Homes Became Forts

Did you know? Almost at the beginning of the Revolution, the settlers of this valley began putting up forts as safe retreats from invading parties of Indians. The 1909 book Historic Huntingdon says they were usually built of logs, with loopholes that served both as lookouts and for the rifle in case of attack, and that the most elaborate were stockades of timbers set on end and firmly imbedded in the ground.

Some of those forts were people's own houses. Lowry's was built in Canoe Valley, three miles southwest of Water Street, and because it was small, the house of Matthew Dean, farther up the valley, was used for a time. Up Shaver's Creek, Alexander McCormick's house was used for the same purpose.

Jordan's 1913 history, which places that house near Neff's Mills, tells how it happened. When rumors of an Indian uprising grew rife in the spring of 1778, the people of Stone Valley determined to build a fort, and McCormick agreed to let his house be used for that purpose. It was put in a state of defense, its walls pierced by loopholes, and it became the principal rallying point for the settlement.

Hartsock's, in Woodcock Valley near Marklesburg, and Lytle's, in Hart's Log three miles south of Alexandria, served the people of their own neighborhoods. Jordan says Hartsock's was built about 1778 and stood on the brow of a hill about 150 feet east of the road from Marklesburg to Huntingdon. Anderson's stood on the southwest side of Shaver's Creek near its mouth, and Jordan dates it to 1778.

Lytle's has a witness of its own. John Dean swore in 1833 that early in the spring of 1778 a number of the inhabitants collected together and raised Lytle's fort in Hartslog valley, near the Juniata river, and lived in it that summer, and that he, then about fifteen, helped raise it.

Checked 2026-10-30 · County histories and primary sources, read in full

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