Family Quarters

Family Quarters. Fort Stanwix National Monument. , Throughout the war, soldiers would have been accompanied by their families as they had no other way of supporting them. Later in the war it became common for officers, running low on assets, to also have their families join them., Most families would have lived in surrounding camps rather than within the fort. Wives and older children worked as camp followers, doing domestic duties in exchange for food and shelter. This was considered quite a hardship for some officers’ wives., One of the few documented cases of an officer’s family living at the fort was in 1780 and 1781, when Captain Moody of the artillery had his wife and daughter living here with him. While we do not know the exact causes for this, it is probable that Capt. Moody had reached a point where he could no longer provide for his family without bringing them into the army service. This room represents the sort of quarters that Capt. Moody and his family might have lived in.