Old Fort Johnson: Sir William and the Mohawk Alliance

Sir William Johnson arrived from Ireland in the seventeen thirties and settled in the Mohawk Valley as a merchant. What distinguished him was an unusual talent: he learned the Mohawk language, attended their ceremonies, and built genuine relationships across cultural lines. In the years that followed he forged close ties with the Mohawk, and the British colonial government appointed him its agent to the Iroquois Confederacy.

He built this stone house, known as Fort Johnson, in seventeen forty-nine, using it as his baronial home, trading post, and Indian council site through the French and Indian War. It is one of the best-preserved structures surviving from that conflict period. Johnson went on to command Iroquois and colonial forces at the Battle of Lake George in seventeen fifty-five. Old Fort Johnson is now managed by the Montgomery County Historical Society and is open as a museum, the Georgian fieldstone walls largely unchanged since Johnson walked out the front door two and a half centuries ago.