A Frontier Place: The Transformation of Colonial Albany, 1756–1763

Abstract

Winter came early to Albany, New York, in 1756. In August, a chill was starting to wind through the frontier town. Normally, Albany was a warm, friendly place—the kind of small city where “a gentleman had to keep his hat in constant motion” as he passed residents spending their evenings on their front porches.1 But in August 1756, the porches were empty and the doors were shut, not so much against the cold as against the British army that was settling into early “winter quarters” in Albany. As the town was forced to expand to house the soldiers who streamed through its small fort, residents offered a frigid welcome. One fur trader, already suffering the effects of the war on his business, tossed his assigned soldier’s luggage into the street. The frosty response of the commanding general, Lord Loudoun, was to forcefully install the soldiers in their new home and threaten that any other resisters would see their homes turned into a storehouse or hospital while the owner could “Shift for himself ” through the winter.2 The army was there for the defense of the British North American frontier, but for the civilians in Albany, it felt like an invasion. Because of its location, Albany was critical for the British army as a staging point for defending forts in the west or north as the Seven Years’ War began to expand beyond the early encounters in the Ohio River valley. The British had Fort Frederick at Albany and built Fort Edward and Fort William Henry near Lake George in 1755. At the same time, the French built Fort Carillon (later Fort Ticonderoga) and Fort St. Frédéric (Crown Point) between Lake George and Lake Champlain. Albany was somewhat protected while the British forts were standing, and it had an—almost—large enough population and