I ended up taking last week off from blogging, due to chronic medical nonsense. It's annoying, but sometimes I have to concede defeat for a day or so. On the bright side, I'm in the home stretch on the new book. I had hoped to be finished in time for my birthday, but now it's looking more like the end of September or very early October. I found some cool stuff (or at least I think so) that ended up causing a handful of updates and edits and rewrites, so I'm still plugging away when time and energy permit.
Speaking of history books, I will once again be signing copies of Laury's Island at the Laurys Station Community Day festivities this coming Saturday, September 20th. There will be food trucks, local wineries, craft vendors, a big raffle, live music, fun stuff for kids, community programs and nonprofits (including a camper full of kitties!), and, well, me. Everything kicks off at noon at the Laurys Station fire company headquarters; you can get the details here.
Meanwhile, this week the quest map leads us back to Luzerne County for the first time in a while. Like nearly all of the colonial forts, this one is long gone, but not forgotten.
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| The marker stands at the intersection of Wyoming Street (US 11) and Exeter Avenue (PA 92). |
The marker identifies this one as Jenkins' Fort, and I'm pretty sure that's to avoid confusing it with Fort Jenkins, which is (er, was) in Columbia County. This one was built by the Connecticut settlers - the Yankee side of the Yankee-Pennamite Wars - to protect their people. Of course, when the American Revolution got fired up, the Yankees and the Pennamites put their squabbles aside to take on the British together, with the understanding that they could go back to their regularly scheduled disagreement after the war was over. Which they did.
The fort was built in 1776, after a meeting in August of that year determined that it would be done. Like most forts of the time, it wasn't so much a formal fort as it was the stockaded home of a local resident; in this case, the home belonged to Judge John Jenkins, hence the name. As recorded by the Commission to locate all these forts (see the sources below), "The stockade was built in the usual manner by planting upright timbers in a trench of proper depth; these uprights were sharpened at the tops, and in this case, owing to their small size doubtless, were fastened together by pins of wood and stiffened with two rows of timbers put on horizontally and pinned to the uprights inside, thus stiffening and uniting the whole into a substantial structure." If I understand this description correctly, they basically dug a dry moat around the home and then put logs into the trench to form a basic fence. The image seen here was published as part of the report from the Commission, and is the best illustration we have of how it looked at that time.
The fort overlooked the Susquehanna River, which might have led to its eventual doom even without the events that destroyed it. It was roughly a mile from the stockades of Pittstown (as it was spelled then) and, compared to some of the other forts in the vicinity, was rather small. As the American Revolution got underway, the bulk of the men who were of an age for fighting left to join the Continental Army, meaning that most of those who remained to guard the home front were either too old or too young to be doing any kind of military service. Between Jenkins' Fort and the relatively nearby Wintermoot's Fort and Forty Fort, there were believed to be roughly eight hundred men. At least, that was the report given to the British Major John Butler, who had requested intelligence about how well the region was prepared for an invasion. Deciding that the odds were in his favor, Butler set out to capture Jenkins' and Wintermoot's Forts, which were farther to the north than Forty Fort.
On the evening of July 1, 1778, a force of rangers led by Captain William Caldwell stormed the gates at Jenkins' Fort. I have to wonder if they were surprised by what they found. One of my sources says there were seventeen "older men" guarding the garrison, and that four were killed and three more taken prisoner before the rest gave up the fight. The report of the Commission, on the other hand, says there were only eight, and that they surrendered almost immediately for the sake of the "several families" who were sheltering within the fort's protection. I don't know which number is correct, and it may be that neither source has it quite right, but it's probably safe to say that there were less than twenty defenders.
The terms of surrender, according to the Commission, were very simple. Judge Jenkins and Major Butler laid them out clearly. In return for the immediate surrender of the fort itself, as well as all arms and supplies kept inside of it, Butler would spare the lives of every person there - man, woman, and child - and allow them to leave the fort unharmed. Once everyone had vacated the premises, and the British forces removed everything they could use, the fort was put to the torch. It had been considered a fort for less than two years before being burned to the ground.
Jenkins' Fort at the Historical Marker Database
Except where indicated, all writing and photography on this blog is the intellectual property of Laura Klotz. This blog is written with permission of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. I am not employed by the PHMC. All rights reserved.
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