Fort Hamilton
Stroudsburg, Monroe County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Built at direction of Benjamin Franklin. Named after James Hamilton, a member of the Governor's Council. Stood NW of here, garrisoned 1755-57, one of a chain of forts later replaced by Fort Penn. Abandoned in 1757.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
Built on Benjamin Franklin's direction and named for provincial councilman James Hamilton, Fort Hamilton guarded the Pocono frontier from 1755 to 1757 as part of a defensive chain raised during the French and Indian War. When violence threatened the scattered settlers of the region, forts like this one offered the only refuge. It was abandoned in 1757 and later succeeded by Fort Penn.
Why it matters
The fort recalls Benjamin Franklin's hands-on role in organizing Pennsylvania's frontier defenses, and the precarious life of backcountry settlers during the wider war for the continent.
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Related people
- · Benjamin Franklin
- · James Hamilton
Related events
- · French and Indian War
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Fort Hamilton - PLAQUE
Stroudsburg, PA · est. 1930
Fort Hamilton was one of a chain of frontier forts that Benjamin Franklin directed to be built across Pennsylvania during the French and Indian War. Raised in January 1756 by Captain Levi Trump, it was garrisoned by a company of some forty men and passed through a succession of commanders over the next several years. The post guarded settlers in the Pocono frontier against raids during the conflict.
Colonel Jacob Stroud - PLAQUE
Stroudsburg, PA · est. 1931
This graveyard began as the cemetery of the Mission of Dansbury, a Moravian outpost started in 1743 near where Daniel Brodhead had settled in 1736. The mission chapel was destroyed during the Indian uprising of 1755 amid the French and Indian War, then rebuilt. Colonel Jacob Stroud — the frontier officer and founder of Stroudsburg — lies buried here.
Dansbury Mission
Stroudsburg, PA · est. 1947
About 1744, frontier founder Daniel Brodhead raised a building here for Moravian missionaries, part of the remarkable Moravian effort to carry their faith to settlers and Native peoples along the Pennsylvania frontier. The mission stood barely a decade: in 1755, as the French and Indian War set the backcountry aflame, it was destroyed in the raiding that emptied the region. Its site lay beside what is now the cemetery.
Nicholas Depuy
Smithfield Township, PA · est. 1947
Nicholas Depuy came to this stretch of the Delaware around 1727, among the very first Europeans known to settle the region. When the French and Indian War brought raiding to the frontier after 1755, his stockaded and garrisoned home was pressed into service as Fort Depuy, one of the fortified farmsteads that dotted the wartime backcountry. Such homes-turned-forts show how thin the line was between domestic life and frontier warfare.