The National Impact of Beaver’s Fort McIntosh
Remarks from Mark A. Miner, guest speaker at a recent engagement hosted by the The Beaver County Chamber of Commerce
A Revolutionary War fort once stood in Beaver, Pennsylvania. What we’ve done really well over the years is to keep it a secret and fail to adequately interpret it for young families and children who are our future.
I want to share eight facts that I’d like you to remember. I’m hoping you and your family might stop at our award-winning Heritage Museum to see our yearlong exhibit, “Fort McIntosh: Its People and Archaeology.”
Bottom line? The fort had a national impact in many ways. These remarks spell out this argument. Using archaeological artifacts, our museum is delving into what a common soldier’s experience was like. We’re discovering how personalities and clashes among the leaders shaped its legacy.
Fact 1
From December 1784 to November 1785, the troops at the fort comprised, except for two small detachments at Fort Pitt and West Point, the entire army of the United States. This has been deeply researched by the late Frank Carver in the book It Happened Right Here. As such it was the birthplace of the first standing U.S. Army in peacetime. Lt. Col. Josiah Harmar, the commanding officer at that time, proclaimed this new unit as the “First American Regiment” — “The Old Guard” — today’s Presidential Honor Guard.
More of this backstory. In 1784, at the close of the war, Congress directed Secretary of War Henry Knox to discharge all troops except 55 at West Point and 25 at Fort Pitt. The next day Knox called upon Pennsylvania and three other states to furnish a permanent regiment to be enlisted for one year. Enlistments were slow, and only Pennsylvania furnished its quota. Four companies of infantry and artillery arrived at Fort McIntosh in December.
So on New Year’s Day, 1785, here were stationed 141 rank and file, 20 sergeants, drums and fifes, 12 officers and staff, the entire professional Army at its first permanent post.
Fact 2
The man who built the fort, Gen. Lachlan McIntosh, has gone down in history for killing Declaration of Independence signer Button Gwinnett in a duel in Georgia. McIntosh left town and joined General Washington’s Army at Valley Forge, and was so impressive that Washington sent him to Fort Pitt to head the Army’s Western Department.
Fact 3
McIntosh was ordered to construct a chain of forts to counter the British presence in Detroit. Beaver was chosen for the first one. It was built by a French military engineer, Le Chevalier Jean Louis Baptiste de Cambray-Digny.
Fact 4
The Beaver side of the Ohio was not American territory. It was controlled by Native American Indian tribes, notably the Delaware Lenape. Thus it was the first fort built by the Continental Army north of the river boundary.
Fact 5
– Fort McIntosh was the headquarters of the largest army to serve west of the Allegheny Mountains.
Fact 6
To build fort #2 in the chain, McIntosh launched an expedition into the Ohio wilderness. Delays in supplies forced him to wait until November to begin. What resulted was Fort Laurens in what today is Bolivar, Ohio. McIntosh got it started and returned to Beaver. In his absence, Laurens was under constant harassment and sieges by Indians. Small amounts of reinforcements and food arrived, but in a February siege the men were trapped and began to starve, eating rancid meat and broiling their shoe leather. The next month, McIntosh brought a 600 men rescue party, only find a mess. Dispirited, he tendered his resignation and left for good.
Fact 7
It was the site of the Treaty of Fort McIntosh. It was signed in 1785 by Lenape, Wyandot, Ottawa and Chippewa sachems, and by U.S. treaty commissioners George Rogers Clark, Richard Butler and Arthur Lee. It cleared the way for Congress to enact a Land Ordinance that opened the Ohio region to orderly settlement. It also was another in a series of forced removals for the Lenape that pushed them all the way to Bartlesville, Oklahoma, where they are headquartered today.
Fact 8
Surveyors for the Chief Geographer of the U.S., based at and guarded by troops at Fort McIntosh, began a base line from a point near Ohioville from which all territories of the U.S. since have been surveyed. This monument on Route 68 marks the point of beginning. This led to the Public Land Survey System, to divide, sell and settle government owned land, and marked the real beginning of westward migration that continued for a century. If you’ve lived west of the Pennsylvania border, especially in an agricultural area, you’ll be familiar with the Section, Township, Range System on your land deed. There are 36 sections of land in a survey township, and each section is a one-square-mile block of land. This example is from Iowa.
Our museum exhibit looks at 19 U.S. and Indian leaders who had a connection with the Fort. Our interactive touchscreen allows guests to get a deeper dive into the who, the what and the why. The bios range from Washington and Thomas Jefferson to Shingas, White Eyes and Captain Pipe.
Washington kept up an active correspondence mentioning the fort with McIntosh, Secretary Knox, Brodhead (for whom Brodhead Road is named) and General William Irvine (for whom Irvine Square in Beaver is named).
Jefferson knew of the Beaver River and populations of Lenape who settled here and mentioned them in his only book, Notes on the State of Virginia.
White Eyes, of the Lenape, once kept his lodge where the Beaver enters the Ohio. He testified at the Continental Congress in 1776 and was assured of a Lenape state with representation in Congress. We see how that worked out. He accompanied McIntosh in Ohio, and persuaded influential Tories from rousing the Delaware against Americans. In an ugly twist, he died, either from smallpox … or assassination, still debated today.
I personally like that these individuals were human and exhibited some the personality traits as we see today.
When Brodhead succeeded McIntosh, he immediately moved the Army’s headquarters back to Fort Pitt. Why? He had always opposed the fort at Beaver, calling it “McIntosh’s Hobby Horse.” He complained about “a delay of military operations, and … a useless consumption of stores.” He grumbled that the Fort Laurens expedition began too late in the season. He said “McIntosh was more ambitious. He swore that nothing else but Detroit was his object, & he would have it in the winter season – And it was owing to the General’s determination to take Detroit, that the very romantic Building, called Fort McIntosh, was built by the hands of hundreds who would rather have fought than wrought.”
We learn that Col. George Morgan, the quartermaster of the Fort Laurens expedition, was so angry at McIntosh over the delay and wastage of whiskey, grain, forage salt and packhorses that “a duel between them … was narrowly avoided.” These problems never were resolved.
Where do we go from here?
1. Archaeologists and cultural resources specialists at Michael Baker International have concluded a phase I effort with us. They’ve organized, analyzed and prioritized tens of thousands of artifacts found in the digs of 1974 and 1975 which have sat in boxes ever since. We’re displaying some now, and want to display more these someday in an entire Fort McIntosh Room at the museum.
2. A Task Force led by Dan Martone has completed a study to transform the fort site into a more visually robust and publicly appealing space, worthy of tourism.
3. We’re seeking a dialogue with the Pentagon, Army War College and/or West Point to have the fort officially recognized and proclaimed for its role.
4. We envision more prominent signage along Interstate 376 and a national communications outreach to position the fort and museum as national tourism destinations.
5. Next year, we hope to mount a compelling exhibit about the impact of the Treaty of Fort McIntosh from the differing perspectives of the Lenape and U.S. Government.
There’s so much more we could be doing to utilize its legacy to educate people about why Beaver County is so special. Could you help us?
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