Fort Shirley and the Frontier Diplomacy of George Croghan

Standing on this knoll was Fort Shirley, one of Pennsylvania's chain of frontier defenses during the French and Indian War, begun in seventeen fifty-five by George Croghan, one of the most remarkable figures on the colonial frontier. Croghan had established a trading post here at Aughwick Indian Town three years earlier, in seventeen fifty-three, making this site a hub of Native diplomacy long before the fort rose. In September of seventeen fifty-four, the celebrated Indian interpreter Conrad Weiser traveled here to meet with the Half King Tanacharison and chiefs of the Shawnee and Delaware nations, a conference that unfolded just as the war between France and Britain for control of North America was beginning to ignite. Croghan went on to become one of colonial America's most skilled intermediaries between European powers and Indigenous nations, and this hilltop was one of his earliest stages.