In the afternoon of August 8th, 1777, 28-year-old Colonel Peter Gansevoort stood on the North Wall of Fort Stanwix. Through his spy glass, he could see the cannon of King George III setting up at a redoubt 600 yards away.
The young colonel, descended from the old Dutch aristocracy that had settled New York over 100 years earlier, had been offered surrender just hours earlier. Gansevoort had turned the offer down.
At that moment, the artillery pieces were touched off beginning the siege of Fort Stanwix in earnest. The cannon would not go silent again for two weeks.
The Siege of Fort Stanwix, though often forgotten, was a pivotal battle in the Revolutionary war. Situated at a critical stretch of land used to transport cargo from the tributaries of the Great Lakes to the Mohawk River, the Fort was an essential part of the British conquest of New York.
Rob Searing is the curator at the Onondaga Historical Association. He’s an expert on Revolutionary history in New York.
“Fort Stanwix is a critical strategic stronghold,” Searing said, “It is a fort that is built out in the middle of the Oneida Nation. The English will fortify it.”
Fort Stanwix would be abandoned after the French and Indian War, but its strategic nature made the abandoned fort attractive to American Rebels retreating from Canada.
“It is a strategic spot close to the Mohawk River… that is the frontier, there's nobody living here that is white European. This is strictly Haudenosaunee, Onondaga out this way.” Searing said, “So it's a very important strategic post that plays a critical role in the revolution. To capture Fort Stanwix is a necessary part of the American strategy.”
In April of 1777, George Washington would order Colonel Gansevoort, who had been wounded a year earlier at Montreal, to repair and occupy the abandoned Fort Stanwix.
Gansevoort and 600 men as well as many of their wives and daughters, worked around the clock to resupply the aged fort. While many objected to the presence of women in the continental army, they quickly became an essential part of the rebellion,
“Many of them had come from New York City in the Lower Hudson Valley area, Long Island, and with the British occupying it in 1776,” said Valerie Morgan whose job as a re-enactor is to educate the public. “A lot of these people had no other place to go, so their husbands, or in some cases fathers, joined the Continental Army and off they went.”
Come July, the fort was almost ready for full operations, but a troubling rumor had spred by Oneida spies, loyal to the patriots. By early July, it was confirmed that Brigadier General Barry St. Leger had left with a large force from Montreal two weeks earlier.
Forty-four-year-old St. Leger was an Irish aristocrat who had been educated at Eton, he had enlisted before the French and Indian War and seen service as a young man at two of the largest sieges of the war.
St. Leger’s expedition was meant to divert American forces from Saratoga and to eventually reinforce General Burgoyne and his campaign to take the Hudson River.
In his command, St. Leger had 500 regulars from the home islands and American loyalists and 90 German mercenary troops. Traveling with them were 800 warriors from the Haudenosaunee confederacy fighting in their own brutal civil war.
Gansevoort made a desperate plea for reinforcements, and was sent 150 men from Massachusetts.
“They weren't necessarily super excited. to have extra people come in, but they all banded together to actually create what was going to happen,” said Morgan.
Between anxiety for the coming battle, and cramped quarters, quarrels were common in the fort.
“A lot of these guys were just young dudes looking to do a multitude of things, whether it be patriotism and, you know, sticking up to the British," said Chris Jakubowski, a re-enactor portraying one of the continental soldiers inside the fort.
“Whether it was promise of food or someone came just because, maybe they were hungry and they were promised regular rations, which they got, or promise of pay," Jakubowski continued, "for some people, this was like a first way to get out of their house and prove themselves.”
Even the women were embroiled in intra-army turmoil.
“The wife of the sergeant major here at the fort, he was recovering from something down in the main hospital in Albany, and his wife was able to stay here, which is very unusual," said Morgan. “But she got into an argument with one of the artillery sergeants, and they were both court-martialed.”
Despite the tensions inside the fort between the poorly trained men and women of the continental army, the fort took the time to celebrate the nation's first birthday, with a reading of the declaration of independence and a gun salute.
In the days leading up to St. Legers expected arrival, women were evacuated from the Fort and sent down river to safety, except for two. One of those women was unnamed, the other was Nancy McCarty, the wife of a soldier in the fort, who soldiers dared not move because she was nine-months pregnant.
On August 2nd, St. Leger arrived. He had sent a convoy ahead to attempt to intercept the last of the re-enforcements being sent to aid Gansevoort, but he had been too late.
Just four miles from the fort, St. Leger had a problem. Gansevoort's men had felled trees on either side of the road, making the road impassable for the British column and their all-important artillery.
The next day, St. Leger paraded his men and their indigenous allies in full war paint in view of the fort, he then offered a truce but was refused.
For the next two days, St. Leger and his men labored to bring the cannons to bear up the road. Earthworks were constructed and the German troops began sniping the fort, wounding several and killing one.
However, on August 5th, Mohawk commander Thayendanegea, received word of an 800-man relief column coming from the nearby town of Tryon (modern day Herkimer).
Thayendanegea assembled an ambush at Oriskany Creek, where he and his Mohawk warriors massacred Nicholas Herkimer and his men. Of the 800 who had left for Fort Stanwix, less than half returned. Thayendanegea’s men was left with 36 dead and hundreds wounded.
Herkimer was mortally wounded at Oriskany Creek, but legend has it he continued giving orders as he smoked a pipe beneath a birch tree while his blood slowly soaked through its trunk.
Adding insult to their injuries, the Mohawk camp was raided during the battle by a small detachment of men from the fort, who made off with nearly all provisions and supplies, and scaring away the few women and children who had remained at the camp.
The casualties at Oriskany creek and the raid of the Mohawk camp, would sow discontent among the British native allies.
Finally, the artillery arrived, nearly a week after the siege began. Colonel Gansevoort was offered surrender one final time, before the cannons opened on the fort.
“There were 800 guys in here not able to leave the walls, constantly just bombarded by explosions pretty much throughout the entire time, which has got to be exhausting," said Jakubowski, adding that, “literally constantly, for 21 days, they bombarded here for hours, constant cannon firings, mortar strikings, whole nine yards.”
The British pounded the fort for weeks, but they had a problem, “They only came with three- and six-pound cannons, which aren't going to do anything to these walls.” Jakubowski explained.
The British relied on a secondary explosion inside the forts powder magazine, but the lucky strike never came, and the British morale began to wear down.
On the last day of the siege, Nancy McCarty was wounded by cannon fire.
“Mrs. McCarty had a chunk of flesh the size of a man's fist taken out of her bottom,” Morgan recounted. Nevertheless, “she delivered her baby girl in one of the areas in the fort being used as a temporary hospital.”
Under pounding fire, Mrs. McCarty delivered her “siege baby” surrounded by wounded and dying men deep in the bowels of the fort. The next day, St. Leger withdrew, after hearing reports of a large relief column led by Benedict Arnold.
When the smoke cleared, The American Battlefield Trust estimates that 34 Americans had been killed or wounded to the British’s 66.
The battle ensured patriot victory at the Battle of Saratoga, as General John Burgoyne would go unsupported by St. Leger, who would not arrive until it was too late. American victory at Saratoga would ensure French support and turn the tide of the war.
Today the patriots of Fort Stanwix are remembered every Independence Day through a reading of the declaration of independence and a musket salute, just as was done 250 years ago.
