Fort Hamilton - PLAQUE
Stroudsburg, Monroe County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
One of a chain of Frontier Forts of the province of Pennsylvania in the French and Indian War, erected by the direction of Benjamin Franklin. Stood hard-by to the rear, extending across ninth street. Built in January 1756 by Capt. Levi Trump and Garrisoned by Capt. John Craig and 41 men. Later commanded by Capt. Nicholas Weatherhold, who on April 7, 1759 was succeeded by Capt. John Van Etter, and upon his death in the month of July Lieutenant James Hyndshaw was placed in command.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
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.
Why it matters
The fort is a reminder that even Benjamin Franklin took the field to organize Pennsylvania's frontier defense, part of the wider struggle that would decide control of North America.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the mid-1750s, the Pocono uplands of eastern Pennsylvania were the edge of the European world. Beyond the last cleared farms lay forest, and beyond that a war that would eventually reach across the globe. The French and Indian War — the North American theater of a wider struggle between Britain and France — turned Pennsylvania's long, exposed frontier into a place where families went to sleep listening for trouble.
Pennsylvania had long been a colony that prided itself on peace, founded by Quakers who kept few soldiers and made a habit of fair dealing with Native neighbors. That posture left the backcountry dangerously unprepared once fighting spread east of the mountains. Settlements that had felt secure suddenly found themselves without walls, without troops, and without a plan.
Into that gap stepped the provincial government, which decided the answer was a line of small forts — not grand stone fortresses, but sturdy log strongpoints where neighbors could gather and a handful of soldiers could patrol. Stroudsburg's Fort Hamilton was one link in that chain, raised in the depth of winter to hold a stretch of vulnerable country.
People & events
The name most people recognize here is Benjamin Franklin's, and the marker records his hand in directing this string of frontier defenses. It is a side of Franklin that gets less attention than the printer, the scientist, or the diplomat: in this crisis he took to the field as an organizer of Pennsylvania's defense, helping lay out and supply the forts that were meant to shield the settlements.
The fort itself was built in January 1756 under Captain Levi Trump, then held by Captain John Craig and a company of some forty-one men. That is a small number to set against a wide wilderness, and it tells you what these posts really were — not armies, but garrisons: enough men to stand watch, escort travelers, and give the surrounding families somewhere to run.
Command passed through several hands over the following years, from Captain Nicholas Weatherhold to Captain John Van Etter, and after Van Etter's death to Lieutenant James Hyndshaw. That succession is its own quiet story. Frontier duty was grinding and hazardous, and the turnover of officers is a reminder that holding a place like this was a matter of endurance as much as battle.
Its place in the American story
It is easy to picture the French and Indian War as a contest of great generals and famous sieges. But wars are also won or lost in places like this — modest log forts where the daily work was watching, waiting, and keeping ordinary people alive. The chain of Pennsylvania forts helped stabilize a frontier that might otherwise have emptied out entirely.
The larger stakes were enormous. This war would decide whether Britain or France dominated the interior of North America, and its outcome reshaped the continent. A garrison of forty-odd men in the Poconos was a very small piece of that story, but it was a real one: hold the line here, and settlement could continue; lose it, and the frontier rolled backward.
There is also a longer echo. The habits of self-defense, local militia, and citizen-soldiers that took shape on the colonial frontier fed into the world the Revolution would inherit a generation later. Franklin's involvement here is a small preview of the wartime organizer he would become on a far bigger stage.
If you visit
There is no fort to see today — the marker notes it once stood just to the rear, its lines running across what is now Ninth Street. That is part of the experience: you are standing where a wooden strongpoint once anchored a nervous frontier, and the town has simply grown over it. Let the plaque do its work and imagine the treeline much closer than it is now.
Stroudsburg makes an easy anchor for a Pocono history day. As you walk the surrounding streets, think about scale — how few men held this spot, and how much country they were meant to cover. The ordinary neighborhood around you is itself the point: this was once the ragged edge of the settled world.
If you're piecing together a French and Indian War road trip, treat Fort Hamilton as a chapter in the story of Pennsylvania's frontier defense rather than a single destination. Pair it with other marked fort sites across the region, and you begin to see the whole chain — a line drawn in log and manpower across a landscape at war.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Benjamin Franklin
- · Levi Trump
- · John Craig
Related events
- · French and Indian War
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Fort Hamilton
Stroudsburg, PA · est. 1967
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.
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.