Wheeling

Wheeling's Revolutionary War: The Frontier That Fought Last

When the Continental Congress declared independence in July 1776, the delegates in Philadelphia could scarcely have imagined the world that existed three hundred miles to the west, beyond the Allegheny Mountains, along the upper reaches of the Ohio River. There, in what is now Wheeling, West Virginia, a small cluster of cabins and a rough-hewn stockade represented the outermost edge of American settlement—a place where the Revolution was not fought with massed infantry and Continental regulars but with flintlock rifles fired from loopholes, with desperate runs through open ground, and with a grinding, years-long struggle for survival against British-allied Native forces determined to drive the Americans back across the mountains. Wheeling's story is unlike any other in the Revolution. It is a story that began before independence was declared and did not end until months after the last major battle in the East. The siege that closed Wheeling's war, fought in September 1782—a full year after Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown—has long carried the distinction of being the last recognized battle of the American Revolution.

Even the name of the place carried a dark foreboding. "Wheeling" is believed to derive from a Delaware (Lenape) Indian term meaning "head" or "skull."

The Delaware word Wihling—from Wih, meaning head, and ling, meaning place—designated it as the "place of the skull." Legend holds that Native Americans, angered by a white settler venturing onto their hunting grounds, decapitated him and set his skull on a pole near the mouth of Wheeling Creek as a warning to others who might follow. The name hinted at the violence that had already marked the confluence of creek and river long before American settlers arrived, and at the violence that would define the settlement's Revolutionary years.

The origins of Wheeling as an American settlement trace to 1769, when Ebenezer Zane, a bold and resourceful Virginian, crossed the mountains and claimed land at the confluence of Wheeling Creek and the Ohio River. Zane was not alone. He brought members of his extended family, including his brothers Silas and Jonathan, and soon attracted a small community of settlers drawn by the rich bottomland and the strategic position along the Ohio—the great highway of western expansion. But the location that made Wheeling attractive for settlement also made it dangerously exposed. The Ohio River was not merely a boundary; it was a contested corridor. To the west and north lay the homelands of the Shawnee, Mingo, Wyandot, and Delaware peoples, nations that had already clashed with Virginian settlers during Lord Dunmore's War in 1774. That conflict, which culminated in the Battle of Point Pleasant in October 1774, temporarily stabilized the frontier but resolved nothing permanently. In its aftermath, Virginia's colonial government authorized the construction of a fortification at Wheeling. The effort was initially undertaken by Ebenezer Zane and John Caldwell in response to anticipated reprisal raids following the murder of Mingo leader Logan's sister and brother at Yellow Creek.

The fortification was built under the supervision of Maj. Angus MacDonald, an engineer of the British regulars, and Maj. William Crawford of the Virginia militia, having been approved by Governor Dunmore.

The fort was originally named to honor Dunmore, one of whose titles was Viscount Fincastle.

After the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, Dunmore had come to be despised by Virginia patriots, and the fort was renamed Fort Henry to recognize Patrick Henry, first governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia. The resulting structure became the linchpin of upper Ohio Valley defense— a major defensive outpost in the upper Ohio Valley through the Indian Wars of the 1790s, second only to Fort Pitt at present Pittsburgh.

The fort itself was a modest but functional frontier stronghold. Its wooden palisade enclosed an area of about half an acre with bastions at each corner.

Inside was a magazine, barracks, several cabins, and a well, while a swivel gun was mounted on the roof of the barracks.

The fort was substantially built of squared timbers painted at the top and furnished with bastions and sentry boxes at the angles. It was no European-style fortification, but on the frontier, its stout walls and bastions made the difference between survival and annihilation.

When the Revolutionary War began, the British quickly recognized that the western frontier offered a strategic opportunity. By supplying and encouraging their Native allies—principally through the garrison at Detroit under Lieutenant Governor Henry Hamilton, known to Americans as the "Hair Buyer"—the British could force the fledgling states to fight on two fronts simultaneously. For the settlers at Wheeling and the surrounding region, this meant that the Revolution was experienced not as a distant political contest but as an unrelenting campaign of raids, ambushes, and sieges that tested the settlement's will to survive.

The year 1777 was particularly violent.

In the summer of 1777, rumors began circulating throughout frontier areas of Virginia and Pennsylvania that Indigenous tribes living in the Ohio Country were planning attacks on frontier settlements south of the Ohio River. Fort Henry was one of the rumored targets. In early August, General Edward Hand, the region's commander at Fort Pitt, warned militia Lieutenant Colonel David Shepherd and all of the local militia captains of the threat, and ordered 11 militia companies to gather at Fort Henry.

At least six companies arrived totalling over 350 men. But when weeks passed with no attack, the absence of any major threat led many of those companies to leave and return to their homes. By the end of August, only Captain Joseph Ogle's 25-man company from Buffalo Creek and the fort's local militia under Captain Samuel Mason remained.

Then, on the morning of September 1, 1777, the blow fell. A multi-tribal alliance of a few hundred Indigenous warriors approached the fort in great stealth and secrecy. The warriors were predominantly Wyandot and Mingo, although there were also some Shawnee and Lenape, led by the Wyandot Chief Dunquat and the Lenape Chief Buckongahelas.

Nearly half the militia were lured outside the post and killed by the Indians. The settlers who survived the initial ambush fought desperately from behind the walls. Calls for help went out across the region. Captain Van Swearingen was the first to respond with fourteen men from Cross Creek, about 20 miles north, and was able to enter the fort without issue. The second to respond was Major Samuel McColloch, who led a force of 40 men from Fort Van Meter along Short Creek. McColloch's arrival produced one of the most storied episodes of frontier legend. While covering his men's safe retreat into the fort, McColloch found himself cut off. Riding his horse, McColloch fled up Wheeling Hill, and there he found himself surrounded by the enemy on three sides, and on the other by a steep 300-foot drop. Instead of being captured or killed, he chose to charge his horse over the edge of the cliff, managing to save both himself and his horse without injury —an act of desperation that became known as McColloch's Leap.