Windmills of Québec III: Moulin á Pointe de la Chevelure, Fort Saint-Frederic

This is the windmill we will never see because it no longer exists.  To imagine this windmill, you must first remember Lake Champlain and the lands surrounding it were part of the French Québec colony before the Seven Years War and not British. This windmill was designed by Gaspard Joseph Chaussegros de Léry and constructed at Pointe de la Chevelure, the site of the French colony at Fort Saint-Frederic, present day Crown Point, New York.

(click on image to enlarge)

Theodore G. Corbett  in A Clash of Cultures on the Warpath of Nations writes : "The king's engineer also designed an elaborate stone windmill to the south of St. Frederic along the lakeshore.  Constructed in 1739 at the king's expense, it was aimed at encouraging the settlement by providing a means to grind grain.  Operating with a mill stone imported from France, here was an indication that the Pointe was to be a permanent agricultural community.  A decade later, this goal was modified as the mill also served as a defensive purpose with five or six swivels mounted on it.  A wooden wharf completed the complex, serving schooners and bateaux that plied the lake". Pages 177-176.

When I last toured the site, I recall the guide told us the windmill was located close to the present day Champlain Memorial off the campground at Crown Point. See the Google location below for the approximate siting of the windmill!

Images of Crown Point on Lake Champlain circa 1900

Dorothy Wills Mylott, who lived most of her life in the Hudson-Mohawk Industrial area, bought these photographs of Crown Point at an auction in 1990.  I wonder if she realized Crown Point was a central place in her family's history.  Her French Canadian ancestor, Joseph Payant sailed Lake Champlain from Fort St Frederic (later known as Crown Point) to Ile aux Noix.  Her French Canadian grandfather, Jacques Beauvais, fought in the Seven Years War to keep it in the French domain. Her Cornish grandfather worked many years in the mines of Port Henry over in the hills beyond the lake shore. 

Fort St Frederic at Crown Point

If you walk amidst the ruins of Fort St Frederic today, you must carry your imagination every step of the way.  It is a wonderful way to remember the activities and the goings on in the vicinity.  Stay walking within the boundary of the French fort.  Don't go ramble over the the larger structure built by Jeffery Amherst a few yards to the northwest.  That structure is called Crown Point and it didn't exist in 1740 or in 1750.  There was just Fort St Frederic and a lively place it was.

Guy Omeron Coolidge in French Occupation of the Champlain Valley from 1609 to 1759 stated the French occupied this spot, called Pointe a la Chevelure from 1700 and used it for commerce for English goods.  Theodore G. Corbett writing in A Clash of Cultures on the Warpath of Nations: the Colonial Wars in the Hudson Champlain Valleys (Fleischmanns, NY: Purple Mountain Press, 2002.) describes the fort and ancillary structures, built in 1731, that made Fort St Frederic on the Pointe a la Chevelure a grand site in the wilderness and a permanent one at that. There was a chapel, barracks, a bakehouse, a storehouse and a windmill to grind grain raised by soldiers in nearby fields and the very French style blockhouse.  Soldiers were able to marry there and raise children who were baptized in the church registers.  Most of all Fort St Frederic was a culturally diversified community as natives, Dutch, English and French, freeman, captives, slaves all passed through, traded, or were traded! Goods were exchanged as soldiers, soldier-farmers, praying Indians (Mohican), Abenaki allies, Iroquois enemies, English captives, colonial militias, Hudson Valley Dutch middleman, African American slaves all moved in and out of Fort St Frederic on their way to other destinations like Albany, Montréal, Fort Number Four, Québec City or Boston.  It was the departure point for French raids into colonial New England as well as the target of New York and Massachusetts colonial government plans to destroy it.  In contemporary jargon, it was a "hopping place". 

When you walk around these ruins, imagine!

Imagine this! A busy trading center with visitors coming and going

The plan of the fort with the blockhouse in the northeast corner

Looking northwest to present day Port Henry from Point la Chevelure

In 1759, as the French were losing their power in the Champlain Valley, the French troops did abandon Fort St Frederic but they did not leave it intact for the English to benefit.  Instead the French troops blow it up...

Abandonment of Fort St Frederic by Dahl Taylor
as displayed in the Visitor's Center at Crown Point

Here is a list of stories on this blog about the forts in the Champlain-Richelieu Valleys:

Forts of Our Forefathers in the Champlain-Richelieu Valleys

Fort Chambly

Fort St Therese

Hunting for Fort St Therese

Fort St Frederic at Crown Point

Fort Carillon

Battle of Fort Carillon