Fort Pitt

The French began building Fort Duquesne in April 1754[1]

Fort Prince George[2]

Braddock expedition, a 1755 attempt to take Fort Duquesne, met with defeat at the Battle of the

Monongahela at present-day Braddock, Pennsylvania. The French garrison defeated an attacking

British regiment in September 1758 at the Battle of Fort Duquesne. French Colonel de Lignery

ordered Fort Duquesne be destroyed and abandoned at the approach of General John Forbes’s

expedition in late November.[3]

The Forbes expedition was successful where the Braddock expedition had failed because

the Treaty of Easton of 1758 reduced French alliances with Native American tribes. Chiefs

of 13 American Indian nations agreed to negotiate peace with the colonial governments of

Pennsylvania and New Jersey and to abandon any alliances with the French. The nations were

primarily those of the Iroquois, Lenape (Delaware), and Shawnee, who agreed to the treaty in

return for the British governments’ promising to respect their rights to hunting and territory in

the Ohio Country, to prohibit establishing new settlements west of the Appalachian Mountains,

and to withdraw British and colonial military troops after the war. The Indians wanted a trading

post at Fort Duquesne, but they did not want a British army garrison or colonial settlement. The

colonists built a new fort and named it Fort Pitt, after William Pitt the Elder. The fort was built

from 1759 to 1761 during the French and Indian War (Seven Years War), next to the site of

former Fort Duquesne.

Pontiac’s Rebellion

After the war and in the face of continued colonial encroachment, in 1763 the western Delaware

and Shawnee took part in Pontiac’s Rebellion, an effort to drive the settlers out of the region.

The Indians’ siege of Fort Pitt began on June 22, 1763, but they found it too well-fortified to be

taken by force. In negotiations during the siege, Captain Simeon Ecuyer, the commander of Fort

Pitt, gave two Delaware emissaries blankets that had been exposed to smallpox. The potential of

this act to cause an epidemic among the Indians was clearly understood. Commander William

Trent wrote that he hoped “it will have the desired effect,” and Colonel Henry Bouquet, leading

a relief force, would discuss similar tactics with Commander-in-Chief Jeffery Amherst. There

is, however, no record that the attempt succeeded.[4]

broke off the siege to intercept the approaching force under Bouquet. In the Battle of Bushy Run,

on the site of the small British

at the beginning of the French and Indian War (Seven Years War). The

On August 1, 1763, most of the Indians

Bouquet fought off the Indian attack and was able to relieve Fort Pitt on August 20.

After Pontiac’s War, the British Crown no longer needed Fort Pitt. They turned it over to the

colonists in 1772. At that time, the Pittsburgh area was claimed by the colonies of both Virginia

and Pennsylvania, which struggled for power over the region. After Virginians took control of

Fort Pitt, they called it Fort Dunmore, in honour of Virginia’s Governor Lord Dunmore. The

fort served as a staging ground in Dunmore’s War of 1774. Notice was given to area residents

of an auction of all salvageable remains of the fort on August 3, 1797 after the U.S. Army

decommissioned the site.

American Revolutionary War

During the American Revolutionary War, Fort Pitt served as a headquarters for the western

theatre of the war. In present-day Michigan, the British garrisoned Fort Detroit.

Only a redoubt, a small brick outbuilding called the Blockhouse, remains in Point State Park

as the only intact remnant of Fort Pitt. Erected in 1764, it is believed to be the oldest building

still standing, in Pittsburgh, and likely within the Mississippi Valley. Used for many years as

a private residence, the blockhouse was purchased and preserved for many years by the local

chapter of the heritage society, Daughters of the American Revolution. They have opened it to

the public.

Later history

The city of Pittsburgh commissioned archeological excavation of the foundations of Fort Pitt.

Afterward, some of the fort was reconstructed to give visitors at Point Park a sense of the size

of the fort. In this rebuilt section, the Fort Pitt Museum is housed in the Monongahela Bastion.

Excavated portions of the fort were filled in, although local citizens hoped to continue to have

them accessible by the public.

Fort Pitt Foundry was an important armaments manufacturing center for the Federal government

during the Civil War, under the charge of William Metcalf. [Wikipedia references]