Who really captured Fort George 250 years ago?

Just three weeks and a day after the Battles of Lexington and Concord, Patriot forces took control of Fort George from the British. Sunday, May 11, 2025, marked the 250^th anniversary of the capture, and the Lake George Battlefield Park Alliance commemorated the anniversary with a ceremony and speeches at the fort’s ruins.

At first pass, the ruins themselves do not seem very impressive — a mound of grass-covered stonework in the woods. They are hidden off to one side of the narrow road that weaves past the picnic tables and barbecue grills in Battlefield Park. However, the history of the fort is quite impressive, and, as Battlefield Park Alliance President John DiNuzzo explains, under the mound are casements, barracks, and other portions of Fort George that date back to 1759.

The fort’s construction began during the French and Indian War under the command of British General Jeffery Amherst. Following the war, it remained a useful military post through the American Revolution. Its capture by Patriot forces at the start of the Revolution, along with the capture of Fort Ticonderoga, Crown Point, and Skenesborough, strengthened the Americans’ position in an area vulnerable to British invasion from Canada. “So, this is truly a historic spot,” says DiNuzzo.

As historians uncover new information, discover previously hidden letters, reports and diaries, the stories of the past must be amended. Much of history that we have taken as absolute fact, says historian John-Eric Nelson, came from stories told by participants who often were “Alpha males” out to promote themselves with exaggerated claims of heroism.

This may be the case with the story of Fort George’s capture. At the Alliance’s commemoration this past Sunday, historian, author and Alliance Trustee Bruce Venter explained how the details of the capture, and who actually took the keys to the fort from the British officer, have become a little muddled.

“The traditional story is that a man named Bernard Romans came here on May the 11^th and captured the fort from a British captain. I’m going to try to dissuade you of that traditional story,” says Venter, “I don’t think it’s true.”

Following the French and Indian War, the British maintained a presence along the corridor that ran from New York City to Quebec. To get a message from New York to Canada, couriers would travel up the Hudson to Albany and from there to Fort George. Messengers at Fort George would carry the message down* Lake George to Ticonderoga, then on to Crown Point, Saint John on the Richelieu River in Canada, then Fort Chambly to Montreal, then finally Quebec.

By 1775, the forts along the way were allowed to fall into disrepair and were minimally staffed. Fort George was under the command of Captain John Nordberg, an elderly and ill half-pay British Officer. He had fought with the British Army for many years and was wounded in the French and Indian War. He took the position as caretaker of Fort George because he needed the pay. He offered no resistance when Patriots arrived at the fort on May 11 and demanded the keys to the fort. It was a bloodless capture from an infirm old man, but to whom did he turn over the keys?

Venter provided some background on the events that led to Captain Nordberg’s quick surrender. In March, a month before the “shot heard ‘round the world,” a Pittsfield attorney, John Brown, was sent by Samuel Adams and Dr. Joseph Warren to Canada with a mission. Brown was to meet with French and British merchants and native tribes to determine if they would support the Patriots should war break out. 

He reported back to Dr. Warren that they could not count on Canadian support. He added that he believed the Patriots should take Fort Ticonderoga for its artillery, and he recommended the Green Mountain Boys for the task.  

According to Venter, Ethan Allen formed the Green Mountain Boys several years earlier to protect his real estate interests in the Hampshire Grants, lands that are now Vermont. The Governors of each were selling the same parcels of land to different investors, which created squabbles that landed in court. The Green Mountain Boys, headquartered in Bennington, were tasked with discouraging the New Yorkers, sometimes with a little roughing up, from settling in Vermont.

Venter says the Green Mountain Boys were “fairly well organized as a disorganized militia,” and John Brown knew of them and saw them as well suited for the job of taking Fort Ticonderoga. The first shot of the American Revolution put more energy into the plan, and others backing the cause of independence eyed Fort Ticonderoga as well, including Benedict Arnold.

Arnold met up with Ethan Allen as the Green Mountain Boys traveled from Bennington to Fort Ticonderoga with the belief that he should be leading the expedition. The Green Mountain Boys would not accept Arnold’s command, and Arnold brought no men of his own except a personal valet. Venter described Arnold’s role in the capture of Fort Ticonderoga as a “hanger-on.”

Ethan Allen and his men captured Fort Ticonderoga in the early morning hours of May 10, 1775. Some of the Green Mountain Boys captured Skenesborough (now Whitehall, birthplace of the US Navy). This left Fort George remaining as a British position. A few of Allen’s men were sent up the Lake to assess the situation there.

Meanwhile, Bernard Romans, who had joined the Patriot cause in late 1774, was in Fort Edward formulating his own plan. Romans had, for several years, worked for the British in Florida, studying the terrain and surveying the land. When he joined up with the Patriots, he was sent to Bennington to join the Green Mountain Boys. According to Venter, Ethan Allen and others found him irritating. They sent him away to Albany. From there, Romans went to Fort Edward, where he organized 15 men to take Fort George.

The traditional story has Roman taking Fort George on May 11. However, another story has a local man, Daniel Parks, as the one who takes the keys to the fort from Captain Nordberg. “That might not be true either,” says Venter, “because he’s a local boy, he gets a lot of credit for the capture of the fort.” Most likely, Parks was one of the 15 men who joined Romans.

These are two stories, but Venter offered a third from research that led him to the journal of Epaphras Bull, who was on the committee to take Fort Ticonderoga. Venter read directly from Bull’s diary:

[Thursday, May 11, 1775]
Arrived at Fort George at 9 p.m. where we met Captain Stephens with 15 men come from Fort Edward to take possession of Fort George, though it happened to be given to three or four of our men who we sent forward before they arrived. Soon after our arrival, Captain Roman, our Engineer, came up Friday morning.

Venter believes this is the best original evidence that three or four Green Mountain Boys, after Fort Ticonderoga was taken, came up Lake George and captured Fort George on Thursday evening.  Captain Nordberg submitted a petition to the Continental Congress in which he mentions Bernard Romans as having captured the fort. This, Venter says, is probably why Romans gets the credit, but other information in Nordberg’s petition leads historians to doubt his credibility.

At the 250^th anniversary commemoration, reenactors from Fort William Henry took on the roles of Captain John Nordberg (Andrew Menzie), Bernard Romans (John-Eric Nelson) and an unnamed Green Mountain Boy (Will Farrel) to reenact one version of the capture.

Romans shouts, “Hark, in the name of the Committee of Safety, I demand the keys to the fort!” Captain Nordberg, limping and stooped over his cane, fumbles with a ring of skeleton keys and drops them into Romans’s outstretched hand.

Following the reenactment, Pat Niles, an Alliance Board member and President of the Washington County Historical Society, spoke about the importance of Fort George in the years following its 1775 capture. 

Originally, the plan was to move artillery from Ticonderoga and Crown Point to Fort George. Benedict Arnold, who was given command of Ticonderoga, took inventory and was under orders to ship the artillery to Fort George. However, Massachusetts and Connecticut had concerns that the Canadians, the British and Native Americans would conduct raids in New York and New England from Canada. The forts needed to keep their defenses.

By July of 1775, the plan was to invade Canada. “This area, in 1775, became one of the greatest boat-building areas along the Hudson-Lake Champlain-Lake George Corridor that they have.” Philip Schuyler, who commanded the Northern Department, began building boats in the Fort George area. The fort became a depot for supplies that were then shipped to Ticonderoga and north.

In the spring of 1776, troops returned to Ticonderoga from the Canadian expedition, bringing with them a smallpox epidemic. “They came back in great numbers,” says Niles. “They were averaging about 2,000 people with smallpox at that time.” The ill were sent to Fort George, which became the largest smallpox hospital in the nation. Niles notes that in 1776, George Washington embraced the science of inoculation to prevent disease. His decision to inoculate the troops helped to check the spread of smallpox.

The Americans retreated from Fort George in July 1777, burning the fort as they left. They retook the fort that November. At this point, the war had moved down to the Mid-Atlantic and the South, so Fort George was lightly garrisoned and used primarily as a supply depot.

In 1780, Fort George was captured by Major Carleton and British forces as Carleton’s Raid swept through the area in an offense known as the “Great Burning.” The Patriots retook the fort in 1781. George Washington visited in 1783 on a trip that took him to Ticonderoga and back. “At that point, it is no longer a military installation. The war is over. It is left, basically, to ruins.”

The land surrounding the Fort George ruins is now a state park. In May 2022, the Alliance opened the Battlefield Park Visitor Center in the park with exhibits and artifacts detailing the park’s history. The Visitor Center will open for the season on May 23. Admission is free.

*Lake George waters flow South to North; therefore, traveling from Ticonderoga to Fort George is moving up the lake.