Washington's Road (Nemacolin's path) the First Chapter of the Old French War

by Archer Butler Hulbert

4. The mound B E is entirely ignored though there is the best of evidence that it stood in Mr. Lewis’s day where it stands today and was considered an embankment of Fort Necessity. Mr. Lewis gives exactly the area of a triangle with it as a part of the base line.

5. Loop M S N would not come near the course of the brook without extending it far beyond Mr. Lewis’s estimate of the length of its sides.

6. Its area is only about 5200 square feet which would make Fort Necessity unconscionably small in face of the fact that more high ground was available.

In 1759 Colonel Burd visited the site of Fort Necessity. This was only five years after it was built. He described its remains as circular in shape. If it was originally a triangle it is improbable that it could have appeared round five years later. If, however, it was originally an irregular square, it is not improbable that the rains and frosts of five winters, combined with the demolition of the fort by the French, would have given the mounds a circular appearance. Was Fort Necessity, then, built in the form of an irregular square? There is the best of evidence that it was.

In 1830—fourteen years after Mr. Lewis’s “survey”—Mr. Jared Sparks, a careful historian and author of the standard work on Washington, visited Fort Necessity. According to him its remains occupied “an irregular square, the dimensions of which were about one hundred feet on each side.”[16] Mr. Sparks drew a map of the embankments which is incorporated in his Writings of Washington (see plate on page 175). This drawing has not been reproduced in any later work, the authors of both History of Cumberland and Frontier Forts of Pennsylvania preferring to reproduce Mr. Lewis’s inconsistent survey and speculation rather than Mr. Sparks’s more accurate drawing.

It is plain that Mr. Sparks found the embankment B E running in the direction it does today and not at all in the direction of the line B C, as Mr. Lewis drew it. By giving the approximate length of the sides as one hundred feet, Mr. Sparks gives about the exact length of the line B E in whatever direction it is extended to the brook. The fact that such an exact scholar as Mr. Sparks does not mention a sign or tradition of an embankment at B C, only fourteen years after Mr. Lewis “surveyed” it, is evidence that it never existed, which cannot come far from convicting the latter of a positive intention to speculate. However, it is well known how loosely early surveying was done.

Mr. Sparks gives us four sides for Fort Necessity. Three of these have been described as C A, A B and the broken line B E D. Is there any evidence of the fourth side such as indicated by the line C D?

There is!

When Mr. Fazenbaker first questioned the accuracy of the map of Fort Necessity in Frontier Forts of Pennsylvania, he believed the fort was a four-sided construction and pointed to a small mound, indicated at O, as the remains of the fourth embankment. The mound would not be noticed in a hasty view of the field, but, on examination proves to be an artificial, not a natural, mound. It is in lower ground and nearer the old course of the brook than the remains of Fort Necessity. A mound here would suffer most when the brook was out of banks, which would account for its disappearance.

Excavations in the other mounds had been unsuccessful; nothing had been discovered of the palisades, though every mound gave certain proof of having been artificially made. But excavations at mound O gave a different result. At about four and one-half feet below the surface of the ground, at the water line, a considerable amount of bark was found, fresh and red as new bark. It was water-soaked and the strings lay parallel with the mound above and were not found at a greater distance than two feet from its center. It was the rough bark of a tree’s trunk—not the skin bark such as grows on roots. Large flakes, the size of a man’s hand, could be removed from it. At a distance of ten feet away a second trench was sunk, in line with the mound but quite beyond its northwestern extremity. Bark was found here entirely similar in color, position, and condition. There is little doubt that the bark came from the logs of the palisades of Fort Necessity, though nothing is to be gained by exaggerating the possibility. Bark, here in the low ground, would last indefinitely, and water was reached under this mound sooner than at any other point. No wood was found. It is probable that the French threw down the palisades, but bark would naturally have been left in the ground. If wood had been left, it would not withstand decay so long as bark. Competent judges declare the bark to be that of oak. An authority of great reputation expresses the opinion that the bark found was probably from the logs of the palisades erected in 1754.