Fort Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin's Frontier Defense

Built in the winter of seventeen fifty-five and fifty-six under the direction of Benjamin Franklin, Fort Hamilton stood near this spot as one link in a chain of frontier forts protecting Pennsylvania during the French and Indian War. Captain John Trump raised the structure; Captain William Craig and forty-one soldiers garrisoned it. The fort changed commanders several times over the following years, with Captains John Nicholaus Wetterholt and Jacob Van Etten each taking command before Lieutenant James Hyndshaw assumed control after Van Etten resigned in seventeen fifty-seven.

Franklin himself had advocated for the chain of forts after Braddock's catastrophic defeat left the Pennsylvania frontier exposed to devastating raids. His role in organizing the defenses of the colony, usually overshadowed by his fame as a scientist and statesman, was one of his most urgent wartime contributions.