Fort Stanwix

Located in what is now Rome, New York, Fort Stanwix began rising on August 26, 1758, when British General John Stanwix oversaw the start of construction, though workers did not finish the job until roughly 1762. Its purpose was to protect the Oneida Carry, a vital portage route, amid the fighting of the French and Indian War, and the design followed the pattern of a bastion fort. Today visitors can see the site occupied by a rebuilt version of the fort, erected by the National Park Service as the Fort Stanwix National Monument.

What secures the fort's place in history is the successful stand American soldiers made there when besieged in August 1777. Sitting at a key point along the waterway connecting Lake Ontario to the Hudson River, the fort had originally gone up under British control back in 1758. Once American forces seized and reconstructed it during the Revolutionary War, a British army moving down from Canada by way of Lake Ontario surrounded the position, aiming eventually to push through to the Hudson. That siege ultimately collapsed when the attackers withdrew, a turn of events that contributed to the larger British defeat during the Saratoga campaign.

The grounds also carry earlier diplomatic weight, having hosted the 1768 Treaty of Fort Stanwix between the British and various Native American nations, and later the 1784 agreement bearing the same name, this time between those tribes and the new American government. Beyond the reconstructed fort itself, the monument features three short paths looping around it, and one of these traces part of the old Oneida Carry route. Housing the monument's collection of 485,000 artifacts and documents is the Marinus Willett Collections Management and Education Center, which also presents exhibits covering Fort Stanwix and the Mohawk Valley while functioning as a hub for regional tourism.

History

Built in 1758, Fort Stanwix served as a guardian for the Oneida Carry, the portage linking two vital water routes: one running southeast through the Mohawk and Hudson rivers toward the Atlantic, and another stretching northwest via Wood Creek and Oneida Lake to Oswego on Lake Ontario.

William Johnson arranged for the fort to host a significant 1768 treaty conference between British officials and the Iroquois, even though the structure itself had fallen into disrepair and disuse by then. The gathering aimed to redraw the boundary separating Native lands from colonial settlements, a line originally established by the Proclamation of 1763. British authorities saw a revised border as a possible remedy for the costly and persistent violence plaguing the frontier, while Native leaders viewed a firm, lasting boundary as their best hope for checking colonial expansion.

Signed on November 5, the resulting treaty pushed the earlier proclamation line considerably farther west, with the Iroquois essentially surrendering claims to Kentucky. Yet the Shawnee, Delaware, and Cherokee, the tribes who actually inhabited and used that Kentucky territory, were excluded entirely from the talks. Far from establishing lasting peace, the agreement instead laid groundwork for renewed conflict. The fort itself was abandoned that same year and left to deteriorate.

Colonial forces under Colonel Elias Dayton returned to occupy the site on July 12, 1776, launching repairs and rechristening it Fort Schuyler, though the older name Stanwix persisted in common usage. Command passed to Colonel Peter Gansevoort on May 3, 1777.

A siege began on August 3, 1777, when Brigadier General Barry St. Leger led the King's 8th Regiment of Foot alongside Loyalist and Native American forces against the fort, one prong of a larger three-part strategy meant to split the colonies apart. Gansevoort rejected British surrender terms, and fighting ensued.

Local tradition holds that the flag raised by Colonial defenders that same day marked the first combat appearance of the Flag of the United States, though historians consider it more probable that the banner flying over Fort Schuyler bore only thirteen stripes, representing either an early New York flag design or the Continental Union Flag.

Nearby, just a few miles southeast, General Nicholas Herkimer's relief column ran into an ambush set by Tories and their Native allies, sparking the Battle of Oriskany. With much of the besieging force drawn away to that engagement, the fort's defenders seized the opportunity to raid the enemy camp, plundering and destroying supplies there. Weakened and disheartened, the British ultimately retreated upon learning that another relief force under General Benedict Arnold was approaching, withdrawing through Canada to rejoin Burgoyne's forces at Fort Ticonderoga.

This failure to seize the fort and push onward through the Mohawk Valley proved a major British setback, contributing directly to Burgoyne's eventual defeat at Saratoga.

Colonel Goose Van Schaick led a Continental Army expedition launching from Fort Schuyler against the Onondaga people in April 1779.

Fire destroyed the fort completely on May 13, 1781. It was never rebuilt, and its garrison relocated to Fort Herkimer after abandoning the site.

A second Treaty of Fort Stanwix took place there in 1784, this time between American and Native American representatives. Later, during the War of 1812, a blockhouse rose on the old parade ground, before dismantling of the remaining fortifications commenced in 1828.

National monument

On August 21, 1935, Franklin D. Roosevelt put his signature to the legislation establishing the site as a national monument, though at the time the ground earmarked for it still held the shops and homes of Rome's downtown. Three decades later, in the 1960s, civic leaders in Rome pushed for a rebuilt fort as part of a broader effort to breathe new life into the city's center through urban renewal. Senator Robert F. Kennedy of New York, hoping to shore up backing in the upstate region, applied enough political pressure that the Park Service, though hesitant, consented to reconstruct the Revolutionary-era stronghold.

A master plan for the site took shape in 1967, and three years of archaeological fieldwork followed, beginning in 1970 under the National Park Service. Ground was broken on the rebuilding effort in 1974, and by 1976, in time for the nation's Bicentennial, visitors could already walk through the unfinished fort. The structure seen today, a reinforced concrete shell wrapped in earth and timber and enclosing three separate buildings standing on their own, reached completion in 1978.

For roughly two decades after opening, from 1976 into the mid-1990s, the monument told its story through first-person interpretation, casting visitors back to the fort as it stood right after the 1777-78 siege and highlighting daily existence during the Revolution. In later years the approach shifted to third-person interpretation, broadening the narrative to include the French and Indian War and the fort's part in negotiating treaties with Native Americans. In 2005 a new visitor center opened its doors. Today the National Park Service keeps the monument running year round.