Trump was relocated to another post to oversee the building of Fort Norris.
Shortly after the completion of Fort Hamilton, Capt. Within three weeks, the construction of Fort Hamilton was completed records suggest the date of completion was on or near January 20, 1756. Franklin also reported that 20 militiamen oversaw the delivery of supplies to the fort. Morris, sent axes of good quality along with two wagons “loaded with bread” to Ashton and Trump. To remedy the situation, Franklin, as documented in a letter to Gov. The fort took longer to build than Franklin had anticipated, because the workers faced particularly harsh weather in January 1756 and because their inventory of worthwhile, serviceable tools was insufficient. In December 1755, Franklin sent British captains Ashton and Trump to the frontier to erect the fort, located in what is now the western part of present-day Stroudsburg, just north of the Stroud Mansion along 9th Street between Main and Monroe streets. The first fort that was erected in the area now known as Monroe County was Fort Hamilton, named for the Hon. The forts were also intended to serve as a safe location to store the harvest. It was the idea that soldiers stationed at the forts could offer protection to the farmers so that the farmers would be able to harvest their crops without fear of an Indian attack.
Varying in size, the forts were often located near a water source and a neighboring large plantation or farm. The land around each of the forts was cleared so that no ambush could take place.
#GOOD HARVEST FORT HAMILTON SERIES#
In general, the forts included a series of log buildings that were surrounded by a wooden stockade fence. His orders were to have erected several frontier forts, which came to be known as “Franklin Forts.” Under direction of Governor Morris, Franklin traveled to Bethlehem on December 18, 1755, to oversee the creation of these forts. This chain of forts followed the mountain range that ran from the northeastern-most point in Pennsylvania at present-day Bushkill in a southwesterly direction to the Maryland border. In response, the Assembly placed Benjamin Franklin and James Hamilton, another member of the governor’s council, in charge of creating a chain of forts along the Blue Mountains between 1755-1756. The Assembly received reports that French troops had attacked and defeated British and American forces in western Pennsylvania and that Indian hostilities had resulted in the death of roughly 400 settlers only 80 miles north of Philadelphia. The forts were also intended to repel the threat Indians and any French forces that may have tried to invade British domain.īenjamin Franklin, at this time in his life, was a well-respected, wealthy, 50-year-old Philadelphian who had retired from his printing company and was an important member of the Pennsylvania Assembly. These local tensions, fueled with the Iroquois Nation’s allying itself with the French to the North, forced the British to erect forts along the Blue Mountains to “protect” British interests and its colonial citizens. Tensions had been rising between the native inhabitants and the European settlers who had been moving into the area, and the interactions between the two groups became greatly strained.įor years before 1755, the natives had harbored negative feelings about the unfair results of the Walking Purchase of 1737 (which had stripped them of their ancestral lands) and the northward movement of thousands of European settlers, who were moving in and displacing the natives.īacked by the legal claim of the Walking Purchase, the colonists felt that they had the right to move on to the land the native people, however, knew that they had been treated unfairly and that they had been swindled out of their ancestral lands. The year 1755 in the northeastern region of Pennsylvania was filled with unrest and strife. Map depicting the site of Fort Hamilton in Stroudsburgįirst of a four-part series highlighting the history of the four frontier forts that were built in Monroe County from 1755 to 1756 at the command of Benjamin Franklin.
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