Battle of Fort Peter

Forts at St. Marys

Where the St. Marys River meets the Georgia coast, Point Peter juts out as the earliest spot travelers would have come ashore on that side of the water, a strip of land wedged between the North River and Point Peter Creek before both feed into the larger river. James Seagrove and Jacob Weed acquired grants of land in this vicinity in 1787, and around that same period a military post took shape on the point.

By July 1794, authorities had commissioned Paul Hyacinth Perrault to raise a fort at St. Marys, likely the structure known as Ft. St. Tammany. Expenses climbed past $1,400 within a year. The War Department signed off on payments tied to the fort's construction in both 1797 and 1800. Over time the garrison grew to include not just the fort itself but also a battery and a mooring point for naval ships, and records suggest the post went by the name Fort Gunn as early as 1794.

Troops stationed at Point Peter carried the duty of collecting tariffs and guarding the southern boundary against Spanish-held Florida. When the Quasi-War broke out in 1798, the fort found itself drawn into that conflict as well. Across the years from 1793 to 1805, American soldiers kept the post staffed, with total spending on the Point Peter garrison reaching $16,000. Yet by 1806 much of the fort had been torn down, leaving gunboats and a stationary battery as the sole means of defense, a vulnerability that may have played a role in the St. Marys River affair of July 1805, which drew in British sailors along with French and Spanish privateers in turn. Plans for a new American fort, centered on a block house and battery, won approval in 1809.

By 1811, eleven vessels out of the Navy's fleet of 165 gunboats nationwide had taken up position at St. Marys, ranking the station third in size across the country in the years just before the War of 1812. These vessels relied on lateen sails paired with oars and carried heavy artillery aboard.

That same year, command of Fort Point Peter fell to Lt. Col. Thomas Adam Smith, whose subordinate officers included Captain Abraham Massias, Captain Joseph Woodruff, Lieutenant Daniel Appling, Captain Fiedler Ridgeway, and Lieutenant Elias Stallings. All were instructed to lend support to any American effort to seize Spanish Florida should rebellion or invasion break out there. Still, only a handful of these men ended up taking part in the Patriot War of East Florida during the years that followed, since neither President Madison nor Secretary of State Monroe ever issued direct commands to the Point Peter garrison regarding that struggle, a marked contrast to the explicit orders that would come later during the War of 1812.

When autumn arrived in 1812, the Camden County Battalion formed up at Point Peter. This unit joined the 1st Brigade under General John Floyd, whose division saw action in the Creek Wars.

Battle of Fort Point Peter 1815

Admiral Sir George Cockburn put British troops ashore on Cumberland Island, off the Georgia coastline, on January 10, 1815. His landing party drew from the three Royal Marines Battalions, totaling 560 men across the 1st and 2nd along with six companies making up the 3rd, plus 120 Royal Marines drawn from the squadron's ships, and 190 troops from two companies of the 2nd West India Regiment stationed in The Bahamas. Robert Ramsay, commanding the Regulus, led several operations along the Georgia shoreline, taking charge of the force that seized Frederica and the island of St. Simon's.

Three days later, on January 13, British ships shelled Fort Peter before troops came ashore at Point Peter near St. Marys. Barrie put his men on land that same day, close to the fort itself. The assault succeeded without a single British casualty, and the fort fell into their hands.

Pushing onward toward St. Marys, the British land forces crossed paths with a modest American contingent, 160 men strong, drawn from the 43rd Infantry Regiment and the Rifle Corps under Captain Abraham A. Massias. Fighting broke out briefly before the Americans pulled back. Massias placed British numbers at roughly 1500, and his tally of American losses for that day included one dead, four wounded, and nine unaccounted for. Massias thought the British had taken heavy losses too, though their own count for the whole campaign stood at just three killed and five wounded.

St. Marys itself fell to the British on January 15, even with Fort St. Tammany positioned just outside town. According to American accounts, British troops ransacked a jewelry shop and made off with fine china and other belongings taken from local residents. The British version tells a different story, claiming townspeople struck a bargain surrendering all public property while private possessions remained untouched by the occupying soldiers. The British haul included two American gunboats and a dozen merchant vessels, among them the East Indiaman Countess of Harcourt, a ship the American privateer Sabine had originally seized while it traveled from London toward Isle of France, now known as Mauritius. Payment for prizes, covering the Countess of Harcourt, the bark Maria Theresa, cargo from the Carl Gustaff, and the schooner Cooler, came through in April 1824.

That same January, Ross took the Albion up the St. Marys River on a boat expedition before heading back to Cumberland Island, bringing along a timber-laden vessel and the captured English East Indiaman. He also loaded onto ships at St. Mary's, the same vessels Captain Barrie had taken there, whatever produce had been gathered in town, then destroyed the fort at Point Peter along with a battery holding six 24-pounder guns and two brass 6-pounders. Barracks and storehouses went up too, along with merchandise and weaponry judged not worth hauling away. Badcock, commanding the Brune, joined Barrie and Ross in this work of dismantling Georgia's coastal defenses.

Cockburn held his forces at Cumberland Island, eyeing Savannah as a potential target, until word reached him on February 25 that the war had come to a close.

Roughly a week into their hold on St. Marys and Fort St. Tammany, the British pulled out, setting fire to Fort Point Peter, its blockhouses, and barracks, then retreating to Cumberland Island. Officers took up residence at Dungeness, once the home of the widow of General Nathanael Greene, the Revolutionary War hero now deceased. The bulk of British forces camped at the island's southern tip, while their vessels rode at anchor in Cumberland Sound.

Newspapers brought Rear Admiral Cockburn word of the Treaty of Ghent by late February, but he declined to treat this as official confirmation and kept moving refugees out of Florida and Georgia. British efforts ultimately helped roughly 1,700 enslaved people leave southeastern Georgia. Cockburn would only agree to hand back those freed following the treaty's ratification on February 17. Spalding, together with Thomas M. Newell, got the chance to speak before several hundred former slaves gathered on the deck of the Regulus, urging them to return. Just thirteen chose that path, while the ships carried the remainder to Bermuda and onward to Halifax, Nova Scotia.

The British left Cumberland Island on March 15, though one vessel had run aground on a sandbar, keeping

Point Peter 1815-1821

The land came under federal ownership in 1818, and the following year saw the signing of the Adams-Onís Treaty, an agreement that led to Florida becoming United States territory by 1821.

Time had reduced Fort Point Peter to little more than crumbling remains by the era of the Civil War. Daniel Proctor acquired the site from the United States in 1870, and he later sold it to Alexander Curtis.