Fort Franklin (Venango County (Franklin, Pennsylvania / Venango County, Pennsylvania)

Franklin, Pennsylvania / Venango County · Pennsylvania · Northwest Indian War

Quick BriefFort Franklin was a post-Revolutionary War fort built in 1787 on French Creek in Venango County, Pennsylvania to protect local settlers from Native American raids during the Northwest Indian War. Fort Franklin quickly became the center of a growing community, the town of Franklin, Pennsylvania. The fort was replaced in 1796 by "The Garrison," a stockaded blockhouse, which was abandoned in 1803.

History & Significance

In April 1787, Captain Jonathan Heart was ordered from Fort Pitt to take a detachment of 87 soldiers from the First American Regiment and about a dozen workmen to a site on French Creek, about 85 miles north of Pittsburgh. Fort Franklin was built on a plan similar to Fort Venango, with a redoubt about one hundred feet square and a three-story blockhouse in the center, with four bastions each equipped with a six-pounder cannon or swivel gun.

The fort featured a stone-lined gunpowder magazine and barracks with stone chimneys; a map sent to Brigadier General Josiah Harmar on June 1, 1787, shows a bakery, blacksmith's shop, smokehouse, butcher shop and military hospital already constructed outside the fort. Within months, farmers, craftsmen and vendors constructed buildings near the fort, and within a year, Andrew Ellicott, who surveyed Washington, D.C., was hired to lay out the town of Franklin.

Fort Franklin was never attacked. Following the Treaty of Greenville in August 1795, there was no further need for military protection, and Fort Franklin was dismantled and its materials repurposed in the construction of the town. A historical marker commemorating Fort Franklin was erected in 1947 by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission at the intersection of 13th Street (U.S. 322) and Franklin Avenue in Franklin.