Sugarloaf Massacre
Sugarloaf Township, Luzerne County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
After an unsuccessful attack on Fort Augusta, Indians and Tories surprised a detachment of Northumberland Co. militia on Sept. 11, 1780. The site of the massacre is just beyond the town.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
In the autumn of 1780 a party of Native warriors and Loyalist Tories, turned back from an attempt on Fort Augusta, fell upon a detachment of Northumberland County militia near here. The surprise attack on September 11 left the small company overwhelmed, one of many such bloody clashes that made the Pennsylvania frontier a war zone long after the fighting had shifted elsewhere.
Why it matters
The Sugarloaf affair shows how the Revolution on the frontier was waged in ambushes and raids that ground on years into the conflict.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related events
- · Sugarloaf Massacre
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Sugarloaf Massacre - PLAQUE
Conyngham, PA · est. 1933
In September 1780, as the Revolutionary War flared along the Pennsylvania frontier, a detachment of Northampton County militia paused to rest at a spring near Sugarloaf Mountain. They were ambushed by a party of Native warriors and Loyalists led by the Seneca chief Roland Montour, and more than a dozen men were killed. The marker preserves the names of the fallen, a roster of ordinary frontier soldiers caught in the war's brutal borderland fighting.
Fort Jenkins
South Centre Township, PA · est. 1948
During the Revolution the Susquehanna frontier was a war zone, and settlers here fortified a house on the riverbank as a refuge between 1778 and 1780 until raiders destroyed it. The violence along this valley was part of the wider frontier warfare that pitted settlers against British-allied Native nations far from the war's famous battlefields. In a later, more peaceful chapter, the ground passed to James Wilson, a signer of the Declaration and a framer of the Constitution.
Shawnee Fort
Plymouth, PA · est. 2003
As the Revolution began, the Continental Congress ordered a chain of frontier forts to shield settlers in the contested Wyoming Valley, and Shawnee Fort was one of them. It guarded Connecticut-backed Yankee settlers — both from British-allied raiders and from Pennsylvanians who claimed the same lands — and served as the garrison of Capt. Samuel Ransom's company, which fought under Washington. Burned after the bloody Battle of Wyoming in 1778 and rebuilt, it was finally swept away by a flood in 1784.
Fort Wheeler
Scott Township, PA · est. 1948
In 1778 the frontier scout Moses Van Campen raised a stockade fort along Fishing Creek to shield local families from the raids that swept this valley during the Revolution. Attacked at least once, it served as one of the refuges that let settlement cling to the Susquehanna country through years of border warfare. Van Campen became a legendary figure in the region, remembered for his exploits as a scout and Indian fighter.