The Bicentennial Minute
If you look at the map of Northwestern Ohio and adjacent Indiana, you notice several towns, named for forts that were created at that particular location during the Indian Wars of Washington’s administration and later during the War of 1812. These would include Fort Loramie, Fort Recovery, Fort Jennings, and Fort Wayne. Some towns dropped the “Fort” appellation at their creation, which would include Defiance and St. Marys. Of all these town, St. Marys is unique in the sense that the United States built two different forts and at two different times at this location–a unique happenstance.
This Minute will deal with the first fort – Fort St. Marys, erected by the forces of Anthony Wayne. A later Minute will focus on Fort Barbee constructed during the War of 1812 by forces under the command of future president William Henry Harrison. The fact that twenty years apart the military constructed two forts here speaks highly of the importance of this particular location at the headwaters of the St. Marys River. Both of these forts had similar functions in that they were primarily supply posts supporting combat units to the north.
In 1994 and 1995, local citizen Paulette Hoelscher and archeologist Tony DeRegnacourt led an archeological dig at the site of Ft. St. Marys on the south side of the Lutheran cemetery behind Varsity Bowling Lanes. In the pamphlet published after the excavation they summarized their research arrived at after searching many libraries and achieves. They learned that Wayne’s forces built Fort St. Marys in the aftermath of the signing of the Greenville Treaty on Aug. 3, 1795. In fact the Greenville Treaty reserved to the United States a two mile square area of the head of navigable water, near Girty’s town.
The site of the fort is further confirmed by the drawing from the 1819 survey of the area as shown in the accompanying drawing. Hoelscher and DeRegnacourt state, “The purpose of Fort St. Marys, on the banks of the river, was to guard the important portage and water transportation route of the St. Marys River.” It was a supply deport for Fort Wayne and Fort Defiance. Even though shipping 100 barrels of flour on the river might take seven days, it was still faster than the hard slough over the land route.
Supplies were transported up the Miami River to Fort Loramie and then over the 11 mile road from Loramie to St. Marys. One author at that time writes that this road was “fine and level” and with a little improvement would be the “best in the Western Country.”
Several pieces of correspondence set out that at times, boats had to wait for high water to make passage possible. The modern observer would think that boating on the river would be impossible, but remember that, prior to the construction of the giant canal reservoir in 1845, tributaries to the river which are now retained, increased the river’s flow.
It is interesting to note that in the correspondence of the time many writers still referred to this site as Girty’s Town, again followed by mapmakers in the early 19th century.
The U. S. Military did not utilize Fort St. Marys for an extended period of time, abandoning it after not more than two years because of maintenance costs. Local residents, actually squatters with no legal rights, probably used the fort structures as residences or harvested the materials to build their own shelters.
An interesting exhibit in the Auglaize County Historical Society’s Mooney Museum on South Wayne Street displays the items discovered the in 1994/1995 archeological dig including evidence, such as buttons, metal harness items and a cannonball.