Many upstate New York villages and towns like to boast of a long and illustrious history, but in Fort Edward words such as freedom and liberty seem to ring a little bit louder.
At the Old Fort House Museum on Broadway in the village, all of Fort Edward’s rich past is on display, and what quickly becomes evident is that freedom and liberty can mean slightly different things to different people. To the townsfolk of Fort Edward during the American Revolution, the words meant overthrowing the yoke of British tyranny, and to Patrick Smyth, who built the house in 1772, they meant skedaddling to Canada to find a new home. To Solomon Northup, a black man, they meant even more