For its May program meeting, the Bridgeville Area Historical Society invited Brady Crytzer back for an interesting discussion of the events during the American Revolution that impacted Western Pennsylvania. Mr. Crytzer is a remarkably productive young man, a professional historian who is carving out a successful career as an author, University professor, television personality, and social media contributor, all focused on colonial history in this general region. His twenty-episode series on YouTube entitled “Robinson Run” is well worth watching.
He began his presentation by emphasizing the contrast during the Revolution between the conventional European military actions along the Eastern Seaboard and the non-traditional confrontations in the West. In the East large, well-organized armies waged campaigns with well-defined objectives, frequently engaging in large scale battles. Out here the enemy were Native Americans, motivated jointly by a desire to protect their homeland and by funding from our British enemies. Fort Detroit was the center of the British operations in the West; Fort Pitt, of the Continental Army.
At that time Fort Pitt was the largest military fortification in North America. Constructed between 1755 and 1758, it survived seven weeks of siege during Pontiac’s Rebellion in 1763, an onslaught that “pushed the frontier back to the Susquehanna River”. In later years it became a pawn between the colonies of Virginia and Pennsylvania, both of whom claimed this region. Once the Revolution began, John Neville and a contingent of local militiamen took command of the Fort. By November 1776 the fort was occupied by the 8th Pennsylvania Regiment and the 13th Virginia Regiment, both recruited locally. The 8th was ordered East on January 1, 1777. The 13th followed six months later, leaving Fort Pitt garrisoned by militiamen. Both units participated in major battles that year, then spent the winter at Valley Forge before being sent back to Fort Pitt in May 1778 as the threat to the frontier heated up.
In the meantime an adventure known as “Willing’s Raid” had been launched from Fort Pitt. Neville had been succeeded by Brigadier General Edward Hand on June 1, 1777. Late that year a young man named James Willing, armed with a commission as a Captain in the Continental Navy, arrived at the Fort with authorization to initiate an inland waterways naval action on the British settlements on the east side of the lower Mississippi River. Willing acquired a small galley and thirty-four men and set off down the Ohio to invade Western Florida. At first the expedition appeared to succeed, but a combination of British naval reaction and the temptation for Willing’s men to become privateers culminated in his being captured and serving as a prisoner of war for three years before being paroled by a prisoner exchange.
While this was occurring, General Hand initiated his own, land-based expedition, the ill-fated “Squaw Campaign”. Learning that the British were stockpiling munitions at a site on the Cuyahoga River, he led a group of poorly supplied militiamen up the Beaver River in mid-February 1778, heading for the Mahoning. Heavy rain and a premature thaw slowed them down so much that they soon abandoned the original mission and began to look for Native American villages. These they found contained only women, children, and very old men. Embarrassed, they limped back to Fort Pitt empty-handed.
On May 26, 1778, General Hand was succeeded at Fort Pitt by Brigadier General Lachlan McIntosh. General McIntosh promptly initiated a campaign to attack Fort Detroit. The first step was to build a fort at Beaver, Pennsylvania, which he named for himself. Next was Fort Laurens, about fifteen miles south of Canton, Ohio, intended to be a staging point for the attack on Detroit. Late in February 1779 a strong force of Native Americans and a few British regulars attacked the fort and laid siege to it. The small garrison resisted valiantly until the attackers finally gave up and departed. By this time McIntosh had been replaced by Colonel Daniel Brodhead, commander of the 8th Pennsylvania. Brodhead had no interest in attacking Detroit, and eventually Fort Laurens was abandoned.
By now the Continental Army had adopted a new strategy to take the war to the British and their Iroquois allies in the West, a three-pronged operation focusing on “total war”, destroying the villages and farms of the Native Americans who were ravishing the frontier. Major General John Sullivan led a large force up the Susquehanna to the Wyoming Valley, then into New York. There he met another force from the Mohawk Valley led by Brigadier General James Clinton. Together they destroyed forty Iroquois villages and devastated their entire nation.
Concurrently Brodhead was leading a force up the Allegheny River which laid havoc to the Seneca villages there. Near Warren they encountered a small group of Senecas at Thompson’s Island and fought a minor battle there. The overall operation was a major success and effectively took the Iroquois out of the War.
In September 1781 Brigadier General William Irvine replaced Brodhead as commander at Fort Pitt. Although it was obvious that the war was winding down in 1782, it was still easy for the British to encourage their Native American allies in the Ohio Country to make a last-ditch effort. This resulted in the destruction of Hanna’s Town, the siege of Fort Henry (Wheeling), the fatal raid on the Gabriel Walker family in Robinson Run, and Colonel William Crawford’s ill-fated expedition to the Sandusky River in northwestern Ohio. Although the Treaty of Paris in 1783 formally ended the Revolutionary War, conflict with the Native Americans continued until “Mad Anthony” Wayne secured the Ohio Country for settlement with his victory at Fallen Timbers.
The next Historical Society program meeting is scheduled for 7:30 pm, June 24, 2025, in the Chartiers Room of the Bridgeville Volunteer Fire Department. It will feature Tom McMillen discussing “The Year That Made America: From Rebellion to Independence, 1775-1776”.