BeeLines - August 3, 2017
By Marybelle Beigh, Westfield Town & Village Historian
Along Erie Shore, Chautauqua Creeks - Tying Up Loose Ends & More Speculations
After sending/posting the last installment about Westfield’s Portage Road and its connection to the French & Indian War, your Westfield Historian was trying to do a bit of personal genealogy that has been on hold for about ten years, when, “Lo & Behold!” a trifold flyer about Fort Le Boeuf, Waterford PA, fell out of one of the scrapbooks. Described as “Site of the Historic French Fort that Washington Visited on the Eve of the French and Indian War,” the contents were eagerly read, and were found to provide even more clarification about the story.
One of those metal historical sign is located there, and reads: “FORT LE BOEUF – Three forts have stood on this site. French fort built 1753 to guard road into Ohio Valley, abandoned 1759. British fort built in 1760, burned by Indians in 1763. American fort to protect settlers, built 1794.” According to the flyer, “From 1755 to 1758, Fort Le Boeuf served as a way station on the French line of defense to Fort Duquesne (Pittsburgh). British attempts to dislodge the French were unsuccessful until the Forbes expedition of 1758 captured Fort Duquesne. As the French retreated northward, Fort Le Boeuf became more vulnerable to scouting attacks and small skirmishes. Thus in August of 1759, the French were forced to abandon Le Boeuf and burn it to the ground.”
The story continues regarding the need for the British to re-build a fort there in October 1760, which was occupied by them “until an Indian attack during ‘Pontiac’s Conspiracy’ forced the small garrison to fall back to Fort Pitt in June of 1763. Once again, the fort at Le Boeuf was burned.” Apparently the British didn’t feel the need to rebuild, and so it was another thirty years later that, after “the end of the Revolutionary War, danger of Indians necessitated re-establishment of a defense system… in 1794,… erection of two small blockhouses.. [and] the erection of a blockhouse at Le Boeuf in 1796.” There is now the Fort Le Boeuf Historical Museum at the site, and nearby “a statue of Washington delivering the demand from the English that the French abandon their possessions in the Ohio valley.” (Thinking a field trip may be in the offing soon!)
A bit of research was done to try to determine if French Soldiers were paid during the French and Indian War, and if so, what sort of currency was used. There are some interesting books and articles about this to be found online and in many libraries. Yes, the French had some rather elite special forces both in Europe during the Seven Years’ War and in “new France” during the French & Indian War during the mid-1700s, and they were paid by bronze coinage called the Sou or Sol – eight (8) Sou per day according to one source. Information about currency from the 1600s to 1900s indicates that depending on the particular monarch, different forms of currency were introduced and withdrawn quite often. There were some larger currency-amount coins of Silver and some of Gold, as well as cardboard/paper currency at various intervals.
Since this series led off with the myth or legend of lost gold hidden in a cave somewhere along Chautauqua Creek, the information about French soldiers’ type of pay, as well as the more details about the activities of the French forces during the French & Indian War along the Lake Erie shorelines near the mouth of Chautauqua creek, can easily provide more “grist for the mill” of speculation about these stories.
Other mysteries and speculations about various structures along the two branches of Chautauqua Creek, above where the Portage Road crossed the Big Chautauqua, include a round stone building above Buttermilk Falls on Little Chautauqua Creek, and the approximately 185-year-old log cabin that once stood on the property of the Westfield Fish & Game Club on Ogden Road, which was moved about 1961 to Sherman’s Yorker Club historic village. The round stone building is described by Devon Taylor in his “Chautauqua Gorge – History, Legends, and People,” including a photograph. According to Taylor, “It has been there quite a few years…and has aroused a could deal of curiosity about who built it, when, and for what reason. Nobody has been able to come up with the answers so far.
The log cabin, according to an April 10, 1961 article in the Westfield Republican by Maureen McKernon Ross, “and the land on which it stands [1961], was owned by four generations of descendants of Luther D. Harmon who bought … the land… from the Holland Land Company before 1837.” Ross comments that “Harmon moved his family into the sturdily built, two-story cabin in 1837.” She goes on to say “There are no records to show who built the cabin.” Using this as a starting point, a number of people, including Maureen Ross and Ted Raynor, provided information for a speculative story that appeared in the Jamestown Post Journal of April 27, 1965 that reads, in part, “From its peculiar construction, a state history expert judged that it had probably been used by the French as a fort and lookout over Lake Erie in 1759.”