoga, 1935+, pp. 68-73.
"Major General Henry Knox," The Bulletin of the
Fort Ticonderoga Museum, vol. III no. 2 (July 1933), cover illustr. and pp.
62-69.
Willard Sterne Randall, Benedict Arnold: Patriot and
Traitor, New York, William Morrow, 1990, pp. 97-98. (Arnold and Bernard
Romans inventory artillery captured at Ticonderoga and Crown Point).
Robert B. Roberts, New York’s Forts in the Revolution,
Rutherford, N.J., Associated University Presses, 1980, pp. 149-186. [FTA]
Primary Sources
"Appoint[ing] Persons In whom this Congress Can Confide,
to Superintend the Removal of the Cannon and Stores . . . to the South end of
Lake George," n.d., unsigned. In Quarterly Journal of the New York State
Historical Association, vol. XI no. 4 (October 1930) pp. 390-392. (Proceedings,
vol. XXVIII). [FTA #4827].
"Cannon, etc., taken at Crown Point and Ticonderoga, 11
May 1775" The Bulletin of the Fort Ticonderoga Museum, vol. VI no.3,
pp. 113-114.
S. DeWitt Bloodgood, The Sexagenary; or Reminiscences of
the American Revolution, Albany, Joel Munsell, 1866. [FTA #3629: Benson J.
Lossing’s copy]. The account of a teamster on the Knox trek, pp. 25-36;
Public Papers of George Clinton, First Governor of New York,
Albany, University of the State of New York, 1914. Ticonderoga: vol. X (G-Z),
pp. 876-877. [FTA].
Drake, Francis S., ed., The Life and Correspondence of
Henry Knox, Boston, 1873 [FTA #1380].
Peter Force, ed., American Archives, 4th Series, pp.
154, 188, 212-220, 225-226, 282, 296, 449, 633. [FTA #4121]
Henry Knox, Diary: 20 November 1775-13 January 1776.
Mss in Massachusetts Historical Society. Available on microfilm, MHS roll P-95.
Published as "Knox’s Diary During His Ticonderoga Expedition," New
England Historical and Genealogical Register, vol. 119 (July 1876), pp.
321-327. See #57 in Witness to America’s Past: Two Centuries of Collecting
by the Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, 1991, pp. 91-92.
Colonel Henry Knox to General Philip Schuyler, Fort George,
17 December 1775. [FTA M-#1937]. Reprinted in The Bulletin of the Fort
Ticonderoga Museum, vol. III no. 2 (July 1933), pp. 68-69.
James Thacher, MD, Military Journal of the American
Revolution, Hartford, Hurlburt, Williams, & Co., 1862. [FTA #3720] See
Appendix.
For detailed research, consult the Henry Knox Papers (12,000
items in 65 volumes and 5 boxes) formerly on deposit at the Massachusetts
Historical Society by the New England Historical & Genealogical Society, and
in 2000 at the Gilder-Lehrman Collection at the Morgan Library, NYC. Only Knox’s
Diary of the Expedition remains at the Massachusetts Historical Society
in 2000. The MHS Knox Papers are available on microfilm through inter-library
loan or by direct purchase from University Microfilms. The Maine Historical
Society holds an additional 11 boxes.
Artworks and Artifacts
Oil painting: Tom Lovell, "The Noble Train of
Artillery," 1946 created for Dixon Pencil Company, and now in the
collections of Fort Ticonderoga.
Two iron cannon said to have been part of the Knox trek from
Ticonderoga. One gun tube was lost through the ice in crossing the Mohawk River
and was not recovered for a century. The second made it to Boston, was displayed
at the Bunker Hill Monument, broken up for scrap during WW II, recovered,
restored, and returned to Fort Ticonderoga.
Jarvis Baillargeon, "Guns of Ticonderoga" [a suite
of 15 paintings, c.1980s, and a video, 1991], exhibited at the Hancock House,
Ticonderoga, New York, 20 June-10 July 1992.
Ref.: 4b/knox
From the Collections of the Fort Ticonderoga Museum
