The mounds now standing on the ground are drawn on the appended chart Diagrams of Fort Necessity as lines C A B E. By a careful survey of them by Mr. Robert McCracken C.E., sides C A and A B are found to be the identical mounds surveyed by Mr. Lewis, the variation in direction being exceedingly slight and easily accounted for by erosion. The direction of Mr. Lewis’s sides were N. 25 W. and S. 80 W.: their direction by Mr. McCracken’s survey are N. 22 W. and S. 80.30 W. This proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that the embankments surveyed in 1816 and 1901 are identical.
But the third mound B E runs utterly at variance with Mr. Lewis’s figure. By him its direction was S. 59¼ E.; its present direction is S. 76 E. The question then arises: Is this mound the one that Mr. Lewis surveyed? Nothing could be better evidence that it is than the very egregious error Mr. Lewis made concerning the area contained within his triangular embankment. He affirms that the area of Fort Necessity was fifty square rods. Now take the line of B E for the third side of the triangle and extend it to F where it would meet the continuation of side A C. That triangle contains almost exactly 50 square rods or one-third of an acre! The natural supposition must be that some one had surveyed the triangle A F B and computed its area correctly as about fifty square rods. The mere recording of this area is sufficient evidence that the triangle A F B had been surveyed in 1816, and this is sufficient proof that mound B E stood just as it stands today and was considered in Mr. Lewis’s day as one of the embankments of Fort Necessity.
Diagrams of Fort Necessity
[Scale 80 feet to the inch.]
Now, why did Mr. Lewis ignore the embankment B E and the triangle A F B which contained these fifty square rods he gave as the area of Fort Necessity? For the very obvious reason that that triangle crossed the brook and ran far into the marsh beyond. By every account the palisades of Fort Necessity were made to extend on the north to touch the brook, therefore it would be quite ridiculous to suppose the palisades crossed the brook again on the east. Mr. Lewis, prepossessed with the idea that the embankments must have been triangular in shape, drew the line B C as the base of his triangle, bisecting it at M and N, and making the loop M S N touch the brook. This design (triangle A B C) of Fort Necessity is improbable for the following reasons:
1. It has not one-half the area Mr. Lewis gives it.
2. It would not include much more than one-half of the high ground of the plateau, which was none too large for a fort.
3. There is no semblance of a mound B C nor any shred of testimony nor any legend of its existence.