ABSTRACT

General Sir John Burgoyne had achieved his first objective, the reduction of Fort Ticonderoga by early summer, as he had forecast. Furthermore, as Burgoyne progressed his army diminished in numbers, from the necessity to establish posts, and to garrison Fort Ticonderoga. Unlike her brother Jane was a Tory, and before his departure from the district she had become engaged to David Jones, from Fort Edward, who marched with Burgoyne. Yet, it seems possible that Jane McCrea may have been shot accidentally for, when her body was exhumed from its temporary resting-place for reburial in the Union Cemetery at Fort Edward, her skull was said to have been found unbroken, and three gun-shot wounds in her body were still discernible. Twenty-three miles of rough, swampy country lay between Skenesborough and Fort Edward, the post on the Hudson River, where the waterway recommenced.