JOINING FORCES
Fort Ligonier to manage Braddock’s Battlefield History Center
Fort Ligonier, a carefully restored 18th-century military stockade with a museum, has agreed to operate Braddock’s Battlefield History Center, a much smaller museum in North Braddock where visitors can learn about the Battle of the Monongahela and the bloody defeat of British Gen. Edward Braddock.
Fort Ligonier’s board of directors want to preserve the legacy of attorney Robert T. Messner, founder of Braddock’s Battlefield History Center.
Since 1994, Mr. Messner, who lives in Blackridge, has studied the battle and written 50 essays about it. In 1999, he exhibited artifacts and documents at the Braddock Carnegie Library. He obtained foundation grants and purchased and renovated a former auto dealership to house the Braddock’s Battlefield History Center, which opened in 2012. The museum has been staffed mostly by Mr. Messner, who wants the battle’s significance to remain alive in the minds of Western Pennsylvanians and visitors to this region.
The Battle of the Monongahela, on July 9, 1755, cemented the military reputation of a young George Washington, aide to Gen. Braddock, while fueling what historians consider the first world war. In North America, the conflict was called the French and Indian War. By the spring of 1756, hostilities had spread to Europe, West Africa, the Philippines and India, where it was called the Seven Years’ War.
Gen. Braddock hoped to capture Fort Duquesne, a French fort at the Forks of the Ohio, now known as the Point. He wanted to claim North America for the British and wrest it from the French and Native Americans. Leading a force of 1,200 officers and men plus 40 women who were nurses or laundresses, Braddock crossed the Monongahela River and began marching through thick woods.
More than 600 Native Americans and 250 French and Canadian soldiers, who hid behind trees and in gullies or ravines, attacked Gen. Braddock and his men for more than three hours. More than 456 people were killed and more than 420 wounded in during the battle, and the rest retreated hurriedly to Fayette County, then later to Philadelphia.
“The Battle of the Monongahela was really the first huge battle of the French and Indian War,” said Erika Nuckles, director of history and collections at Fort Ligonier in Ligonier, Westmoreland County.
“It sends shock waves around the world that this super powerful army was defeated. It really showed how important the piece of land that we call Pittsburgh today was for controlling North America and why an entire world war was started. If you controlled the rivers, you controlled North America,” she said in a telephone interview.
Ms. Nuckles, who earned a doctorate in history from the State University of New York in Albany, wrote her dissertation about Charlotte Browne, a hospital administrator who was the highest ranking woman of the Braddock campaign.
For the ambitious Washington, Western Pennsylvania was a butt-kicking boot camp where he experienced crushing military defeat, narrowly escaped death and witnessed the blood-soaked savagery of war.
As Braddock’s aide, Washington supervised the removal of the wounded general on a litter. Before Braddock died a few days later near Uniontown, he gave Washington his red sash. Washington it proudly in 1772 when artist Charles Willson Peale painted his famous portrait of the Virginia-born military leader.
Mr. Messner, who grew up in McKeesport, said he is pleased with the transaction because Fort Ligonier’s staff will promote Braddock’s Battlefield History Center and that will “provide a much needed shot in the arm for Mon Valley communities.”
Ms. Nuckles will assess the art and artifacts at the smaller museum and update the exhibits. Mary Manges, director of education at Fort Ligonier, will develop special programs for students who visit Braddock’s Battlefield History Center.
Julie Donovan, a spokeswoman for Fort Ligonier, said special events will be held to increase awareness of the other museum. Fort Ligonier, which has a first-rate art gallery and education center, will also partner with the Braddock’s Road Preservation Association, the Rivers of Steel National Heritage Area and Visit Pittsburgh.
The forts’ stories are related because both Gen. Braddock and Gen. John Forbes wanted to capture Fort Duquesne.
Three years after Braddock’s defeat and death, Forbes built Fort Ligonier as a staging area to capture Fort Duquesne for the British. On Oct. 12, 1758, a raiding party from Fort Duquesne, made up of 440 French soldiers and 150 Native Americans, attacked Fort Ligionier. (Last weekend, Fort Ligonier marked the 260th anniversary of that battle during Fort Ligonier Days.)
Fort Ligonier repelled the attack with its 1,500 soldiers, but the French and Native Americans managed to kill or steal about 200 horses, Ms. Nuckles said.
“Both sides claimed victory. The French were not trying to take the fort. They didn’t have the artillery to do it. They were trying to slow the Forbes army down,” Ms. Nuckles said.
On Nov. 11, 1758, Gen. Forbes held a war council with his officers, including Washington, drawing up a list of pros and cons and deciding whether to attack Fort Duquesne before winter set in that year or delay until the spring of 1759. They decided to wait. The next day, during a friendly fire incident that killed Virginia officers, French prisoners were captured, and one admitted that Fort Duquesne was weak.
So, Forbes and his men rode into Fort Duquesne on Nov. 25 and found that the French had set it on fire and abandoned it. Three days later, on Nov. 28, Forbes wrote in a letter that he had sent a detachment of soldiers to the Braddock battlefield.
One member of the detachment was Maj. Francis Halkett, who had survived the Battle of the Monongahela, in which he lost his brother and father.
“Today, a great detachment goes to Braddock’s field of battle to bury the bones of our slaughtered countrymen,” Gen. Forbes wrote.