FORT SANDUSKY

Cedar Point built a replica of the fort at Frontier Land. Pretty Cool; however Touring Ohio says: It should be noted that this only an interpretation of what an Ohio Country fortification looked like. It in fact has very little in common with any frontier fortification other than picketed logs. None of Ohio’s fortifications would have had stone walls. The height of the log walls are close in height and size. Most forts on the western frontier did not have artillery pieces. A few fortifications did have artillery pieces like Fort Meigs and Fort Stephenson. READ MORE

The Battle of Fort Sandusky was one of many clashes during Pontiac’s Rebellion in 1763. The Native American leader gathered several tribes in a loose alliance and attacked British forts throughout what is now Ohio and Michigan. Although Pontiac’s uprising ultimately failed to drive out the British, a group of Wyandots managed to take Fort Sandusky on May 16, 1763. They entered the stronghold after requesting a council and then slaughtered everyone inside. READ MORE

For a hundred years, controversy has raged over its location. It has been variously placed all the way from the mouth of Pipe Creek to Fremont, in Ohio. One writer even goes so far as to locate it on the Marblehead Peninsula near Port Clinton and then after badly confusing the data by unwarranted assumptions winds up by twice showing a sketch of De Lery’s French Fort Sandusky and the second time indexing it in the book – “Fort Stephenson as sketched by De Lery” – thereby not only confusing two separate forts but confusing Pontiac’s War of 1763 with the War of 1812. Fort Stephenson was sometimes called Fort Sandusky. Henry Howe in his Historical Collections of Ohio does so. But De Lery who records French Fort Sandusky on the Marblehead Peninsula had been dead thirteen years when Fort Stephenson was built, and Howe’s text and sketches leave no room for any confusion as to the fact he means Fort Stephenson of the War of 1812. We shall examine a few documents in an effort to straighten this out, but first here again is the usual story about British Fort Sandusky. READ MORE