Site History
“[Fort Laurens] is a piece of that larger American story, but it also shows what's happening in the Ohio Country at this time, the intersection of the British, the American, the American Indian.” - Megan Wood, President, Ohio History Connection
Ancient Crossroads
The nearby Tuscarawas River formed a part of a major waterway system (Muskingum-Cuyahoga) used for thousands of years by native people. It was also located near what was called the “Great Crossing” at which several Indian trails “crossed" or came together, making the site an important intersection for travel in all directions.
Historic Home & Outpost
In the mid to late 18th Century, the Tuscarawas Valley hosted a unique assortment of people. While the Lanape or Delaware people called it home, many Europeans and Euro-Americans visited the region as traders, missionaries, land speculators, or as part of three military expeditions- Robert Rogers in 1761, Henry Bouquet in 1764 and Lachlan McIntosh in 1778.
image courtesy, David L. Shelburne
The Fort
In 1778, Fort Laurens was built near the Great Crossing on the Tuscarawas River to serve as a base from which a spring campaign would be launched against the British and their Indian allies at Fort Detroit.
Fort Laurens, the only American Continental outpost in what would later become the state of Ohio, was built by Continental troops, Western Pennsylvania and Virginia militia between November 18 and December 9, 1778.
The fort was then garrisoned by regular Continental troops of the 8th Pennsylvania, 13th Virginia along with a small number of troops from the Maryland Corps.
Serving in the Continental and militia ranks of this expedition were ancestors of three future U.S. presidents (Zackary Taylor, Abraham Lincoln, and William McKinley) along with many African Americans including Henry Dorton, a free Black man from Redstone, Pennsylvania.
Also involved in the expedition were a small number of North Carolina light dragoons, several supply party members and their militia escorts, pack horse drivers, laundresses, nurses, surveyors, surgeons as well as allied Delaware Indians who assisted as scouts and guides.
Click here for a listing of the men and women who we currently know took part in the expedition.
Throughout most of its existence, the garrison suffered from the extreme cold winter of 1778-1779, a terrible lack of supplies and constant attacks by American Indians allied with the British.
The site was a battlefield as well. From February 24th to March 23rd, 1779, Fort Laurens survived a siege by some 180 Indians and a small contingent of the Kings 8th Regiment out of Fort Detroit.
From the time the march west along the Great Trail began in November of 1778 to the eventual evacuation of the fort in the late summer of 1779, eight separate attacks on American forces resulted in 36 American casualties (killed, wounded, and captured).
Due to the difficulty of supplying the western outpost and an eventual change in American military strategy in the west, Fort Laurens was abandoned on August 2, 1779.
Modern Byways
After the Revolutionary War, American Indians continued to lay claim to and resisted settlement of the Tuscarawas Valley which led to the Northwest Territory Indian Wars in the early 1790s.
After two major military defeats, the U.S. Army finally overwhelmed a powerful Native American confederacy at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794.
The resulting Greenville Treaty, whose line ran adjacent to the abandoned Fort Laurens, officially ceded the region to the United States in 1795.
In the late 1820s, the Ohio and Erie Canal cut through what was once the fort’s eastern bastions and in the 1960s, the nearby Tuscarawas River was re-routed to build Interstate 77.
Museum & Memorial
The first major archeological excavation of the site was conducted in the early 1970s by the Ohio Historical Society at which time a variety of artifacts as well as the the original outlines of the fort and adjacent buildings were discovered.
The graves of soldiers killed here were also uncovered, one of which was excavated and is currently memorialized in Fort Lauren’s Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
Today, a museum that commemorates the site and its history is open to the public.
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