How William Johnson Made His Bones
By Bob Cudmore, Focus on History for 02-17-2024
What made William Johnson important in Colonial America especially with his British overlords?
You might borrow a phrase made popular by Godfather movies and Sopranos TV shows that Johnson "made his bones" by defeating the French who attacked him in the Battle of Lake George in 1755.
Johnson was already doing well financially and culturally. The Irish born immigrant had prospered in the fur trade and built a substantial stone home called Fort Johnson in 1749, today a significant and locally operated museum, Old Fort Johnson.
By 1755 the British and their native allies were fighting the French and their native allies for dominance in North America.
Johnson commanded a force of three thousand fighters from four colonies, 250 Mohawk Indian warriors and one British officer, according to historian Mark Silo.
The objective of Johnson's expedition was to attack the French Fort St. Frederic at Crown Point on Lake Champlain. Fort St. Frederic was France's southernmost base. From it they launched raids against towns in New York and New England.
Johnson's army cleared a road and made camp at the southern end of what the British called Lake George and the French called Lac du Saint Sacrement.
Johnson sent a thousand of his soldiers to relieve Fort Edward.
The French attacked this smaller group of Johnson's forces about three miles from Lake George in an ambush called the Bloody Morning Scout. Colonel Ephraim Williams from New England and Mohawk King Hendrick were among those killed.
Silo said the survivors reeled back to Lake George while the men camped at the lake threw up a small defensive breastwork.
"They grabbed logs, they grabbed wagons, they grabbed boats," Silo said. The breastworks gave soldiers something to hide behind to shield themselves from enemy fire.
Silo spent the summer mapping out Johnson's battle lines for the Lake George Battlefield Park Alliance.
One source for finding locations in the Battle of Lake George was a painting that Silo said was drawn by an artist who observed the fighting.
This October Silo plans to speak at the Fort Plain Museum's conference on the American Revolution. He doubts he will do a book since so much is already in print about the Lake George battle.
He got a lot of strange looks from people who were camping when he "poked through" taking notes on his iPad for his research on the Lake George battle lines.
Silo said Johnson had little military experience before this battle. The limited victory made Johnson the first British hero of the war with France.
British King George II was pleased and made Johnson a baronet in recognition of his victory, which made him "Sir" William Johnson. Parliament awarded Johnson 5,000 pounds, a substantial sum.
Britain had its losses but won the war. The 1763 â€" Treaty of Paris awarded all French possessions east of the Mississippi, except New Orleans, to the British. By then Sir William Johnson had built a larger home which is now a state historic site in Johnstown.
Mark Silo is a native of Yonkers who relocated to Albany as a civil engineer with the state Department of Transportation. He is a volunteer for the Lake George Battlefield Park Visitor Interpretive Center.
Silo is also author of "The 115th New York in the Civil War," the history of a local volunteer Civil War regiment.
He was attracted to the topic because his mother-in-law had ancestors who fought with the 115th regiment.
Silo and his wife Kathy split their time between their home in Loudonville, a log cabin on the Schroon River near Lake George and other bucket list locations.
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