Garard's Fort and the Corbly Massacre

Near this spot stood Garard's Fort, a frontier refuge used during the Revolutionary War when this corner of Pennsylvania was still claimed by Virginia as part of Monongalia County.

On May tenth, seventeen eighty-two, Reverend John Corbly, a noted Baptist minister, was walking with his family to Sunday church service. A group of Native fighters attacked the party just short of the fort. His wife and three of his children were killed. Two other children survived their wounds. Corbly himself escaped.

The attack came near the end of the Revolutionary War, during one of the bloodiest stretches of frontier violence in western Pennsylvania. Garard's Fort was one of dozens of small militia stations scattered across the region, offering uncertain protection to settlers pushing into contested land. Corbly later wrote a widely circulated account of the attack, which became one of the most reprinted frontier tragedy narratives of the era.