Fort Robinson (Perry County, Pennsylvania Frontier Series) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Foreword

  An Introduction

  Chapter 1 - 1750

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5 - 1753

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34 - Spring 1762

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Epilog

  Author's note

  Books by Roy Chandler

  FORT

  ROBINSON

  ROY F. CHANDLER

  Perry County, Pennsylvania Frontier Series

  I dedicate this volume to

  Katherine Reynolds Chandler, Ph.D.,

  my lovely wife of more than 35 years.

  She unfailingly encourages me to do better work.

  With my appreciation for putting in as

  much time on this book as did the author.

  Kate makes it all worthwhile.

  Printing History:

  eBook Edition: 2012

  Katherine R. Chandler, Publisher

  St. Mary's City, MD

  First Hardback Edition: Bacon and Freeman, 1981

  Deer Lake, Pennsylvania

  Second Hardback Edition: Iron Brigade Armory, 2003

  Jacksonville, North Carolina

  Title of this volume: Fort Robinson

  Copyright © 1980, Roy F. Chandler

  Although many of the events included in this volume are recorded historical incidents,

  the Fort Robinson story as told herein is a novel.

  Foreword

  In a remote area of Central Pennsylvania, which remains as uniquely underdeveloped today as it was 250 years ago, lies an unheralded account of our forefathers' labors to settle their new frontier. The story of Fort Robinson is brought to life by Roy F. Chandler in a style perhaps not otherwise possible-if not by his pen.

  In the mid 1700s, just prior to the French and Indian War, provincial authorities were constructing forts and stockades to defend the frontiers. In Sherman's Valley, however, no such garrisons were established, and the settlers were left to defend themselves from the constant threats of Indian attacks and perhaps brutal massacres.

  Fort Robinson was built as a communal fortress for use by settlers near enough to gain its protection. When there were reports of Indian uprisings, the settlers rushed to the fort for safety, and north of Kittatinny Mountain, Robinson's was the essential shelter for the settlers' very survival. Close against the protecting walls of the stockade, seeds were sown and crops were harvested, and the fort provided a community center where no town existed.

  Although attacked many times, the stockade's decade-long defense epitomizes the ferocity and savagery of frontier warfare by hostile Indians intent on ridding their lands of hated white settlers.

  Following the Indian wars, Robinson's Fort became lost in the sands of time. Today, the logs that formed the blockhouse and stockade have decayed and been plowed into farmland until only a higher spot in a field records the fort's position.

  Chandler's Fort Robinson is the story of George Robinson and the pioneers of Sherman's Valley-their adventurous spirits and their rarely matched capacity to endure the hardships, toil, and danger that were so much a part of their every day lives.

  Chandler's capacity to draw a reader into become a living part of a story is perhaps the most appealing feature of his writings. With more than sixty published books to his credit, Chandler consistently takes his readers toward that barely discovered territory of successfully blending history, lore, and entertainment within the same venue.

  Chandler is the antithesis of most of today's storytellers-no sex and no cursing, but reader response is always the same-overwhelming approval and demand for more.

  Roy Chandler, fondly known to many as "Rocky," is immediately charismatic, and the demand for his books appears unquenchable. One needs only to attend a public sale where his books are offered for sale or examine the prices of those listed on E-bay to discover one of his earlier volumes-that originally sold for less than $20- now selling for $100 . . . $200 . . . or in some cases more than $2,000-each.

  If the author did not write as we report, his books would have gone the way of most volumes that, once read, are unceremoniously discarded. Not so with "Chandler Books." His books live on to be read and reread through decades and now into a second generation.

  Beyond pure enjoyment, Roy Chandler's writing has become a gateway enabling readers to better understand their pasts. Individuals who never before read a book become Chandler Book collectors, and many young adults have been turned from their mindless TV absorptions into dedicated readers of historical adventure. Such is the legacy of Rocky Chandler, teacher, visionary, storyteller, and friend.

  Chandler has indicated to many that he believes Fort Robinson to be his most important book. He may well be right, but with so many books and countless articles already written by him, we will leave that judgment to his faithful readers.

  Fort Robinson will make you proud, angry, and sad, but more than anything else, it should renew a sense of awe for the sacrifices so valiantly endured by our forefathers to grant this nation the freedoms and securities it now so richly enjoys.

  We have had the pleasure of knowing Rocky Chandler for many years, and during that time he has become a special friend and mentor to our entire family. To meet Rocky for the first time is a special delight-to know him is a genuine privilege. There are no facades, no pretenses. He is as genuine and unassuming as you would expect a true friend to be. Do not be surprised if one day while attending a sale where some of his books are being sold (probably for stunning amounts) you are introduced to him-only to discover sometime later that he pulls into your driveway on his beloved Harley-Davidson just to say, "Hi." It has happened just that way.

  If Fort Robinson is your first entrée into the writings of Roy Chandler, beware . . . you cannot read just one! If you are already a reader of Chandler, enjoy this tale and stride into the past as our forefathers set on a course of building and growing this greatest of nations.

  Marcus and Keith Hite

  in Sherman's Valley,

  Perry County, Pennsylvania

  An Introduction

  What you are about to read is a novel, but the story is about a real fort. Fort Robinson existed where, when, and as I depict it.

  Fort Robinson is the most exciting tale and the most courageous series of events in Perry County, Pennsylvania history. It is also the most overlooked story in the area's colonial record. Few Pennsylvanians know more than the name, and the
fort's existence is unnoted by virtually all general historians.

  When researching for this book it became quickly apparent that every historian writing about Fort Robinson based his material on a relatively few pages within "Loudon's Narratives." The sum is thin fare but sufficed when Robinson's fort was only a corner of a larger picture. For this volume I needed much more.

  Solid information about the fort has been hard to come by. The settlers built and defended their fort without military personnel, and Robinson's fort is rarely mentioned in official communiqués. Fortunately, Ben Franklin's "Pennsylvania Gazette" occasionally received frontier reports that included Fort Robinson happenings, and as I dug deeply, other material in bits and pieces surfaced.

  It is a challenging effort to do justice to Fort Robinson. While the time frame and some of the people are known, meaty details are few, but unless a proper diary by one of the participants is unearthed, day-to-day existence during that troublesome decade will remain speculation.

  There are mixed opinions on inventing words and thoughts for legitimately historical characters-people who actually lived. In so doing an author may warp history while granting insights or character traits not possessed by the persons depicted.

  A proper reminder, however, is that a novel is fiction. Therefore, most of the work is created from the author's imagination and cannot automatically be accepted as fact.

  In the case of this book we cannot know what the people really said, what their temperaments were, how much humor they possessed, or how they talked things over among themselves. Unfortunately, historical records have only rarely included such human experience. Within our histories we find famous quotations or stirring speeches, but we cannot discover what George said to Robert during daily activities.

  If the Robinsons were of the historical stature of George Washington or Thomas Jefferson, I would hesitate to put many words in their mouths, but as the major participants in a story of Robinson's fort, it would be ludicrous to leave the Robinsons as dimly seen stick figures.

  Using available facts, I have developed a story line plausible for the era and fleshed it out with incidents that occurred at Fort Robinson or under conditions similar in nature. To separate storytelling from history will require the reader's own research, but a few examples of my methods might be of interest.

  Historians have noted that Fort Robinson had a blockhouse and a stockade. Its shape or size is unknown. Certain points are, however, traditionally sound. For instance, no one (except Hollywood) would build a round stockade, as it is difficult to bring defensive fire along a curve. (Curved firing steps inside are also harder to build.) If a blockhouse was included, it was usually placed at a corner where it could provide a strong point and deliver fire down two walls of the stockade. The blockhouse often overlooked and defended the main stockade gate.

  In 1938, aerial photographs were taken of Perry County for survey and mapping purposes. Examining the Fort Robinson area, historian Frank Tressler discovered that from the air the outline of the long destroyed fort was visible as disturbed soil in the middle of a plowed field, I studied the photo (Carson Long Military Institute library) with a magnifying glass. The fort was square and the blockhouse appears to have been at the north corner. I thought I could detect a main entrance to the east and a wide trail south, westward to the creek.

  More recently, historian Donald Briner showed me how the original road followed the old Indian path to the east of the fort instead of the current road's position to the west along the creek's bank. "Hurrah!" That explained the positioning of the main entrance, but what about the path from the bluff edge? You will discover how I worked that small detail into the story.

  Another historian, Harry Lenig, developed the Robinson genealogy for me. Until this book, the relationships were confused. For generations, local historians recorded how the patriarch, George Robinson, and his four sons built the fort and fought the Indians, but my first investigations showed George to be only twenty-six years of age at the founding of the fort. How then, I wondered, could he have had Indian-fighting sons? Harry Lenig unearthed the correct brother, cousin, and nephew relationships that showed the Robinsons to be a typical clan of frontier Scotch-Irish working to survive and prosper in an untrammeled wilderness.

  A factor confusing at times was the Robinsons' willingness to spell their family name in different ways. They used Robinson, Robison, Robeson, Robertson, and Robisen. The casual approach was perpetuated by others of the time recording Robinson names in their correspondence.

  I might note here that anyone distressed by today's erratic spelling should read the imaginative, often phonetic, efforts of our early Americans. Those old timers could really twist things around!

  The early settlers on our frontiers were not ultimate woodsmen knowledgeable of Indians and their ways. The settlers, while daring and enduring, were neither crack marksmen nor wilderness fighters. The colonists were small farmers or basic artisans seeking, through strain of muscle and sweat of brow, to wrench a livelihood from virginal lands. Their methods were adapted from traditional European knowledge. Sometimes the old ways failed, and success often amounted to bare survival-and it took the labors of a second or even a third generation before comforts accumulated and the people lived well.

  Of course, the menace of Indian hostilities hung shroud-like along the frontier, and not without reason. Atrocities occurred and would surely be repeated. Yet the promise of land ownership, incomprehensible in Europe, overcame normal trepidation, and settlement plowed ahead with everyone trusting that the war hatchet would fall elsewhere.

  White conquest succeeded, not because of superior fighters, but due to three insurmountable settler advantages.

  First, white weapons were on the whole superior, and they improved dramatically with the development of the long rifle.

  Second, white numbers increased almost geometrically continually leaving the Indian populace further behind.

  Finally, while the Indian could (and usually did) win a battle, he was not philosophically indoctrinated to sustain a war.

  In the Indian way, a battle was a war, and everyone considered the deed complete and went home to celebrate or nurse their wounds. For the whites, a battle was a step, or a slip, on an almost endless war trail, and despite a battle's outcome, the war continued. Whites consolidated what they won; the Indian withdrew to safety; and whites moved a little closer.

  I believe it is desirable to comment further on Indians. There is considerable interest in Indian affairs these days. Most of the concern is directed toward something known as traditional rights or Indian heritage. It all has to do with Native American claims through ancient treaties and, in some cases, prior or continuous occupation of certain land areas. My own opinion is that the current crop of "Indians" has little moral justification for their claims. Legally, they may or may not find technicalities to exploit, but I feel that rarely should the living be compensated for injustices to distant grandparents. Too often the cases become ludicrous travesties. I am not a supporter of "affirmative action" as a general compensatory method.

  All of that aside, the Indian cultures along the Atlantic were truly complex and marvelously balanced. White arrival tore those societies asunder and scattered the remnants. There is no place, however, for some belated Mea Culpa ethnic guilt. Whenever the Stone Age has encountered an iron culture, the stone has crumbled and given way. How else could it be?

  The Indian fought his best, but the ultimate outcome could never have been in doubt. There were heroics on both sides as well as atrocities and deceits. If scores were kept, we might credit whites with more deception (lying and treaty breaking, if you will) and the Indian with more horrendous tortures and murders. But, if we had been participants, living with the emotions and desperations of the period, we too might have raised the scalping knife or moved into an empty meadow on Indian land.

  We should keep in mind that nature is unfailingly brutal. Nearly everything conscious lives from the bodies of
other things and kills its food without mercy or self-recrimination, and the Indian was truly natural. If one harbored conceptualizations of Indians being only "misguided children," being skinned alive while gunpowder was ignited on the exposed flesh might have minimized the dreamings. That courage in dying would have been admired by your tormentors, or that they would have expected a similar fate in your hands, would have counted for little as the powder smoke swirled. So, to our more "civilized" eyes, the Indian's individual and collective cruelties appear bestial atrocities.

  A point of these many generalities is that American Indian culture was not simple; it was not all good or bad. Civilized "peoples" have regularly exceeded the worst tortures Indians ever devised and, in some countries, we are still at them. On the other hand, Indian codes of honor have been exceeded only by the rarest and finest of civilized behavior.

  While materially primitive, our eastern Indian cultures were highly stylized, socially complex, and enduringly viable. Within Indian societies there was order, planning, religion, and historical awareness. I think it essential that we recognize that the Indian possessed, in degree similar to our own, all basic human characteristics. The Indian laughed, loved, and warred. He adorned himself attractively; he admired, hated, and respected. He had gods; there were families, clans, tribes, and nations of tribes. There were social groups such as warrior societies and message carriers. There were guilds of skilled artisans (often within family or clan) that built canoes, made bows, or crafted pottery.

  Indians farmed extensively. They raised corn, squash, and pumpkins. They fertilized and rotated crops. It has been estimated that cultivated vegetables comprised over a third of eastern Indian diet. Considering their need to follow the game, one third is a remarkable percentage.

  Indians fished. They netted, trapped, gigged, and hooked fish, eels, and turtles. Of course hunting was life's mainstay. Indians did not differentiate between hunting and trapping in their thinking. Small game fell to snares and deadfalls; larger animals to arrow or spear.