Fort Granville

In 1754, Virginia militia officer (and future United States president) George Washington ignited a world war when he and his men opened fire on a small party of French soldiers just south of Fort Duquesne (now Pittsburgh). Washington's small skirmish and subsequent defeat and surrender at Fort Necessity began a struggle between the British and French empires and local Native Americans for control of the Ohio River Valley. This conflict, widely known as the Seven Years' War and in the colonies often referred to as the French and Indian War, began in North America but spread to Europe, Africa, India, and elsewhere.

In 1755, the British raised a large army under Major General Edward Braddock for the purpose of capturing Fort Duquesne and seizing control of the Ohio River Valley. On July 9, 1755, however, Braddock's army was ambushed and decisively defeated at the Battle of the Monongahela just a dozen miles from Fort Duquesne. Braddock himself was mortally wounded, and George Washington helped manage the British retreat.

Braddock's defeat sent shock-waves throughout the Virginia and Pennsylvania backcountry. With Fort Duquesne firmly in French control, small parties of French and Native raiders struck at settlements along the British colonial frontier; towns were abandoned, and refugees flowed eastward. Hoping to stymie the enemy's success, colonial authorities determined to build a chain of fortified blockhouses along the frontier to deter further attacks. Yet as noted historian Fred Anderson has pointed out, this strategy was flawed. The forts "were always too far-flung to create a genuine shield for the colonies that built them" and often "were as much targets as shields."[5]

One such post was Fort Granville, whose construction was overseen by Captain George Croghan. The fort's design measured "Fifty feet Square, with a Blockhouse on two of the Corners, and a Barrack within, capable of Lodging Fifty Men." Once built, the fort measured slightly larger with bastions on the corners; it could hold 50-75 men and was a major supply post for the area. Situated several hundred feet from the Juniata River, and it was bounded on one side by a deep ravine.

On July 2, 1756, a party of 60 Indians struck the area. Though they couldn't breach the fort, they burned several nearby farms. On July 30, most of the fort's garrison left to protest a civilian party sent to harvest nearby lands. With most of the garrison absent, Fort Granville lay vulnerable. A party of over 100 French regulars and their Delaware allies attacked the fort, commanded by Chevalier Louis Coulon de Villiers (who captured Fort Necessity in 1754). As eyewitness Joseph Shippen later reported, the attackers used the ravine as "a kind of natural Entrenchm[en]t, and covered them from the fire of [Fort Granville's] Garrison, and from thence they threw pine Knots & Fire & burnt a Breach thro' the Stockade."[2] As the fort's wall burned, the raiders managed to wound several of the garrison's men. Having taken casualties and with the walls no longer affording real protection, the garrison surrendered and was taken prisoner.

The fall of Fort Granville produced only more panic on the frontier and forced many settlers to fall back towards Carlisle (barely one hundred miles from Philadelphia). Reverend Mr. Barton reported that "all is Confusion. Such a Panick has seized the Hearts of People in general, since the Reduction of Fort Granville, that his County is almost relinquished."[1] Yet the fall of Fort Granville spurred colonial forces to take offensive action, eventually leading to an attack on the Delaware village of Kittanning (forty miles east of Fort Duquesne), killing approximately 50 Indians and freeing 10 white prisoners (some of whom were from Fort Granville). These back and forth attacks between French, Native-Americans, and British colonials would continue throughout the French and Indian War.

Today, two adjacent markers acknowledge Fort Granville's place within Pennsylvania and French and Indian War history. These markers stand several hundred feet north of Fort Granville's historic location. A 1916 plaque affixed to a stone marker and a Pennsylvania state historic marker note the 1756 attack on the fort.

1. James P. Myers, Jr. "Pennsylvania's Awakening: the Kittanning Raid of 1756." Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies. Vol. 66, No. 3 (Summer 1999): 399-420.

2. James P. Myers, Jr. "The Fall of Fort Granville, 'The French Letter,' & Gallic Wit on the Pennsylvania Frontier, 1756." Pittsburgh History (Winter 1996/9): 154-159.

3. Matthew C. Ward. Breaking the Backcountry: The Seven Years' War in Virginia and Pennsylvania, 1754-1765. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003.

4. John Grenier. The First Way of War: American War Making on the Frontier, 1607-1814. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

5. Fred Anderson. The War that Made America: A Short History of the French and Indian War. New York: Penguin Books, 2006.