Fort Ashby is located in Patterson Creek Valley, a fertile and protected valley teeming with wildlife even today. Thousands and thousands of points (arrowheads, spearheads, scrapers, and knives) have been found in the area. These points are from different eras from Paleo Indian (10,000 BC - 7500 BC) through the Late...
This letter reveals much, not only about Captain Ashby's wife Jane and how word spread quickly even back in the day, but about Washington's level of detail and insistence upon discipline.
[Winchester, 28 December 1755]
To Captain John Ashby of the second Company of Rangers
I am very much surprized to hear of the great irr...
This letter, written on October 23, 1755, instructs Captain Ashby to send half his men to the site of what will become their Fort on Charles Sellers' plantation along Patterson Creek. Three days later, Washington will order construction to begin.
Washington kept a copy of every order he sent out in a journal. T...
Captain Ashby wrote the following letter to Lt. Colonel VanMeter and Captain Waggoner at Fort Cumberland, recounting how Indians on April 15, 1756 demanded he surrender his Fort. Ashby refused, gave the Indian spokesman a dram of rum, and the Indians moved East towards Walker's plantation at the mouth of Patterson Cr...
The letter which follows is from Colonel George Washington, ordering construction of the first two forts of a chain of forts to be built, stretching from Winchester Virginia, to Fort Duquesne (present day Pittsburgh). Fort Ashby was completed approximately one month later.
The French and Indian war was a conflict between Britain and France, fought in North America over disputed territory. Indian nations aligned themselves with whichever side they felt would be more advantageous to their interests. Shawnee, Lenape (Delaware), Algonquin, Ojibwa, Ottawa, and Wyandot Indians sided with the...
