Nathan Ganson, at age 23, served as Sergeant in Capt. Daniel Shays's Company under the command of Col. Rufus Putnam in Gen. John Nixon's Brigade at the Fishkill Encampment and Supply Depot.

Declared as "the last of the important Revolutionary War sites yet to be properly explored," the Fishkill Supply Depot was a key strategic center of the American Revolution, established and visited repeatedly by George Washington. Known as the "Military nerve center of the Continental army," the Depot was one of three major encampments along with Morristown and Valley Forge. Hallowed history happened here - hundreds of the original soldiers who fought to found the nation died and were buried here in unknown graves.

Excerpts from "To Preserve or to Pave Over History" by Peter Applebome, New York Times

Published: April 18, 2009

History is what we choose to remember, and there have been many reasons not to remember too much about the Fishkill Encampment and Supply Depot, a sprawling military city that became the most important northern supply center during the Revolutionary War.

No stirring battle was won there. Life was brutish and often short, a place of smallpox, frostbite and mutiny, where wounded soldiers had limbs sawed off and covered with tar, where, as one contemporary account put it, soldiers “patched their clothes until patches and clothing both gave out and the garments dropped from their bodies,” where hundreds, perhaps well over a thousand, were buried in unmarked graves.

It’s probably too late for Fishkill to become New York’s Valley Forge or Morristown, even though it was in use, not for a winter or two, but for nearly the entire American Revolution, from late 1776 through 1783.

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