Still raining today, it sounds nice on the roof of the trailer, but it keeps me inside to much and I don't like that much. So to get out for at least a little while I drove over to Johnstown and watched the Snow White and the Huntsman movie. Pretty good all in all, but very dark. Certainly not a Disney production and not one to take your 6 year old daughter to.

   Nothing else really went on today. The rain has cooled things off a bit around here though. I had to get the space heater out last night and fire it up for a couple of hours before bed time. Will have to do that again this evening I think.

   So here are some photo's from the trip to Fort Klock two days ago.  I have also copied the one's that were posted a couple of weeks ago and added them into this batch along with the comments I made at that time. I erroneously thought it would make my job easier tonight, but am now finding that mixing them in has been more work than it was worth. Oh well, it's done now and I'm not going to change back. Note that pictures from the previous post along with any descriptions have a separate date for them as well as having it and the rest of the comment in green text. All new photo's and comments have black text. This is only some of the photo's I took and tonight they include just the exterior and interior shots of the main house. More pictures of other buildings will be added as I find time.

A view of the Mohawk Valley near Fort Klock.

The state highway sign pointing to the Fort Klock site.

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(6-1-2012) This is a view of the main house. Built of hand laid limestone, it is the reason that this is considered a 'Fort', as in, fortified homestead. While building it they also incorporated a couple of other features that helped protect it and the people inside. The main thing was that there was a running spring in the cellar that would provide water if they were under siege. Other defenses will be noted on other pictures.

A view of the main homestead.

Another view of the main building, this one shows the steep, 12:12, pitch of the gable roofs.

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(6-1-2012) The building on the right side of this photo was once used to make cheese. It is now used as a care takers home so someone can be on site most of the time.



Note the stone at the bottom of this photo and then continue on to the next picture.

I was curious about what I thought was an odd set of steps. Turns out that this is actually a finely dressed limestone step used by people to mount a wagon or their horse easier. Once I knew that, I started seeing a lot more of them in yards as I drove by.

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(6-1-2012) The front door of the Fort. Check out the lintel block over the door. Wonder how much that one stone block weighs? Turns out the stone lintel is not full width, it is actually only about 16" thick. Still wide enough to be very heavy.




(6-1-2012) The 'Historical Landmark' sign on the wall beside the front door of the Fort.



(6-1-2012) An outside wood fired oven. I believe the wood structure over it is of new origin and there only to protect the oven from the elements.



(6-1-2012) Another view showing some more of the stonework that makes up the building. Note the small, rectangular spots on the walls at about shoulder height. These are 'loopholes' built in as the walls were laid up. Loopholes were openings in the wall where rifles could be thrust out to shoot at anyone who was trying to do harm to you or your family. In that age it could of been either the British, French, Native American or disgruntled neighbor. Besides the loopholes there would of been heavy wooden shutters on all the windows that could be closed and locked. I think setting fire to the roof would of been a possibility, but I guess it never happened. Check out the interior pictures below that add more information about loopholes.

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If you look really carefully at the stone work in this photo you will see several more small stones at what would of been about shoulder height from the inside. The reason this is important is because most restorers who have worked on the building think there are between 30-40 loopholes scattered around the building. All of these were closed up once the war was over and they were no longer needed. Most were left plugged up and will probably stay that way.

(6-1-2012) A close up of one of the windows and one of the loopholes. I love the arched stonework above the window. The loophole was filled with some kind of insulation wrapped in plastic today, wonder what they would of used way back when. Check out interior loophole photo's below for more updated info.





(6-1-2012) Really liked the view of the house from this side. Again you can see the steep gable ends of the building.



 This would of been the front of the house back in the 1700-1800's. From nails still in the stone it appears likely that there was some kind of wooden deck on the front of this side.  A view from the riverside. I would imagine that all the trees and bushes surrounding the house would of been cut down and used at the time the house was built and they would of also wanted to have a clear field of fire around the house, just as a safety precaution. It is sometimes hard to imagine what it would of looked like when you have trees around that could be more than 100 years old. I saw old photo's of this side of the house that did not have these trees in them. It is thought that there would of been a palisade or wall on this side, which faced the river and the 'Kings Highway', for additional protection. The King's Highway is now the right-of-way for the CSX Railroad. 



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(6-1-2012) There were these marvelous stone steps between the main house and the cheese house to the west. Overgrown a bit now, they still invite a person to see what is at the top.





(6-1-2012) Another window close up, this one showing a large straight stone lintel and sill.

(6-1-2012) A small wood framed garden shed type structure.



 A view from the garden. This shows the cheese building better. There is a small creek between the buildings and where I am standing. I thought at one point that maybe they had used it to run a mill, but no real sign of that. Will ask someone next time I am there. The on site guy didn't believe there was ever any mill on the site as no gear or old machinery has been found on the site.



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The first interior shot, this one in what would of been the kitchen. This whole room and the one above was added several years after the main part of the building was built in 1750. Because of neglect after the homestead was abandoned in the 1940'2-1950's this room was nearly destroyed by fires set by transients that camped out in the building. When the re-enactor group came in they found most of the wood flooring gone and the fireplace was destroyed. The overhead beams also had soot and char marks on them. Not being professional  building restorers they just went ahead and sanded the soot off of the beams, rebuilt the fireplace using plans from a book in the library and found old flooring in a building that was being torn down and put it in. I think they did a pretty good job.

A view showing the interior of one of the windows. You can see that they used a thick piece of wood, probably chestnut or cedar because of it's resistance to rot, for use as the lintel.

Unfortunately there wasn't much left in any of the buildings that was actually owned by the Klock Family. Instead they have gone out and found items that would of been used in all of the various periods when the Klock's lived here. Since that was a continuous period that went from 1750 all the way up to nearly 1940, it wasn't hard to find antiques that would work. For the most part though they have used items that would of been found in a wilderness home around the late 1700's. 

I wish the contrast in this photo was a little better because what you are looking at is a single, hollowed out stone sink. There was no sign that the Klock's ever ran a pipe into the house from the stream right outside, but they might have done it, and we just don't know about it. The sink does have a drain that went through the outside wall. One great story is that several years ago one of the caretakers came into the site one morning and found this sink about 50 feet outside the door. Evidently someone had broken in with the intent of stealing the sink and then couldn't manage to get the 350+ pound stone out where he could load it into a vehicle.

A better view of the fireplace that was rebuilt by the volunteers. They did a very nice job of it and they use it all the time when they hold re-enactments at the Fort. They weren't perfect though, if you notice the little oven on the left hand side, they forgot to put in a separate flue for it, so it isn't usable.

 

Here is a closer view of the Kitchen window. You can see the wooden lintel at the top as well as the marks from the adze and axe's that would of been used to shape it.

While doing repairs to the kitchen the plaster on the wall was all stripped off and several loop holes stuffed with wooden plugs appeared. Most experts now think that there are somewhere between 30-40 of them total. Not all of them will be found and re-opened of course, there is no reason to do that. It is neat that some of them have been found though.

This is a view of a loop hole from the inside looking out. Note the angled walls to it. This would allow a person on the inside to cover a larger field of fire than a straight through hole would. Now of course the question is; what would prevent some one from running up on the outside and firing into the house? And the answer would be nothing.... except first they would have to run across a large stretch of open ground, all the while being exposed to fire, and once at the wall nothing would prevent some one at another loop hole, some of them all the way up on the 2nd and 3rd floor, from shooting them dead. So it probably didn't happen all that often.

This is one of the wooden plugs pulled from one of the new found loop holes. It is likely that they would of been wrapped in rags or some other material to help block out cold air and critters.

Now; an interesting, but true, documented story, about loop holes at Fort Klock. Sometime during the skirmishes that went on during the revolutionary war a British soldier road by on a horse and fired at Fort Klock. It was closed up with people inside because of the warfare going on outside. One women neighbor was standing on the 2nd floor when the bullet from the soldier came in one of the loop holes up there. It crossed the room and hit the stone wall on the other side before ricocheting off and hitting the women in the head. Lucky for her most of the energy had been spent by that time, so even though she was knocked down and injured she lived and was granted a war pension because of her wound. Her account is documented  and held in the archives in Albany, NY.

This room was probably the original kitchen before the addition was added on. After the addition this room was most likely used as a living or family type room since this room held the front door. The stairs to the 2nd floor were once located here and a wall was located under the right hand beam in this picture. This is all known because of patches to the original floor boards as well as the fact that all of the ceiling beams have a decorative cove detail along each edge except for the edge that would of been hidden by the edge of the wall.

The fireplace, flooring, and plaster are all original in this picture. The wooden mantel and surround are from a different local home that had been torn down.

This is one of 3 rooms on the 2nd floor and has been set up to show what a bedroom  might look like. It isn't real obvious but the bed in this photo is actually a good deal shorter than most beds would be today, even though this was a full size bed in it's day. It's not because people were that much shorter way back then, instead it was because of the way a lot of people slept back then. Many, many people back in the 1700's and before and after ended up contracting 'Consumption' at some point in their life because no one knew how to cure  it, what caused it or even how you got it. Today we know it as tuberculosis and you can cure it with simple penicillin in most cases. But back then if you had it you would know that the only way to get any rest was to sit up or semi-recline in bed as laying prone would hurt to much. So lot's of pillows and short beds. The other interesting thing here was this wooden tool that looked a lot like a tuning fork. It was used to twist the rope work that was used to hold up the mattress. Wish I could remember the name of it... but I can't.

The Klock's main trade to start with was in fur's. It is reported that the family, as a whole, had a good relationship with all 5 major Indian tribes in the region and carried on a good trade with them. Of course trading a few glass beads for furs may have seemed like a good deal to the Indians at the time, but only history will tell. That being said, the Klock's were good at what they did and prospered and bought a lot of land around the area eventually ending up with somewhere in the neighborhood of 60,000 acres. In this picture you can see a robe made up of 3 wolf pelts, a beaver plew, a sheep skin and a fisher pelt.

Yea old chamber pot and the seat to sit on.

This is the joint between the roof beams and the attic floor joist's. It appears to be a pinned mortise and tenon joint with a haunched seat. There would of been very few nails or other iron fasteners used when building the first erected. 

The Klock's were among nearly 13,000 immigrants who came to the U.S. from the Rhine Valley in Germany. They had been promised good jobs and cheap land by the British who were looking for people to come over and work for them. Our family ended up in New York City, then called New Amsterdam, and were basically indentured to a guy who was interested in providing pine tar to the British Navy. Lucky for the Klock's, this guy wasn't a very good business man, so when many of his workers nearly starved to death he set them 'free' to go off and die or survive on their own. He of course, kept all of their tools and farming implements in order to force them back to him later. The Klock's instead took off and headed up river until they landed in the Mohawk Valley where the finally settled. So what does that have to do with this picture? Having few tools to start with, they like many others started small and made almost every thing they needed, mostly out of wood. The next few photo's show some of the other tools they would of used.

The metal thing with all of the little fingers sticking out of it was a crude boat light. Lit pine knots would be put in the baskets and it would be stuck in a hole in the bow of a boat to either show the way or to draw in fish and frogs to be gigged.

The basket like item as well as the hollow wooden bowl, shown upside down on the right, are samples of early bee hives. Honey bee's aren't actually native to the U.S. but were brought to the continent by new immigrants. Prior to the 1700's most bee's were killed every year when honey was harvested. With new types of hives, bee keepers could now take some honey and leave the bee's to live through the winter and get a better start the next year.

I had forgotten some of my middle school history from the 1700's when the British were demanding that their colonies were to send them all the raw materials they were finding, and then having to buy back finished items from them later on. One of those items was clothing. Of course that didn't go over very well with anyone in this country, especially when finished clothing could be made cheaper and better at home. There were lots of materials to work with of course, wool from sheep, leather from animals of all sorts and cotton from the south, though cotton was scarce and expensive at that time. One material could be grown though, and that was flax. The Klock's grew lot's of flax and in the fall they would pull it up and dry it. Once dried the stalks were put through a flax break after which a scutching knife and board were used to remove most of the woody parts. From there you would use a hetchel/hackle, a metal comb, to align the fibers. Once that was done you could load it on to a distaff and from there onto a spinning wheel to make thread. The material above is ready to be spun into thread on a spinning wheel where it can then be used to weave cloth on a loom. You can see from the color where the term 'flaxen haired' came from.

Not much would be wasted back then so parts that contained the outside, darker edges of the stem as well as other broken pieces would be gathered up and put through this machine which would twist it into string or baling twine. The color here was known as toupe (sp), and is where the term 'tow headed' comes from.

Almost every homestead had to have a loom on site in order to make cloth to use for everything they needed. Most cloth was a straight or plain weave, but a lot of unique patterns were developed by family weavers. This particular pattern is from a Fort Klock Coverlet and is known as Klock's Roses. It is similar to another pattern known as a Whig Rose or Methodist Rose but has some key differences in size, location and style of some of the elements. Because linen was a cheap and easy material to make and use it was often used for all types of clothing. It was also a material that was easy to dye using home made dyes. One such dye was from the indigo plant and produce the pretty blue color shown above.

Underneath it all is the cellar. There is still a spring seeping into a part of it, but it was in another, darker, creepier part of the cellar, so I didn't go in there. Note the charred floor beams from fires set by vagrants over the years. The walls are still in good shape though. The cobble stones were brought in to cover the often wet ground. It was certainly cooler and damper down there.

One last photo, this one of a stone ledge built into part of the cellar.