A motorist touring north along the Susquehanna Trail, when six miles above Harrisburg, just at the point in the roadway where one would turn off sharply to the right, if going to the beautiful Country Club of Harrisburg, can see a boulder which marks the site of Fort Hunter, one of the busy places during the stirring period immediately following hostilities which inaugurated the French and Indian War.
This fort stood on the south bank of Fishing Creek, at its junction with the Susquehanna River, on property now occupied by John W. Reily near the village known as Rockville.
The date of its erection is uncertain, but it is probable that it was built by the settlers about October, 1755, immediately after the two terrible Indian massacres at Penn’s Creek and Mahanoy Creek. It was completed by the Provincial Government in January, 1756.
Benjamin Chambers was the first white man to settle in that vicinity, where he built a mill in 1720. He was the senior of four brothers, all sturdy Presbyterians from the County of Antrim in the north of Ireland. He was subsequently joined by his three brothers, and in 1735 all but Thomas removed to the Cumberland Valley.
Benjamin erected Fort Chambers and became a most influential citizen. Thomas remained on Fishing Creek and operated a mill. His son-in-law, Robert Hunter, subsequently fell heir to the improvements and henceforth the stockade was known as the fort at Hunter’s Mill, or Fort Hunter.
The first orders on record relating to Fort Hunter were issued January 9, 1756, by Governor Morris to Adam Read, of Hanover Township, Lancaster County, and were as follows:
“The Commissioner thinking that a company of fifty men under your command are sufficient to guard the frontier along the Kittektiny Hills, from your own house to Hunter’s Mill, have refused for the present to take any other men in that quarter into the pay of the Government, and requested me to order, and I do hereby order you to detach twenty-five of the men now at your house, to the fort at Hunter’s Mill, upon Susquehanna, under the command of your lieutenant, or officer next under yourself, or in case there be none such appointed by the Government, then under the command of such person as you shall appoint for that service; and you are to give orders to the commander of such detachment to keep his men in order and fit for duty, and to cause a party of them, from time to time, to range the woods along and near the mountains toward your house; and you are in like manner to keep the men with you in good order, and to cause a party of them from time to time, to range the woods on or near the mountains toward Hunter’s Mill, and you and they are to continue upon this service till further order.
“You are to add ten men to your company out of the township of Paxton, and to make the detachment at Hunter’s Mill of twenty more men, which with those ten, are to complete thirty for service, and keep an account of the time when these ten enter themselves, that you may be enabled to make up your muster roll upon oath.”
Hardly had the above order been executed and the men recruited until additional orders were dispatched by the Governor to Captain Read: “I have also appointed Thomas McKee to take post at or near Hunter’s Mill with thirty men.”
An interesting sentence in his letter revealed the hardships of a Provincial soldier: “But as the Province is at present in want of arms and blankets, if any of the men you shall enlist will find themselves with those articles, they shall receive half a dollar for the use of their gun, and half a dollar for the use of a blanket.”