Fort McClary

About this property

Fort McClary is a former defensive fortification of the United States military located along the southern coast at Kittery Point, Maine at the mouth of the Piscataqua River. It was used throughout the 19th century to protect approaches to the harbor of Portsmouth, New Hampshire and the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery. The property and its surviving structures are now owned and operated by the State of Maine as Fort McClary State Historic Site, including a blockhouse dating from 1844. Coastal defenses on the site date to the late 17th century when shipbuilder William Pepperell (father of William Pepperrell) acquired the property and erected crude defense works in 1689. Prior to that, the village was protected by Fort William and Mary at New Castle. The Province of Massachusetts Bay voted in 1715 to erect a permanent breastwork of six guns for the defense of the Piscataqua River, during the lead-up to Father Rale's War. Some sources state that it was intended to protect Maine (then part of Massachusetts) from "unreasonable duties" (taxes) that the governor of New Hampshire was attempting to impose on nearby citizens of other colonies. The fort was also used to collect duties from Massachusetts citizens for its own upkeep. This fortification was transferred to the United States government in 1803, known as Fort William, but none of its features are known to survive. The Pepperrells remained loyal to the British in 1775, so their property was confiscated by local Patriot forces, including the fort. In 1776, ammunition was provided for the fort's 9-pounder and 12-pounder cannon, and the New Hampshire militia manned the fort until 1779. Fort McClary was officially established in 1808 as part of the second system of US fortifications. It was named for New Hampshire native Major Andrew McClary, an American officer killed in the 1775 Battle of Bunker Hill. It consisted of a semi-elliptical lower battery of 9 or 10 guns and a shot furnace, and an upper battery near the present blockhouse whose armament does not appear in references. The fort was used throughout the 19th century, most notably during the War of 1812, but it saw no action. The fort was further expanded in the 1840s, probably a consequence of tensions with Great Britain over the disputed border between Maine and New Brunswick which culminated in the bloodless Aroostook War and the 1842 Webster-Ashburton Treaty. The blockhouse was built in 1844 near the former upper battery; this was the last blockhouse built at a fort in Maine, and probably one of the last in a US coastal fort. The fort saw active use during the American Civil War, at which time it achieved much of its present structure due to a rebuilding under the third system that was never completed. The fort was manned near the start of the war by the Maine Coast Guard and the Kittery Artillery company, and in 1864 was also manned by the Maine State Guard. Its Civil War garrison notably included Vice President Hannibal Hamlin, who enlisted in Company A of the Maine State Guard as a private and served as a cook in the fort. Some subsequent citations erroneously confuse his unit with the Maine Coast Guard — including a plaque at the fort.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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