Fort Johnson

Variant name of place

Mount Johnson

Geographic position

42.9386° N, 74.1886° W

Event

Occom's First Mission to the Oneidas

Sources

Swinehart, Kirk Davis. “Fort Johnson, Johnson Hall, and the Anglo-Mohawk Alliance.” American Indian Places: A Historical Guidebook. Ed. Frances H. Kennedy. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 2008. Web. Sir William Johnson, 1st Baronet."Encyclopedia Britannica. Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc. 2 July 2014. Web.

General note

Fort Johnson, originally referred to as Mount Johnson, refers to a stone house enclosed in a fortification located in the present-day town of Amsterdam, NY, in the Mohawk Valley. It is also the name of the small village in which the house is located, which became part of the larger city of Amsterdam. Less a full-scale fort built to repel armies and more a British embassy, Fort Johnson was an important site of British imperial negotiations between the Anglo and Native-American residents in upstate New York. The house received its name from Sir William Johnson, the British Superintendant of Indian Relations for all tribes north of the Ohio River, who lived there until the close of the French and Indian War. Today, Fort Johnson is most commonly referred to as Old Fort Johnson. In a letter to Wheelock, Whitaker speaks of Samuel Kirtland, a missionary who travelled to Fort Johnson to learn the Mohawk language.