Fort Franklin
West Penn Township, Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Built in 1756 as defense from Indian attacks. Named for Benjamin Franklin, who ordered construction. It was of limited use; abandoned in 1757. The Fort stood a short distance above present highway.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
In the mid-1750s the Pennsylvania frontier erupted into violence as the French and Indian War spread down the Blue Mountain, and colonists petitioned for a chain of provincial forts to shield their scattered farms. This small stockade, thrown up in 1756 and named for Benjamin Franklin—then charged with organizing the colony's frontier defenses—was one such outpost. It saw little action and was given up the following year, a reminder of how quickly and cheaply many of these hastily built strongholds rose and fell.
Why it matters
It marks a link in Pennsylvania's improvised frontier-defense line during the French and Indian War, and Franklin's hands-on role in fortifying a colony that had long resisted keeping any military at all.
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Related people
- · Benjamin Franklin
Related events
- · French and Indian War
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Gnadenhuetten
Lehighton, PA · est. 2005
In 1746 Moravian missionaries established Gnadenhuetten, a mission town meant to shelter a growing community of Mohican and Delaware converts and the first European settlement in what is now Carbon County. As the French and Indian War engulfed the frontier, tensions boiled over, and on November 24, 1755, the settlement was attacked and burned in a raid encouraged by the French. The victims were laid to rest in what is now the Lehighton Cemetery nearby.
Nescopeck
Nescopeck, PA · est. 1948
On this ground stood Nescopeck, a village of Shawnee and Delaware people along the Susquehanna. After General Braddock's shattering defeat in 1755 opened the Pennsylvania frontier to raids, the town became a gathering place for Native fighters aligned against the English, until the building of Fort Augusta the following year shifted the balance. For that brief, violent interval it sat at the heart of the borderland war.
Fort Everett
Lynn Township, PA · est. 1951
Around 1756, at the height of the French and Indian War, a log blockhouse rose just north of here as one link in a chain of frontier defenses guarding the settled valleys south of Blue Mountain. Its garrison watched the country between the Schuylkill and Lehigh Rivers, offering refuge to farm families when raiding parties struck the exposed Pennsylvania backcountry. Such small forts were the difference between staying and fleeing for the region's colonists.
Fort Allen Well
Weissport, PA · est. 1971
In 1756, as the frontier violence of the French and Indian War pushed Pennsylvania settlers into panic, the colonial government threw up a chain of defensive forts along the Blue Mountains. Fort Allen at present-day Weissport was among them, and its construction was overseen personally by Benjamin Franklin, then a colonial official who marched into the backcountry to organize the province's defenses. The fort itself is long gone; only its stone well survives, restored and tucked behind the houses across the road.