Just a week ago I led off my column with a remark that I was tired of writing about America’s War of Independence with Great Britain. Easy for me to say. I did get swept up in some history programming about it, but in general it is overdone, and really not much of it was happening in our neck of the woods. However, I am entranced with the period of the French and Indian War, and the time just after the War of Independence when our new country acquired the Northwest Territory and had to figure out how to make use of it and settle it in the face of sometime Native American resistance. In those periods our little area is featured prominently.
Studying the earlier war, George Washington comes across as a totally different human being, before he was sort of deified. During the war period from 1757 to 1763, the string of forts across Southern Pennsylvania at Carlisle, Littleton, Bedford, Ligonier, Pittsburgh and other points take on added significance. This extended into our area with early forts like Henry, Chapman, and many others which were small, and today are chiefly noted by Highway Department History Markers. Many of these were not much more that fortified homesteads. Some of the larger ones, such as Bedford and Ligonier and Necessity have been accurately reconstructed. Others such as Niagara near Buffalo NY, have never really gone away. The big ones are open to the public as museums. Others, Fort Pitt for example, still has a standing Blockhouse, and a twentieth century Museum, but any other remains are buried beneath Point State Park. Although, one of the Fort’s brick bastions was unearthed and on display from approximately 1958 through 2010, until it was reburied to hinder further deterioration.
