Fort Duquesne was a fort established by the French in 1754, at the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers. It was later taken over by the British, and later the Americans, and developed as Pittsburgh in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. Fort Duquesne was destroyed by the French before its British conquest during the Seven Years' War, known as the French and Indian War on the North American front. The British replaced it, building Fort Pitt between 1759 and 1761. The site of both forts is now occupied by Point State Park, where the outlines of the two forts have been laid in brick.
Fayette County is a county in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. It is located in southwestern Pennsylvania, adjacent to Maryland and West Virginia. As of the 2020 census, the population was 128,804. Its county seat is Uniontown. The county was created on September 26, 1783, from part of Westmoreland County and named after the Marquis de Lafayette.
Brownsville is a borough in Fayette County, Pennsylvania, United States, first settled in 1785 as the site of a trading post a few years after the defeat of the Iroquois enabled a resumption of westward migration after the Revolutionary War. The trading post soon became a tavern and inn and was receiving emigrants heading west, as it was located above the cut bank overlooking the first ford that could be reached to those descending from the Allegheny Mountains. Brownsville is located 40 miles (64 km) south of Pittsburgh along the east bank of the Monongahela River.
Wharton Township is a township in Fayette County, Pennsylvania, United States. The population was 3,372 at the 2020 census, down from 3,575 at the 2010 census. The Uniontown Area School District serves the region.
The Braddock expedition, also called Braddock's campaign or Braddock's Defeat, was a British military expedition which attempted to capture Fort Duquesne from the French in the summer of 1755, during the French and Indian War of 1754 to 1763. The British troops suffered defeat at the Battle of the Monongahela on July 9, 1755, and the survivors retreated. The expedition takes its name from General Edward Braddock (1695–1755), who led the British forces and died in the effort. Braddock's defeat was a major setback for the British in the early stages of the war with France; John Mack Faragher characterises it as one of the most disastrous defeats for the British in the 18th century.
Tanacharison, also called Tanaghrisson, was a Native American leader who played a pivotal role in the beginning of the French and Indian War. He was known to European-Americans as the Half-King, a title also used to describe several other historically important Native American leaders. His name has been spelled in a variety of ways.
The Battle of Fort Necessity, also known as the Battle of the Great Meadows, took place on July 3, 1754, in present-day Farmington in Fayette County, Pennsylvania. The engagement, along with a May 28 skirmish known as the Battle of Jumonville Glen, was the first military combat experience for George Washington, who was later selected as commander of the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War by the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia.
Louis Coulon, Sieur de Villiers was a French military officer who served during the French and Indian War. Perhaps his greatest claim to fame is the fact that he is the only military opponent to force George Washington to surrender. Coulon was born into a prominent French Canadian family. His grandfather, Sieur Raoul-Guillaume Coulon, was an officer in the French Royal Army. He was the son of Nicolas Antoine Coulon de Villiers and Elizabeth Le Couturier. Louis Coulon de Villiers entered the military in 1733. He had risen to the rank of captain by the outbreak of the French and Indian War and was assigned to Fort Duquesne.
Joseph Coulon de Villiers, Sieur de Jumonville was a French Canadian military officer. His defeat and killing at the Battle of Jumonville Glen by forces led by George Washington was one of the sparks that ignited the Seven Years' War, also known as the French and Indian War in the United States.
Redstone Old Fort — or Redstone Fort or Fort Burd — on the Nemacolin Trail, was the name of the French and Indian War-era wooden fort built in 1759 by Pennsylvania militia colonel James Burd to guard the ancient Indian trail's river ford on a mound overlooking the eastern shore of the Monongahela River in what is now Fayette County, Pennsylvania near, or on the banks of Dunlap's Creek at the confluence. The site is unlikely to be the same as an earlier fort the French document as Hangard dated to 1754 and which was confusedly, likely located on the nearby stream called Redstone Creek. Red sandstones predominate the deposited rock column of the entire region.
The Battle of Jumonville Glen, also known as the Jumonville affair, was the opening battle of the French and Indian War, fought on May 28, 1754, near present-day Hopwood and Uniontown in Fayette County, Pennsylvania. A company of provincial troops from Virginia under the command of Lieutenant Colonel George Washington, and a small number of Mingo warriors led by the chieftain Tanacharison, ambushed a force of 35 French Canadians under the command of Joseph Coulon de Jumonville.
Fort Cumberland was an 18th-century frontier fort at the current site of Cumberland, Maryland, USA. It was an important military and economic center during the French and Indian War (1754–63) and figured significantly in the early career of George Washington.
William Trent was an American fur trader and merchant based in colonial Pennsylvania. He was commissioned as a captain of the Virginia Regiment in the early stages of the French and Indian War, when he served on the western frontier with the young Lt. Colonel George Washington. Trent led an advance group who built forts and improved roads for troop access and defense of the western territory. He was later promoted to the rank of major.
George Washington's military experience began in the French and Indian War with a commission as a major in the militia of the British Province of Virginia. In 1753 Washington was sent as an ambassador from the British crown to the French officials and Indians as far north as present-day Erie, Pennsylvania. The following year he led another expedition to the area to assist in the construction of a fort at present-day Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Before reaching that point, he and some of his men, along with Mingo allies led by Tanacharison, ambushed a French scouting party. Its leader was killed, although the exact circumstances of his death were disputed. This peacetime act of aggression is seen as one of the first military steps leading to the global Seven Years' War. The French responded by attacking fortifications Washington erected following the ambush, forcing his surrender. Released on parole, Washington and his troops returned to Virginia.
Braddock's Field is a historic battlefield on the banks of the Monongahela River, at Braddock, Pennsylvania, near the junction of Turtle Creek, about nine miles southeast of the "Forks of the Ohio" in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In 1755, the Battle of the Monongahela was fought on Braddock's Field, which ended the Braddock Expedition.
Nemacolin's Trail, or less often Nemacolin's Path, was an ancient Native American trail that crossed the great barrier of the Allegheny Mountains via the Cumberland Narrows Mountain pass, connecting the watersheds of the Potomac River and the Monongahela River in the present-day United States of America. Nemacolin's Trail connected what are now Cumberland, Maryland and Brownsville, Pennsylvania.
François Coulon de Villiers was a French military officer from an influential military family in the French and Indian War and then an influential officer in the New Spain community of New Orleans.
Redstone Creek is a historically important widemouthed canoe and river boat-navigable brook-sized tributary stream of the Monongahela River in Fayette County, Pennsylvania. The creek is 28.4 miles (45.7 km) long, running from headwaters on Chestnut Ridge north through the city of Uniontown and reaching the Monongahela at Brownsville. Located in a 1/4-mile-wide valley with low streambanks, the site was ideal for ship building in a region geologically most often characterized by steep-plunging relatively inaccessible banks — wide enough to launch and float several large boats, and indeed steamboats after 1811, and slow-moving enough to provide good docks and parking places while craft were outfitting.
Thomas Brown, was an American colonial era husbandman, businessman, and land speculator. Along with his brother Basil, he acquired the bulk of the (Brownsville) lands towards the end of the American Revolution from Thomas Cresap(Cresap's War, Lord Dunmore's War), early enough to sell plots to Jacob Bowman in 1780 and Jacob Yoder who respectively made business firsts in 1780 and 1782; Jacob Bowman founded a trading post and tavern. Yoder got in a crop big enough to ship to New Orleans and invented the flat boat on Redstone Creek, inaugurating the water craft construction businesses which made the town an industrial powerhouse for the next seventy years.
Nemacolin was a hereditary chief of the Delaware Nation who helped Thomas Cresap widen a Native American path across the Allegheny Mountains to the Ohio River Valley.
