The stockades and small forts built along the frontiers during the intense excitement which followed Braddock’s defeat in July, 1755, have always been of great interest to local historians and the many citizens who reside in the vicinity of these provincial defenses.
One such place, to which not a little interesting history is attached, was built about twelve miles east of Manada Gap, near the passage through the Blue Mountains, by which the Swatara Creek wends its way to the fertile acres below, and a few miles farther empties into the Susquehanna.
In the immediate vicinity of Swatara Gap was located Fort Swatara or Smith’s Fort, as it was sometimes called. An unfortunate fact was that this fort was sometimes erroneously called Fort Henry or Busse’s Fort, and many incidents in and about this place are confused.
After the disastrous beginning of the French and Indian War the Indians swept through the frontiers of Pennsylvania and committed terrible massacres.
The news of the Penn’s Creek massacre soon reached the settlements on Swatara Creek and the farmers gathered together, October 30, armed with guns, swords, axes, pitchforks, whatever they happened to possess, until some 200 rendezvoused at Benjamin Spickers, near Stoucksburg, about six miles above Womelsdorf.
The Rev. Mr. Kurtz[[9]] of the Lutheran faith, delivered an exhortation and offered prayer, after which Conrad Weiser divided the people into companies of thirty each.
[9]. Reverend John Nicholas Kurtz, first Lutheran Minister in Pennsylvania.
They marched toward the Susquehanna, having first sent a company of fifty men “to Tolkeo in order to possess themselves of the Capes or Narrows of the Swahatawro, where we expected the enemy would come through,” wrote Colonel Conrad Weiser, to Governor Robert Hunter Morris.
The forces were augmented on the way, and by the time they arrived at Squire Adam Read’s plantation on Swatara Creek, they received the intelligence of the surprise and slaughter of members of Captain John Harris’ party at the mouth of the Mahanoy Creek.