At 2 pm on Saturday Sept. 19, 2015 Dusty Griffin presented the opening lecture in the 2015-16 Williamstown Historical Museum lecture series. His topic was “The West Hoosuck Blockhouse,” the history of the “blockhouse” or small fort built near the site of the present Williams Inn in 1756, when the little settlement here was still called West Hoosuck. Shortly after the blockhouse was built, at the beginning of the French and Indian War, three of its defenders were killed by a force of Indians moving through the Hoosac River Valley. But the real story behind the blockhouse concerns local disputes about the siting and building of the blockhouse, disputes that sharply divided the settlement and reached the floor of the provincial legislature in Boston, where it was known as the “West Hoosuck Affair.”
The lecture was designed as a companion piece to a talk Dusty gave in 2014 on “The 1746 Attack on Fort Massachusetts.” Dusty is a frequent lecturer at the Williamstown Historical Museum, having talked in recent years on “The Short History of Treadwell Hollow,” “The History of Flora’s Glen,” “The Cincinnati Connection,” “Two Williamstown Soldiers in the 37th Massachusetts,” and “Three Eph Generals in the Civil War.” He has also curated exhibitions at the Museum on “Williamstown in the Civil War” and “Big Days in a Small Town.”
Dusty’s lecture can be viewed on WilliNet by following this link: The West Hoosuck Blockhouse
