Fort Seybert facts for kids
Fort Seybert was a small fort built in the 1700s in the Allegheny Mountains. Today, this area is part of Pendleton County, West Virginia, United States. During the French and Indian War in 1758, a group of Shawnee and Delaware warriors launched a surprise attack. Most of the 30 settlers hiding inside the fort were killed, and the fort was burned down. Just the day before, a similar attack happened at nearby Fort Upper Tract. Fort Seybert is now mostly gone, but it was located about 8 miles northeast of the town of Franklin.
Contents
History of Fort Seybert
Why Fort Seybert Was Built
After a big battle in 1755 where General Edward Braddock was defeated, settlers in the Allegheny Mountains were often attacked by Shawnee and Delaware Native American groups. To help protect them, the Virginia Regiment (a military group) grew larger. They started to put soldiers in small forts that had been quickly built by regular people or soldiers.
Fort Seybert was one of these forts. It was built near a river called the South Fork of the South Branch Potomac River. The land was first owned by John Patton, who had a mill there. But in 1755, he sold it to Jacob Seybert, who the fort was named after.
A young 24-year-old commander named Colonel George Washington was in charge of protecting the settlers. He worked to build and staff forts along the frontier. Fort Seybert and Fort Upper Tract were often mentioned in his official records as important places to defend. In 1756, Washington wrote to Virginia's Lieutenant Governor, Robert Dinwiddie, explaining that they had built forts where settlers were being bothered. He noted that people at Upper Tract still needed protection.
Growing Worries on the Frontier
By November 1756, Colonel Washington was very worried about the settlers. He wrote to Governor Dinwiddie again, saying that people were so scared they were moving away from the frontier. He expected that soon, hardly any families would live in the western counties of Virginia.
Washington also agreed to a plan to build a long chain of 23 small forts along the wilderness edge. He would have preferred fewer, but larger and stronger forts. In September 1757, five people were killed and eight were captured by Native Americans on the South Branch. Major Andrew Lewis told Washington that the whole region might need to be left empty because there weren't enough soldiers to guard the forts.
A few months later, in April 1758, a scout found a large group of Native American warriors heading towards the frontier forts. It's very likely that these were the warriors who attacked Forts Upper Tract and Seybert soon after.
The Attack on Fort Seybert
The surprise attack on Fort Seybert happened on a foggy morning, April 28, 1758. Many of the men who usually defended the fort were away on business. There wasn't much ammunition left inside the fort, and only about three adult men were there to defend it, including Captain Seybert.
Seeing that they couldn't win, Captain Seybert surrendered. He believed the war chief, Bemino (also known as John Killbuck), when he promised that everyone's lives would be saved. However, after the surrender, the warriors killed between 17 and 19 people. They took eleven people captive, including Seybert's teenage son. This son later returned to the area years later and shared what happened. The fort was then burned down.
After the attacks, Bemino's warriors left the area. They followed an old Native American path that later became known as the "Shawnee Trail". They traveled west, taking their prisoners and anything they had taken to the distant Ohio Country.
What Fort Seybert Looked Like
People who lived near Fort Seybert for generations passed down stories about what the fort looked like. The local community is still called "Fort Seybert" today.
One description, written by Mr. Alonzo D. Lough in the 1930s, said that Fort Seybert was on the west side of the South Fork River. It was on a raised area that sloped down to a valley on one side and dropped sharply to the river on the other. The fort was a round fence, about 30 yards across. It was made of logs or thick planks called puncheons, set upright in the ground. These logs stood about twelve feet high. A wooden door closed the entrance. Inside the fence was a two-story building, 21 feet square. From the upper loop-holes (small openings), defenders could shoot their rifles at anyone approaching the fort.
The Old Drawing of the Fort
In 1851, a historian named Wills De Hass included a picture of Fort Seybert in his book. This picture is a wood engraving, but no one knows for sure where he got the image or how accurate it is. The drawing shows the fort as a large, square stockade, which looks more like a trading post or a much later fort that could hold many soldiers.
Amateur historians have often used this drawing as a source of information. However, De Hass himself described the fort as "a rude enclosure, cut out of the heart of the forest." People living near Fort Seybert in the 1930s said they could still see a dip in the ground where the palisades (the upright logs) were placed. They thought it was impossible for the fort to have been made of almost a dozen log houses, as shown in the De Hass drawing.
