Fort Brewerton & Oliver Stevens Blockhouse Museum

10/19/2026

We at Fort Brewerton are saddened to learn the Jack Henke has passed. He was a longtime friend of our museum and we share wonderful memories of time spent at the Blockhouse, visiting and signing his books. Those books contain information from our reference library collections. We will miss his visits. Rest in peace Jack!

View Jack Henke's obituary, send flowers and sign the guestbook.

10/19/2026

10/16/2026

Museum Monday’s Mystery were beaver teeth chisels. When still installed on a beaver, their teeth are self sharpening. At some point long ago in prehistory, Native Americans observed these world altering animals cutting down trees with their teeth. Besides being an excellent source of fat, they used every bit of the animal and put those teeth to work as chisels and gouges for fine woodworking.
They didn’t know why those teeth could be sharpened so well and cut wood so efficiently without being destroyed like other teeth. It turns out that they have iron in them! The orange color on the front part of the enamel is caused by ferrihydrite and amorphous iron-calcium phosphate. This wears 2.5 times slower than the rest of the tooth enamel that does not contain it and is about as hard as non hardened iron tools. The rest of the tooth is made of a bunch of prisms that wear faster and break off in little enamel blocks. If the harder part does break off, it shears off clean due to its unique structure, and quickly re-sharpens.

More on their structure here:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1742706122008625?fr=RR-2&ref=pdf_download&rr=a4bad4831c91f3ba

To keep them honed, they can be ground against a smooth rock, where their unique properties make them easy to sharpen to a keen edge by hand. To this day, despite being in the ground for millennia, they still hold a remarkable edge and each one is a little different depending on how it was used.

Watch one of these tools being made in this video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzJr_mfP9H8&themeRefresh=1

These tools were found at the Wickham site here in Brewerton in the mid 20th century and are part of the Denman collection.

10/12/2026

Today’s Mystery! Guess the items from the Museum collections (The orange ones). Comment below what you think they are and how the native Americans used them. Why are they orange? I will post my answers on Friday!

10/11/2026

We enjoyed hosting members of the Betsy Baldwin Chapter of the NSDAR today. Donny gave a brief talk and then they toured the museum. Please come back soon!

10/10/2026

It's a sunny afternoon at Fort Brewerton. Stop by! The men are here and happy to share what they are doing.

10/09/2026

Fort Brewerton Historical Society's Annual Membership Meeting will be next Saturday 10/17/26 at 1pm in the Blockhouse Museum.
Please come and hear what we are up to! Please come and share your ideas!

10/09/2026

This weekend is the chance for kids to get a picture with the soldiers of Rogers Rangers who are camping on the Fort Brewerton grounds. It's also a great time to learn about the French and Indian War and the part Fort Brewerton played right here (1754-1763.)

10/05/2026

Thank you Quinn Fecht for creating this!

10/02/2026

Museum Monday’s Mystery was a native American stone celt, likely from the Woodland period about 1000-3000 years ago. These tools replaced the heavier groove axes of the archaic period as Native Americans began to become less nomadic and begin utilizing agriculture. Their tool sets became lighter during this period. What didn’t change was the amount of work that it took to make one of these. Although they were smaller, they still required a massive time investment. After selection, the stone had to be pecked with a hammer stone for hours reducing and shaping the surface and preparing it for the next stage, polishing. The stone celt would be polished with water and sand. Lastly, the edge would be abraided, or ground down with a smooth stone to a useful edge that wouldn’t stick in the wood, but would bounce, with about a third of the effectiveness of an iron axe. Celts were placed into a hollowed out wooden handle and didn’t require any lashing like grooved axes.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/684483754906272/posts/8822280147793218/

What makes this piece interesting is that the creator of it tried to skip a few steps. He must’ve needed an axe in a hurry as this appears to be a river cobble that already has the shape of a celt. The cutting edge has been knapped, more like when you’re making flint tools. The results was a quick and dirty tool that would’ve performed its job but quickly degraded as the edge was crushed. It was probably discarded shortly after.
The other possibility is that this is a celt preform, an unfinished stone axe that was being reduced by knapping to shape it. For whatever reason, they never got back to it, perhaps a better piece of tool stone was found.
We have several other celts in the collections that are in various stages of manufacture and also have different finishes. The smaller darker polished celt was made from a nearly indestructible, much harder to find tool stone called greenstone. Tools made from these materials could last for generations.

https://historicjamestowne.org/collections/artifacts/celts/