Fort Sullivan "Soldiers' Burial" - PLAQUE
Athens, Bradford County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Here within the confines of Fort Sullivan were buried, August 14, 1779, several soldiers killed the previous day in a skirmish at Chemung, as attested by Soloman Talada, soldier in the ranks, who returned to live in Athens the rest of his life. This statement was corroborated by finding skeletons previous to 1839.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
During the summer of 1779, General John Sullivan's army built Fort Sullivan here as a supply base for its campaign against the Iroquois. In mid-August, soldiers killed in a skirmish downriver at Chemung were carried back and buried within the fort's walls. The location was remembered by a veteran, Solomon Talada, who settled in Athens after the war, and confirmed generations later when skeletons were unearthed before 1839.
Why it matters
It marks a soldiers' grave from one of the Revolution's largest offensives and shows how local memory and physical evidence together kept a wartime burial ground from being forgotten.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the summer of 1779, the American Revolution reached deep into the northern frontier. The war along the New York and Pennsylvania borderlands had become a cycle of raids and counter-raids, as settlements and Native towns struck at one another with devastating effect. To break that cycle in its favor, the Continental command mounted one of the largest offensives of the entire war.
General John Sullivan led an army up the Susquehanna Valley on a campaign against the Iroquois Confederacy, most of whose nations had allied with the British. It was a methodical march, and armies on such marches need supply bases — fortified points where provisions could be stored and the sick and wounded could be sheltered.
Here, at the confluence of major waterways in what is now Athens, Sullivan's men built such a base and called it Fort Sullivan. For a few weeks in the late summer of 1779, this ground was a hive of soldiers, supplies, and the grim business of a campaign underway.
People & events
The plaque marks a soldiers' grave. On August 14, 1779, several men were buried within the walls of Fort Sullivan — soldiers killed the day before in a skirmish downriver at Chemung. Their bodies were carried back to the fort and laid to rest inside its defenses, as armies on the move so often had to bury their dead where they could.
What lifts this from an anonymous wartime burial is the human chain of memory behind it. A soldier in the ranks named Solomon Talada witnessed the burial, and afterward he did something many veterans did not — he came back. Talada settled in Athens and lived out the rest of his life here, and his testimony kept the location of the grave alive in local memory long after the fort itself was gone.
Memory alone can fade or drift, but here it was confirmed by the ground itself. Before 1839, skeletons were uncovered on the site, corroborating the veteran's account. Spoken testimony and physical evidence met and agreed, turning a half-remembered story into a documented fact.
Its place in the American story
This modest grave belongs to one of the largest offensives of the Revolutionary War, a reminder that the campaign against the Iroquois was fought and paid for in individual lives. Behind the sweep of a major expedition were skirmishes like the one at Chemung, and behind the skirmishes were men who did not come home.
The site is also a small case study in how history is preserved. So much of the frontier war left no formal record; what survived often depended on a single person choosing to remember and a community choosing to listen. Talada's decision to settle and testify is why this ground is marked at all.
The later discovery of the remains shows how oral tradition and archaeology can reinforce one another. When a community's memory and the evidence in the soil tell the same story, a wartime burial that might have vanished entirely is instead honored and known — a link between the nation's founding struggle and the people who still live where it was fought.
If you visit
You are visiting a place of burial, and it rewards a quiet, reflective approach. The fort that once stood here is long gone, so what you are really coming to see is the ground and the rivers around it — the strategic confluence that made this a natural site for a supply base two and a half centuries ago.
Take in the setting of Athens at the meeting of the waterways, and consider how a soldier like Talada might have looked at this same landscape and chosen to spend his life beside the graves of the men he had helped bury. The nearness of the rivers explains both why the fort was built here and how casualties from a skirmish downstream could be carried back for burial.
It pairs well with the region's other Sullivan Expedition markers, which trace the army's route up the valley. Read together, they turn an abstract campaign into a walkable sequence of camps, forts, and, here, a resting place — the sober human cost set among the milestones of the march.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Plan your visit
NearbyMake a day of it — museums, food, and places to stay near this marker.
Museums & culture
- Tioga Point Museumnearby
- Sayre Historical Society2.1 mi away
- S.R.A.C. Susquehanna River Archaeological Center3.7 mi away · 343 Broad Street, Waverly, NY
- Ashland Historical Society14.4 mi away · 3064 Lower Maple Avenue, Wellsburg, NY
Food & drink
- Maple Lawn Dairy14.1 mi away · 3162 Lower Maple Avenue
Places to stay
- Comfort Inn2.4 mi away · 2160 Elmira Street, Sayre, PA
- Candlewood Suites3.0 mi away · 2775 North Elmira Street, Sayre, PA
- Hampton Inn Sayre3.2 mi away · 3080 Elmira Street, Sayre, PA
- Econo Lodge3.2 mi away · Spring Street, Sayre, PA
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Related people
- · Solomon Talada
Related events
- · Sullivan Expedition
- · Battle of Chemung
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Sullivan Expedition Against the Iroquois Indians, 1779 - Teaoga (PLAQUE)
Athens, PA · est. 1929
Teaoga was a key Iroquois village at the forks of the rivers, and in August 1779 it became the staging ground for General John Sullivan's army during its campaign against the Six Nations. From roughly August 11 to 26 the Continental force encamped near here before pressing deeper into Iroquois country. This marker fixes the village's site relative to that fateful summer of the Sullivan Expedition.
Fort Sullivan
Athens, PA · est. 1947
On August 18, 1779, General John Sullivan raised a fort on the high ground between the Chemung and Susquehanna rivers, commanding both waterways at once. With a supporting camp on the flats below, the post became the launching point for Sullivan's expedition into central New York — a scorched-earth campaign that broke the military power of the Tory and Iroquois alliance allied with Britain. The fort's brief life belied its role in one of the Revolution's most consequential frontier operations.
Colonel John Franklin (To be replaced)
Athens Township, PA · est. 1946
John Franklin was a leading figure in the Connecticut settlers' claim to lands in the Wyoming Valley, a bitter dispute with Pennsylvania over overlapping colonial grants. He served in the Sullivan Campaign of 1779, was imprisoned from 1787 to 1789 for backing a movement to carve a new state out of the contested territory, and later sat in the Pennsylvania legislature. He settled here in 1789 and died in 1831, with his homesite and grave just east of the road.
Athens
Athens, PA · est. 1947
Where the Chemung meets the Susquehanna, this river junction has funneled travelers for as long as people have moved through the region — long enough that Native peoples knew it as Teaoga, and later generations as Tioga Point. Connecticut settlers laid out a village here in 1786, but a decade earlier the same ground had served as a staging area for General Sullivan's 1779 Revolutionary campaign against the Iroquois towns of central New York. Its position made it, for centuries, the natural gateway between the New York interior and Pennsylvania.