Description:
Powder horn inscribed "DILLINGTON * JOHNSON * HIS HORN * AUG 6*1759 / CROWNPOINT * I POWDER WITH MY BROTHER BALL / C WHAEN" and ornamented with elaborate scrolling designs, pinwheel-like forms, and a hunting scene with three hunters, one with a rifle, and animals such as dogs, deer, fox, and duck. This may be Dillington Johnson (b. 1740) of Southborough, Massachusetts, the son of Jonathan Johnson (b.1692) and Abigail Bellows (1701-c.1780) of Marlborough and Southborough, Massachusetts, who married Mary Gill in 1780 and then lived in Rutland, Massachusetts. According to William Guthman, Johnson served during the French and Indian War (1754-1763) at Fort William Henry, a British fort on the shores of Lake George, New York, from 1755-1756, and later at Crown Point. Fort William Henry was built in late 1755 (and destroyed by the French in 1757) as a staging ground for attacks against the French Fort Carillon (later renamed Fort Ticonderoga), as part of a chain of British and French forts along the inland waterway from New York City to Quebec. Another of those French forts, Fort Saint-Frederic was constructed between 1731 and 1734 at the south end of Lake Champlain in present-day northern New York near the border with Vermont, on on a peninsula called Point à la Couronne or Crown Point. After several unsuccessful attempts between 1755-1758, the British under Sir Jeffrey Amherst (1717-1797) took the fort on August 4, 1759 after the French had blowen up sections and left for Isle aux Noix on July 31st. Amherst used the construction of new, extensive fortifications as a means of keeping his men working through the winter 1759. The fort was initially renamed Fort Amherst, and later Crown Point The use of the name "Fort Crown Point" as the English name of this fort is historically inaccurate; "Fort" was not added until after 1800. The English fort built in 1759 was always referred to in the records as just "Crown Point" or occasionally "His Majesty's Fort at Crown Point."
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https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+97.71 |
