Battlefield Park Alliance to unveil model of reinterred Revolutionary War soldier

The Lake George Battlefield Park Alliance will unveil its newest acquisition, the composite model of a 1st Pennsylvania Battalion soldier, at the park’s Visitor Center on Tuesday, July 21 at 11 a.m. The soldier’s remains were among those reinterred at the Battlefield Park’s Repose of the Fallen memorial this past May.

In February 2019, construction workers discovered an unmarked cemetery on Courtland Street in the Village of Lake George. Over the course of a year, the remains of 44 individuals were recovered from the site. The remains were transported to the New York State Museum in Albany. Anthropologists there determined they were the remains of smallpox patients at the General Hospital established at Fort George in 1776.

The State Museum commissioned forensic artist Jenny Kenyon of Stafford, Virginia, to create a bust based on a 3D print of a nearly complete skull recovered from the Courtland Street Cemetery. Kenyon created the shape and features of the man’s face in clay using anatomical markers and tissue depth information. She then scanned the sculpture and produced a 3D-printed model, which she painted and added eyelashes, a hair tie, and a shirt closure. The New York State Museum’s model is currently not on display.

Kenyon created a second model, which will be on display at Lake George Battlefield Park Visitor Center, 75 Fort George Road, Lake George, following the July 21 unveiling.  “Our museum will be greatly enhanced by this genuine likeness of one of the Revolutionary patriots who passed through Lake George on his way to the fight in Quebec and returned here to draw his last breath,” says Alliance Visitor Center Curation Committee Chair Mark Silo. “His mortal remains lie just a few steps away at the Repose of the Fallen memorial, and the presence of his likeness in our center will honor him and all those who served in the creation of our country.”

Alliance members Rosemary and Frank Pusaterio of Cleverdale are underwriting the costs of the model and display cases. The Lake George Battlefield Park Visitor Center is open in the summer, Thursday through Monday, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. It will also remain open for the day after the Tuesday morning unveiling ceremony. Admission is free.