Fort Littleton - PLAQUE
Dublin Township, Fulton County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
One of Pennsylvania's defenses against the French and Indians stood on this knoll built 1756 by GOVERNOR ROBERT HUNTER MORRIS.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
In 1756, as war between Britain and France spilled across the Pennsylvania frontier, the colony raised a chain of provincial forts to shield its exposed backcountry settlements. Fort Littleton was one of these strongpoints, ordered up under Governor Robert Hunter Morris and planted on this knoll to guard a vital road through the mountains. In the fear-filled years of the French and Indian War, such stockades were refuge and rallying point for settlers who lived within reach of raiding parties.
Why it matters
Pennsylvania's frontier forts mark the moment a peaceable Quaker colony was forced to build a military line of defense, a turning point that helped set the stage for the wider imperial struggle for North America.
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Related people
- · Robert Hunter Morris
Related events
- · French and Indian War
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Forbes Road - Raystown Path
Dublin Township, PA · est. 1952
The Raystown Path was one of the great Indian trails threading the Allegheny ridges of central Pennsylvania, and in 1758 it became a corridor of war. During the French and Indian War, General John Forbes cut a military road westward toward the French stronghold at the forks of the Ohio, throwing up a chain of forts to guard his slow, methodical advance. The towns strung along his line of march — Littleton, Bedford, Ligonier, and finally Pittsburgh — still carry the names of those wilderness garrisons.
Fort McCord
Hamilton Township, PA · est. 1947
In the tense years of the French and Indian War, Pennsylvania's Cumberland Valley settlers threw up log stockades like Fort McCord to shelter their families when frontier violence flared. Named for the settler John McCord, this refuge was overwhelmed and burned on April 1, 1756, in a raid that left 27 people dead or dragged into captivity. Such attacks were part of the wider war between Britain and France, in which allied Native nations struck deep into the exposed backcountry.
Fort McCord - PLAQUE
Hamilton Township, PA · est. 1914
On April 1, 1756, Fort McCord — one of the small stockaded refuges thrown up along Pennsylvania's Cumberland Valley frontier during the French and Indian War — was overrun, and twenty-seven settlers were killed or carried off. A militia party that gave chase was itself ambushed days later at Sideling Hill, where many of the pursuers fell. The marker names the women, children, and provincial soldiers lost, preserving a roll of the dead from one of the war's bloodiest weeks on the backcountry.
Fort Loudon
Peters Township, PA · est. 1947
Built by the provincial government in 1756, Fort Loudon guarded the frontier during the French and Indian War and in 1758 served as a staging point for Gen. John Forbes's expedition that captured Fort Duquesne. In 1765 the fort became a flashpoint of a different kind when frontiersmen led by James Smith — the "Black Boys" — forced a British garrison to withdraw, an early act of armed colonial defiance. The site thus spans both the imperial war and the friction that would build toward revolution.