The Battle of Fort Stephenson-Part Three

[The third part of my series on the Battle of Fort Stephenson, which was fought at modern-day Fremont Ohio on August 3rd, 1813.]

The famous cannon today.

The old dent on the breech which allowed Thomas L. Hawkins to identify the French and Indian War-era gun after the war.

...At about 5pm the time of decision arrived. Croghans men on the walls glimpsed scarlet coats through the gunsmoke, but not until they were only 20 paces from the stockade did the Americans spot a massive, close-packed column of 350 Englishmen. The column was headed by light infantry company of the regiment. Croghan's men were ready for them. Their loopholes erupted with musketry and the sudden rain of small arms fire staggered the column for a moment. Lt. Colonel William Short, who was heading up the column, quickly rallied his men and urged them to follow him forward into the ditch. Lacking scaling ladders and faced with the bayonets on the intact wooden stockade, Short and his men tried to hack the timber down with axes, even as the defenders continued to shoot down into their crowded ditch at point-blank range.

            At this moment, the port-hole that no one had been able to see from the British lines creaked open, and a black muzzle rolled out. There must have been a flash of light and flame, and the searing streaks of hundreds of iron slugs, but most of the Englishmen in the ditch had no time to see or hear it. A six-pounder cannon could be reloaded just as fast as a musket, and within tens of seconds a second blast swept the ditch. Within minutes, every man who had entered the ravine was either wounded or dead. The survivors of the column fled to safety.         Colonel Short was dead, as was Lieutenant J. G. Gordon who was badly wounded by a large caliber ball from a wall piece, and was hacking at the pickets with his sword when the same gun blew his brains out.[1] Major Adam Muir, who had led many of the British operations over the past year, was badly wounded but dragged from the scene by Indians. On the opposite side of the fort, another infantry column led by Lt. Colonel Wharburton advanced, but raked with rapid musket fire and realizing the main attack had failed, these men too retreated back towards safety. Within 30 minutes, the battle for Fort Stephenson was over. The Americans had lost a total of seven men slightly wounded, in addition to their earlier fatality.

A Missed Opportunity?

            The remaining British forces embarked and sailed from Lower Sandusky after dusk. A couple of British deserters made it into the stockade at 3am to inform Major Croghan of their retreat. General Procter's small western forces lost, according to his account, a total of 26 dead, 41 wounded, and 29 captured soldiers in the attack.[2] He blamed the Indians and the officers of the Indian Department for forcing him to attack. “Impossibilities being attempted, failed,” he later reported, and added that Croghans men had put up “the severest fire I ever saw” on the attacking columns. The Indians, who had been expected to support the assault, faded away as they saw it fail.[3]

            Many of the attackers were trapped in the ditch, either too wounded to escape or pinned down by the American fire. While the battle was still ongoing, the garrison cut gaps in the picketing to aid the mass of wounded men lying only a few feet from the walls. As August 3 dawned, the Americans collected 70 muskets and several sets of pistols from around the fort, as well as a boat laden with clothing and military stores, left behind by the British in their hasty retreat. Croghan set his surgeon to assisting the wounded as best he could.

            General Procter had left the neighborhood of Fort Stephenson so fast that some of his men, who had lost their way after the failed assault were picked up later near Lake Erie by General Harrison’s Indian scouts.[4] Procter had good reason to move quickly. Many Americans in Harrison's army saw an opportunity to counterattack and trap the British force even as they were attacking Fort Stephenson. The phlegmatic Virginian ordered his men to stand fast, to their chagrin. He awaited the arrival of 250 mounted volunteers from the Ohio settlements. Moreover, there was every evidence that his nemesis Tecumseh remained perched in the Black Swamp, waiting for Harrison and his untrained recruits to bungle through.

            As soon as he had word on August 3 that the British were gone, Harrison now changed his mind and rode out at the head of Colonel Ball's dragoons, anxious to catch them before they escaped to the lake. Generals McArthur and Cass followed with their infantry regiments. It soon became apparent that the main force had already returned to Malden, and ever fearful of an Indian ambush, the general ordered most of his forces back into camp at Fort Seneca.

            There remained for the Americans the problem of the wounded. On visiting Fort Stephenson the day after the attack, General Harrison set his hospital surgeon to treating them, including many British soldiers whose condition was quite serious. General Procter sent Lt. John Le Breton of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment with a surgeon to the fort under a flag of truce.[5] When they arrived on August 10, Major Croghan forwarded Procter's letter appealing to General Harrison to allow his men medical attention to Fort Seneca. Procter also asked that his non-wounded prisoners be released on parole.

            Harrison, who may have been piqued that Procter was implying the Americans would not treat wounded British prisoners with humanity, replied curtly that the British soldiers were being treated by his own surgeon “according to those principles which are held sacred in the American army.”[6] The Americans had seen their wounded abandoned and massacred by their opponents. One of Harrison's own surgeons had been imprisoned by Procter himself in a similar situation, after his guide had been murdered by one of Procter's allies. The unwritten rebuke in Harrison's cordial note, sent back with Lt. Le Breton and the surgeon, must have been unmistakable.

            As the drama on the Sandusky concluded, word arrived for the Americans in camp at “Sink-a-Town” (Seneca Town) that Master Commandant Oliver Hazard Perry's squadron had  sortied from its shipyards and refuge behind Presque Isle at Erie, Pennsylvania. Perry's two 18-gun brigs had tipped the balance of power on Lake Erie solidly towards the Americans, and the British fleet had fled for safety in its own refuge on the Detroit River. The stage was set for the battle that would decide the campaign. It would be fought not in swamp or forest, but on the inland seas.

---

[1]Letter of W. B. T Webb, reprinted in Sandusky County Historical Society, History Leaflet No. 4 (September 1963) (http://www.sandusky-county-scrapbook.net/FtSteph/SoldLtr.htm accessed 6/2/14.)

[2]Alec R. Gilpin, The War of 1812 in the Old Northwest (East Lansing, Michigan: The Michigan State University Press, 1958), 207.

[3]MPHC 15, 347-48.

[4]Esarey, 523.

[5]Ibid., 518.

[6]Esarey, 521.

Touring a 1911 Great Lakes Iron Ore Freighter

The centerpiece of the Toledo, Ohio waterfront is a 600-foot long retired iron ore freighter named the Colonel Schoonmaker (formerly the Willis Boyer). She (or he, as the ore boats are sometimes referred as) was commissioned the year before the Titanic, and sailed the lakes until 1980. This past year the venerable ship was moved from her old berth at International Park to a new one just upriver from the I-280 bridge in East Toledo. I was recently able to get a close-up look at the newly restored ship.

 My virtual tour will start from the stern, where the engine room, steering gear, mess rooms and the engineers and steward's departments lived.

Toledo's National Museum of the Great Lakes

This past weekend I had the chance to visit the Great Lakes Historical Society's new museum on the waterfront in Toledo. I've been a fan of their museum at Vermilion, Ohio since I was a child.

I was a little nervous whether this new incarnation would be too watered-down. Although the exhibits were more focused on a younger set, they managed to convey a lot of good information, and were more organized and thematically focused than the previous museum. On the other hand, the architects did not leave any real space for expansion, so there was a limited amount of room for more artifacts or, presumably, travelling or temporary exhibits. 

The museum no longer has the pilot house of the Canopus, nor the steam engine of a great lakes tug (both were probably left at the Inland Seas archives in Vermillion). However, the real centerpiece, the restored 1911 freighter S.S. Colonel Schoonmaker, more than makes up for their absence. I'll get into the ship in my next post, though.

There are a few poignant artifacts from the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald, the famous ore freighter lost with all hands during a November storm in 1975.

Threshing Wheat the 1890s Way At Slate Run Farm

Columbus Metroparks' Slate Run Farm is running its horse-powered, mechanical thresher this Saturday, from 9-4. My family and I stopped by on Tuesday afternoon to find the farm workers tinkering with the 100-year old machine, which uses drive shafts from a capstan pulled by horses for power.

Talking about Trains....

This weekend I had the opportunity to visit a great piece of local transportation history: the Ohio Railway Museum in Worthington Ohio (990 Proprietors Road-- open 12-4pm Sundays). The museum sits on the old rail line of the Columbus, Marion and Delaware interurban electric railroad. Founded in 1948, the museum had fallen into decay before a local group of volunteers took it over a couple of years ago. Since then they have been working hard to restore the museum's short stretch of rail line and the cars themselves. 

The museum is very kid-friendly, although it is also basically a railroad junkyard so close parental attention is in order. I took my 6-month old son for his first experience of railroad travel.

The No. 578 steam locomotive looms over the rest of the equipment in the yard. It was built in 1910 and served between 1917 and 1944 on a Ohio railroad. Its top speed was 70 miles per hour, not bad for a mountain of cast iron and steel!

The museum lacks the expertise or resources (or space, really) to run a steam locomotive, so they use two more modest locomotives to pull their cars. This electric switcher was once used to pull coal cars beneath a power plant.

Mass transit, pre 1970s style. The museum is proud of its interurban heritage and sports a number of old trolleys and cars which used various means of propulsion. Unfortunately, many of the older trolleys were made of wood and are quickly rotting away under exposure to the elements.

Inside one of the better-preserved trolleys. For those of us familiar with Central Ohio's mass transit system, it's a bit sad to think of the intricate network of light rail systems that once tied Columbus' neighborhoods together.

Several of the older passenger cars were slowly rusting and rotting apart, but the excursion car, a 1930s vintage Canadian National Railways coach, was clean and nicely painted. Although many of the old benches and seats had started to spill out their horsehair guts, you could see the glamour that even ordinary rail travel carried in the early 20th century.

One of the more interesting specimens was a hybrid, self-propelled car, which had an engine in the front and a passenger compartment in the back half. Coupled to a couple of other cars, this train would have plied the short lines linking smaller cities in the waning days of passenger rail service.

What the Ohio Railroad Museum could really use is a shed to shelter its historic equipment from the elements, and a lot of mechanical and upholstery work on its cars. The legacy of the interurban lines and early 20th century light rail is here to see and walk around in. In a new century when people are moving back into the city and automobiles are becoming less sustainable as a transportation system, the museum is not a collection of decaying relics-- it is an ark for lost technologies and ideas whose time may come again.

Movie Night at Columbus' Historic Mausoleum

Last night I found myself sitting in the darkness amid flickering shadows, in front of a half lit marble clad tomb, just down the street from the sprawling necropolis that is Greenlawn Cemetary. The occasion was the last in this year's summer outdoor movie series at Greenlawn Abbey, a beautiful if somewhat run down mausoleum that is home to such famous deceased persons as Thurston the Magician, the Sells brothers (of the Sells Brothers Circus), and the Swisher brothers (of Swisher Sweets cigars) built in 1927. A nonprofit group, the Greenlawn Abbey Preservation Association has taken up the challenge of repairing the building and its fantastic stained glass windows. They raise funds by hosting events at the Abbey, such as this film screening.

The film itself matched the cool, early autumn night and the jazz-age, macabre setting: Lon Chaney as The Phantom of the Opera from 1925. A silent movie, the soundtrack was provided live by an organist who sat at a vintage electric organ plugged into an extension cord. Before the main feature started, the organizers screened some old Alice cartoon shorts-- some of Walt Disney's earliest work.

 The Abbey itself was open for curious visitors to look around beyond iron gates that are rarely unbarred for the public. If you're interested in events at the Abbey (there are two more this year), check out their website at http://www.greenlawnabbey.org/ or their facebook page.

Progress on Columbus' Oldest House

This weekend I got bored, and drove down to Franklinton to see what was doing around the old Deardurff House, the oldest standing log structure in Columbus (it dates from perhaps 1807 or so). Log post office is a bit of a stretch: postmasters before the 1840s were simply local citizens who got an appointment from the government, and then received letters at a store or tavern.

It looks as if the owners have taken off much of the siding (the house was occupied until the 1960s!), so at this point you can see the wood siding, the logs underneath, and a bit of the interior lathing between the window and door on the first floor. Hopefully gutting is the first step to a speedy reconstruction!

The New Olentangy River and an Ancient Mound

The weather in Columbus this afternoon was beautiful. I took the opportunity to  explore some places around town that I know pretty well, but haven't visited for a while.

The Fifth Avenue Dam removal project has transformed the Olentangy River near the OSU campus. I am curious about the effect that this civil engineering project will have on the river's current downstream of the dam.

I drove to the 3rd Avenue bridge. On the mud flats upstream of the bridge there is usually a small homeless encampment. The water level seems the same as before down here, although around the 5th Avenue bridge and extending up to Lane Avenue the Olentangy has changed immensely. Where there was a fat, stagnant pool of water before, now there's a rapid little stream cutting its way around mud piles.

My main concern is for the homeless. If there's no dams along the river, will there be any hurdle for flood waters come Spring? What about Franklinton, which was flooded several times earlier in the century? Although most of the articles that I've read have cited civil engineers saying that the Olentangy water levels will decrease rather than increase, the wilder sections of the river between Worthington and Delaware give a hint at what the river downstream will look like during the next rainy season.

After visiting the river, I drove west over the Scioto to visit Shrum Mound. This is one of the few ancient Indian mounds remaining inside the borders of Franklin County. The land on which it sits (about a square acre) is literally surrounded on three sides by empty space... because it juts out into an enormous abandoned quarry.

The quarry is interesting in itself. Having been on the bottom I can attest that it looks and feels very much like being on the surface of a martian crater (or how I imagine that must look and feel). An anonymous source tells me that the man-made crater is used to discard surplus equipment owned by the city government: office desks, tools, even dump trucks. The training camp for the Columbus police stands nearby, and I imagine the SWAT people have used the quarry for interesting training scenarios. The gap in the chain link fence around the edge of the cliff had been mended, but the more adventurous urban explorers could probably dismantle the gap handily.

Toledo's 101-year old freighter and a new national park site

I was in the Toledo area last week and had the chance to visit two exceptional historic museums: the restored freighter James M. Schoonmaker, built in 1911; and the River Raisin Battlefield National Park in Monroe, Michigan. Their websites are http://www.willisbboyer.org/ and http://www.nps.gov/rira/index.htm.

Fort Meigs Living History Event: First Siege

This Memorial Day weekend, Fort Meigs State Historic Site in Perrysburg Ohio (near Toledo) is hosting a reenactment of the first siege of the fort in 1813. If you're in the tri-state area and don't have any plans for the long weekend, check it out. Starting on Saturday, reenactors representing the American and British armies (as well as Native American forces fighting for both sides) occupy camps in opposite ends of the fort. A large scale battle is held on Saturday on Sunday; in between battles each camp holds demonstrations and a morning and evening parade. On Memorial Day, a smaller group of American reenactors will hold a ceremony at the 1908 obelisk to honor the soldiers who fought and died here.
 

Check it out:

Official event page at fortmeigs.org

wikipedia.org page for Fort Meigs

A youtube video from last years' event

Series of blog posts on the first siege