FORT EVANS, OHIO
At the same time that we, the English settlers who occupied the Atlantic coast of North America, were busy building protective walls to our west, the French were busy building fortifications in their vast wilderness beyond the Appalachinan mountain range.
We are familiar with some such forts such as the larger ones such as the one at Fort Duquene which, in time, became the Pittsburg area occuring in our history annals a number of times. They served primarily as pylons aound which sheltered masses of migrating people expanding into the wilderness.
One such site can be seen today about ten miles west of Coshockton,Ohio, on U.S. Route 36. Until 1952 it appeared to be a random pile of scattered limestone rock which seems to have been quarrIed about a mile away and dragged to the site. The mysterious pile of rock was named "Fort Evans" because a man named Isaac Evas owned the land in 1806. The fort was restored as near to the way the Coochocton County Historical Society though it may have been when built. The acual date of construction is uncertain.
A single documentary reference has been found which mentions the construction of a new fort norhwest of the Ohio River. Other forts were of logs and of such material is probably it was menioned at all rather than it's strategic importance. The building has been reconstructed an now stands as a silent, small and sturdy symbol of the era we call "The French and Indian War”.
The finished building looked more like a small shed of some sort on a level site with thick forest all round at a dustance of a hundred feet or so. It was built of large, limestone slabs, thought to have been quarried at a point a mile away. It is twenty feet long, fifteen feet wide and sixteen feet high by outside measurements. The roof is of long, pine shakes. The walls are an average of twenty-two inches thick so that limited the space available for defenders inside. It had only one door, which would seem to be a mistake. A fort, large or small, needs a back door. The front door is of sturdy oak planks. There is no record to show that the fort was every used for its intended purpose. but it was part of a phase of construction which the French undertook to protect their Mississippi-Ohio valley holdings. That which they did helped to determine our future.
This small fort in Ohio is of special interest to many of us here in the Shenandoah Valley because the church in which we worship today - the very stone building itself still being used - Virginia was built of native stone in 1740 - dedicated in l746 - and it was built as a fort to protect the citizens from depradations of Indian tribes from the west.incited by the French in the time when Fort Evans was a reality.
There is another reason, geographic and governmental, which connects us with the fort on the northwest bank of the Ohio River. From 1738 to 1770 Fort Evans was, legally, a part of Augusta County, Virginia adminstered from the County Court House in Staunton, Virginia.
A.L.M. January 22, 2004 [c467wds]
