Fort Laurens Site

About this property

Fort Laurens was the only fortification built within the current boundaries of Ohio during the American Revolutionary War. It was constructed in the fall of 1778 on the Tuscarawas River near what is now Bolivar, Ohio. Fort Laurens was besieged by Indigenous and British forces for several weeks in the winter of 1779. The fort was ordered abandoned in August 1779. The site is now owned by the Ohio History Connection. None of the original fort remains above ground. In October 1778, a force of 1,200 regulars and militia led by Brigadier General Lachlan McIntosh departed Pittsburgh with the intention of attacking Wyandot settlements on the Sandusky River and eventually capturing Fort Detroit. By November, McIntosh had reached the Tuscarawas River, a tributary of the Muskingam River, where he ordered the construction of Fort Laurens on the west bank. The fort was a typical four-sided stockade with a square blockhouse located beside the landward gate. It was named after Henry Laurens, the president of the Second Continental Congress. A storehouse and barracks were built inside the fort. Due to a shortage of provisions, McIntosh decided in December to return to Pittsburg, leaving Colonel John Gibson, 19 officers and 152 men of the 13th Virginia Regiment to garrison the fort. At Detroit, the British learned of the fort's construction from their Indigenous allies. In January, British Indian Department interpreter Simon Girty was sent to scout the location. Girty brought with him a number of Mingo warriors and arrived at Fort Laurens on January 21, just as a small resupply column commanded by Captain John Clark of the 8th Pennsylvania reached the fort. Girty was too late to intercept the supplies but successfully ambushed the escort as it returned to Pittsburg. Two Americans were killed, four were wounded, and one was taken prisoner. Girty brought the prisoner to Detroit and requested that British regulars be assigned to help take the fort. Captain Henry Bird of the 8th Regiment and a small number of regulars volunteered to accompany Girty to the Wyandot village of Upper Sandusky were they were joined by roughly 180 hundred Mingo and Wyandot. The siege of Fort Laurens began on February 22, 1779 when a work party was surprised outside the fort. 17 were killed and immediately scalped while two were taken prisoner. The garrison suffered from a lack of warm clothing and provisions during the siege. Captain Benjamin Biggs of the 13th Virginia recalled, “The siege lasted 4 weeks, provisions exhausted; finally for 3 or 4 days had to live on half a biscuit a day—then the last two days washed their moccasons and broiled them for food, and broiled strips of old dried hides.”

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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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