Quaint and Historic Forts of North America — John Shaqi
Quaint and Historic Forts of North AmericaHammond, John Martin
History
Quaint and Historic Forts of North America
Hammond, John Martin
Fortification -- North America; Fortification -- United States; Historic buildings -- United States
The post was taken by the English in 1759, and in 1763 fell a
victim to Indian attack as a corollary to the Pontiac conspiracy
which had as its object the complete extinction of English life
in the West. The fort, a rectangle of earth and wooden palisades,
stood on the west bank of Mill Creek and at the intersection with
the shore of the lake. Here the veteran Indian fighter, General
Wayne, died in 1796. In 1876 the State of Pennsylvania erected
a block-house on the site of the old fort as a memorial. This
block-house is now included in the grounds of the Pennsylvania
Sailors and Soldiers’ Home.
From Presque Isle there was a portage to Fort Le Bœuf, now the
little city of Waterford, Pennsylvania. Fort Le Bœuf stood at High
and Water Streets, Waterford, though there is at this point no sign
of its existence. It was erected in 1753 and fell before Pontiac’s
far-reaching conspiracy in 1763.
Venango, the next of the French line of forts east of Pittsburgh
(Duquesne), was the fore-runner of Franklin, Pennsylvania, and
stood at Elk and Eighth Streets. Of Venango, too, no sign remains.
It fell to the Indians in 1763.
South of Pittsburgh the English had a post at Brownsville, on the
Ohio River, Pennsylvania, built in 1754, and known as Redstone
Old Fort. The French had Fort Massac to which about one thousand
troopers retired after the evacuation of Fort Duquesne. Later
years also saw small fortifications developed on the Ohio River,
some holding the potentialities of future greatness such as that
at the falls of the Ohio River, which was to be the nucleus of the
settlement of the present-day city of Louisville, Kentucky.
At the south end of Lake Erie during the French occupancy of the
West stood Fort Sandusky which has given its name to the City of
Sandusky of to-day. On the Maumee River, Indiana, was Fort Miamis,
Miami of to-day.
In the early days of the French there had been a trading post at
the site of the future great city of Chicago, but it remained for
the United States, in 1803, to establish a formal fortification
here, Fort Dearborn, of bloody memory. Fort Dearborn, as every
good Chicagoan knows, or ought to know, stood at the southern
approach to the Rush Street bridge and extended a little across
Michigan Avenue and somewhat into the river, as it now is. The
ground rose into a little mound yielding a fine view of the
surrounding flat prairie land. Here the pioneer soldiers erected
a rude stockade of logs fifteen feet in height and enclosing
a space sufficiently large to contain a small parade ground,
officers’ quarters, troop barracks, guard house, magazines and two
block-houses, one at the northwest and the other at the southeast
corner of the palisade. This rude structure with its small garrison
was the seed of the present-day great city.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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