Fort Ontario

Volunteers Wanted. Greeters, Museum Shop, Guides, Gardens & Monuments, Events & more. Call Caroline at 315-343-4711 or [email protected]

On this day in Fort Ontario history, On the morning of May 4, 1814, a Royal Navy squadron of seven ships towing gunboats and troop barges sailed from Kingston, Ontario with 900 sailors and 991 soldiers and marines on board. That night the ships dropped anchor in lee of the Ducks (Islands) to wait out a storm. About midnight the ships sailed west, and by 3 AM on May 5th, they set their studding sails for the southeast run down to Oswego. On May 5th - 9th from 10:00 AM to 4:...30 PM, Friends of Fort Ontario AmeriCorps Staffers Corey King and Marilyn Huntington will offer a free, self-guided and socially distant walking tour of the 75-acre Fort Ontario National Register District on the Battle of Oswego. Flags will be placed were soldiers are believed to have been killed, wounded or captured during the battle. Hikers are to report to the old stone fort where they will receive a booklet which includes maps that will guide them to stopping points of the battle. They will walk in the footsteps of history and use original sources to help them imagine how the landscape was devastated by the battle. The booklets need to be returned, and masks are required to be worn inside the old stone fort.

Thanks to all who volunteered at the 2021 I Love My Park Day at Fort Ontario State Historic Site! Opening Day is 5 May 2021!

266 years of Fort Ontario. Come celebrate the beauty in our own backyard, visit the Fort and enjoy the scenic views that surround this majestic Fort. Tomorrow on May 5, Fort Ontario State Historic Site opens for the 2021 season. Fort Ontario will be open Wednesday - Saturday, 10 A. M. - 4:30 P. M., and on Sunday 12 A. M. - 4: 30 P. M. Closed Monday and Tuesday. We will be open on Monday holidays. The last day of the 2021 season will be October 11. We require that COVID-19 protocols be followed. Masks are required. Looking forward to your visit.

The sky was blue and the sun was bright, but they couldn't compete with Rebecca's smile at I Love My Park Day.

ILMPD Fort Ontario 2021. The Guard at the Gate. Thanks Christopher Maas of Oswego!

Crisp and Clear Conditions at the 10th Annual I Love My Park Day at Fort Ontario State Historic Site and the Safe Haven Holocaust Refugee Shelter Museum!

Please enjoy checking out the fascinating artifacts on here that are on display in the old stone fort while Fort Ontario is closed for the season. New artifacts will be uploaded on here regularly.

#GroundhogDay "Half a century ago a small boy took especial delight in climbing an old tree, now unhappily gone, to pick and eat ripe sickle pears. That was abo...ut one hundred feet to the west of where I am standing now. And just to the north he used to lie flat between the strawberry rows and eat sun-warmed strawberries-the best in the world. In the spring of the year, in hip rubber boots, he sailed his first toy boats in the surface water formed by the melting snow. In the summer with his dogs he dug into woodchuck holes in this same field, and some of you are standing on top of those holes at this minute. (Laughter) Indeed, the descendants of those same woodchucks still inhabit this field and I hope that, under the auspices of the National Archivist, they will continue to do so for all time." - Franklin D. Roosevelt, Address at the Cornerstone Laying of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, New York, November 19, 1939 : MO 1956.164, sketch by Olin Dows See more

Brigadier-General Benjamin O. Davis Sr., the highest ranking black officer in the army, succeeded in opening technical fields to African-American troops for the first time when the 369th Infantry Regiment (Harlem Hellfighters) was federalized and trained as Anti-Aircraft Artillery at Fort Ontario, a milestone in the Civil Rights Movement. Wednesday, January 22, 1941.

The Fulton Patriot, February 1, 1934 HIRAM LODGE ENTERTAINS Private Dennison of Fort Ontario, who accompanied Rear Admiral Richard E. Byrd on the first expedition to the South Pole in 1929, and spent two years at Little America, will tell the local Masons and their guests of this remarkable experience at a lodge dinner at Masonic temple on Friday evening at 6:30. Private Dennison wears a medal bestowed by Congress for his part in this famous venture, and through the efforts of Past Master Harry E. Griffiths of Hiram Lodge, has been granted special leave to come to Fulton to give this timely address. Those who have heard, Private Dennison state that he holds his listeners spellbound by his thrilling and instructive tale of this outstanding feat of the last decade. The ladies of the Eastern Star will serve the dinner.

Friends sponsored Americorps staffer Marilyn Huntingdon recently submitted her first post on the Fort Ontario Facebook page. She is conducting research for and posting interesting information and images to the Friends page to stimulate membership and raise awareness of Fort Ontario's significant history from the French & Indian War to Veterans housing complex during the post-WWII Housing Emergency. Membership forms are available on the Friends website [historicfortontario.com]. Enlist now!

January 1919 Fort Ontario Post

It's that time of year again! Though we are not doing a formal ceremony inside the fort this year, the wreaths will still be brought to Fort Ontario and will be placed in the Post Cemetery on December 19th, 2020. More information will be released when it becomes available. The cut off for sponsoring wreaths this year is November 30th! Any help will be greatly appreciated!

Here are comments I have submitted to the hearing before the Port Board in Nov. 5th: Comments on Port Master Plan While the proposed Port Master plan is in s...ome ways a step in the right direction as far as the west side of the harbor is concerned, it’s emphasis on grain shipment on the east side of the port is a throwback to earlier days and a manifestation of the thought syndrome that If we build it , they shall come. The projected grain handling for export of Central NY grain production, and the levels of anticipated use is unsubstantiated at best, and wishful thinking at the worst. To build a 165 foot tall behemoth to handle grain exporting is a more significant visual impact on the view shed of Fort Ontario than the much criticized barrel storage facility , which many Oswegonians, including the Friends of Fort Ontario found objectionable as it negatively impacted the view shed 30 years ago. . This new monstrosity will serve to further the uglification of the port, and amounts to a one step forward ( west side) and a two steps backward approach to port development. I argued nearly thirty years ago that soybeans and potash do not eat out in local restaurants, buy gas and food, and shop for other necessary sundries. The most significant local economic impact is that such shipments help provide employment for a dozen or so longshoreman. That is a good thing, but there are better uses and higher returns on money to be invested that the consideration of raw commodity shipping. For example, the construction of a car and passenger boat ferry at the site would produce a much more significant positive economic impact on the city and the area. A ferry to Kingston is something that the former Owner of the Empire Boat line, Paul Quackenbush , was considering before his untimely death in an automobile crash in. 1990. Since then , great strides have been made in the promotion of Fort Ontario as a National park, with the inclusion and expansion of the Safe Haven museum. There is enormous potential there for growth and ancillary construction of tourist facilities which would make greater use of the Fitzgibbons site for development than plunking a warehouse and additional rail coupling on the site. This study is inadequate, incomplete, and ill advised, and should be sent back to the drawing board for being blinded by its own limited vision of what could be. There is no evidence of any visionary or outside of the box thinking which could serve us all better. It is more of the same limited view of the role of the port which produced that barrel shaped behemoth building that has never lived up to its projected value vs. it’s adverse effect on the overall visual ambience of the port. Building a bigger and uglier edifice amounts to cutting off our collective noses to spite our faces. I would recommend going back to the drawing board for the port, and broadening the horizon of the limited thinking which produced this report. These views are my own, and are not intended to represent the views of the Mayor’s Waterfront Commission which I chair.i Respectfully submitted, John T.Sullivan 1 West Seneca St., Oswego, NY.

On October 24, 1945, 75 years ago a joint report of the State, Justice, and Interior Departments on the Fort Ontario Emergency Refugee Shelter residents was forwarded to the three respective Cabinet Officers; James Byrnes, Thomas Clark, & Harold Ickes. It contained the results of a detailed survey of shelter residents conducted from September 14-22, 1945 to ascertain their desires for future residence and the practicality of returning them to their homelands. The panel foun...d that 32 persons desired repatriation, 72 persons desired to seek admission to other countries, and the balance of 814 persons presented various reasons for not wishing to return to countries of origin. The panel agreed unanimously that 119 individuals in the last group should be classified as "not practical to return" and the War Relocation Authority (WRA) representatives dissented on 90% of the remaining 695 cases classed by the other two representatives as "repatriable." The difference of opinion was based on the desire of the persons involved--the State and Justice Departments feeling that this should not be taken into account in determining "practicality." The WRA representative held that, in the view of conditions in Europe and the policy of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) and the US Army not to force involuntary repatriation, this group should be permitted to remain in the US. (In TOKEN SHIPMENT, p.98-99, Edward B. Marks 1946). From August 5, 1945 to February 5, 1946, Fort Ontario served as the only camp or shelter for Holocaust Refugees in the United States.

National Mule Day 2020. This photograph taken by Nurse Esther Thompson (later Glen) at U.S.A. General Hospital No.5 - Fort Ontario in 1918 is captioned "Part of Our Sanitary Equipment." It depicts a soldier emptying a garbage can into a cart pulled by light colored army mule behind an officers quarters, likely the one housing nurses. In the background across the ballfield, running track, and parade ground is the white painted Red Cross Building, wood frame Hospital Wards, the fort power plant with tall smokestack, and the houses of East 9th Street. Mules and horses at Fort Ontario were housed in a stable now used as a skating rink.

Volunteers Ellen Hammer and Randy Marshall put the Refugee Monument Garden to bed for the winter today. They will return in the spring to plant and care for new beds of annuals at the monument dedicated to the 982 Holocaust refugees brought to Fort Ontario in 1944 and the six million victims of the Nazis. Thank you Ellen and Randy!

Fort Ontario would like to thank everyone for making the 2020 season a success even when things didn't go as planned. Thank you visitors, staff and especially our volunteers! See you in 2021...we are now closed for the season. Please continue to enjoy our outside grounds and reading our historic posts.

With the weather looking good this week, Fort Ontario State Historic Site will remain open until 10/18/2020. Wednesday - Saturday 10-4:30. Sunday 12:00-4:30.

Yes we are OPEN today! 10am - 4:30pm; Adults $4; Seniors (62 & over) & Students 3$; kids 12 and under are free.

"Oswego October 12th: 1754[,] Whereas Derick Petre informs me that the Receipt I gave him of the 16th of September last for Provisions for the use of this garrison was lost [.] I hereby certify that I then received of him for the use of this garrison [,] Fifteen Skipples of Indian Corn [,] Thirty Three Skipples of Peas [,] Two Thousand Two Hundred Fifty Seven Pounds of Meal, Seven Barrels of Pork, One Barrel of Rum. Xxxxx Hitchen Holland On this day in 1754 Lieutenant Hitch...en Holland supplied Derick Petre with this copy of a receipt Petrie lost for provisions delivered to Fort Oswego on September 16, 1754. The receipt was recently acquired by the Friends of Fort Ontario for the collection of Fort Ontario State Historic Site. Hitchen Holland had a long career as a soldier, officer, and colonial official involved with the fur trade post at Oswego and Fort Oswego. He is believed to have been born in NYC around 1713 and married Margaret Collings in 1735, the daughter of an officer in a NY Independent Company at Fort Oswego. Independent Companies were not attached to the regular British Army or the NY colonial militia. Instead, they were funded and supported by the British Board of Trade & Plantations, Treasury and Pay Office. By the 1740’s Hitchen Holland was referred to as the Commander and Commissary of Oswego. In 1751 he was commissioned a Justice of the Peace for Oswego. Holland served as Commissary at Oswego until 1756 when the large concentration of British forces assembled there by General William Shirley relegated him to a subordinate position. He endured the siege and capture of Oswego by the French in August 1756, where according to Sir William Johnson, he suffered greatly. Afterwards, in ill health, Hitchen Holland retired to his home south of Albany to convalesce. He died in July 1762. Derick Petrie’s October 12, 1754 receipt lists 15 Skipples (Skipple = .75 bushel) of Indian corn, 33 skipples of peas, 2250 pounds of meal, 7 barrels of pork and one barrel of rum. This winter shipment of provisions illustrates the limited variety of foodstuffs and dietary range supplied to the Fort Oswego garrison for the winter of 1754-55. Foodstuffs and stores were transported on bateau along the arduous Mohawk River-Oneida Lake-Oswego River route from Schenectady to Oswego by forwarders such as Derick Petrie from the early 1700’s to the advent of the Erie and Oswego Canals.

Another beautiful fall day at Fort Ontario with volunteers interpreting its history from the French & Indian War through WWII. The fort will be open Monday, Columbus Day from 10 AM to 4:30 PM.

Park Manager Tim Gray, Park Worker Brian Hibbert, and Park & Recreation Aide James Morrisette of the fort's Maintenance Department have completed repairs and painting of the metal roof of the 1821-22 Lighthouse Keepers Residence. The roof over the main house was installed around 1884 when major repairs were made to the building. During or shortly after WWI a wooden rear addition was replaced with stone masonry, and a new metal roof was installed over it. The building is th...e oldest lighthouse keepers residence on the Great Lakes, and is the 2nd oldest in the United States. The historic photograph is from the Captain Conger Brown collection of Fort Ontario SHS. Brown and his family lived in the house in 1943. He was attached to the 1212th Special Service Battalion which administered and maintained the 3000-man 80-acre army post from 1940-1944. See more

Just another day at Fort Ontario!

Recruit training. Learning the Manual of Arms from Upton's 1867 Manual for Double and Single Rank.