A temporary Patriot camp on the route from Whitemarsh to Valley Forge. (1816 - 1977), Philadelphia FORT WIKI Without major threats to control over the region and naval supremacy in the bay and nearby Atlantic coast, the British decided not to garrison fortifications on the Delaware. 16 applied the name Fort Wadsworth to all the fortifications on the west side of the Narrows and at the same time gave names to each of the individual batteries on the island. Fort Mifflin historical website - North American Forts #9, located on North Schuylkill Second Street (North 23nd ?) Created By: PocketSights Information Built before 1802, the smith's shop may be the oldest structure of the fort. American forces experienced a serious defeat in a futile attempt to recapture the fort in 1814. When the fort was deactivated as a military unit in 1904 all mines, wires, and earlier torpedo equipment were removed. Printz arrested the leader of the petitioners and executed him for attempting to cause a revolt. (1799 - 1958/1999), Philadelphia FORT WIKI A two-gun 3-inch anti-aircraft emplacement was built across the Schuylkill River from the Arsenal in 1918 by the Army, near the present-day Philadelphia Civic Center. By the twentieth century, the landscape around Mud Island began to change shape as dredge spoils from the Delaware River were loaded onto nearby Hog, Carpenters, and Province Islands. The British had built seige batteries at Webb's Ferry, Mingo Creek, and five on Province Island to subdue the fort. By November 1777, enough British ships were able to circumvent the chevaux-de-frise to bombard Fort Mifflin and support British land attacks on Fort Billings and Fort Mercer, resulting in the loss of all three forts. The name "Mud Island Fort" was reused in official reports until the name "Fort Mifflin" became official again in 1795, because Generals Washington and Mifflin had a falling out after the city fell to the British. Over the years, however, these fortifications, located on Staten Island west of the Narrows outside New York harbor, have had a variety of names. (1772 - 1962, intermittent), Philadelphia FORT WIKI During the Revolutionary War, Fort Mifflin was the site of a siege, which ended with the British controlling the fortifications. (Fort Mifflin on the Delaware Official Website) Camp Union (1) | Camp Philadelphia | Camp Gaines | Smith, Samuel Stelle. Fort Mifflin - FortWiki Historic U.S. and Canadian Forts Camp Chestnut Hill (1863 - 1865), the largest military hospital in the city, located between Abington and Springfield Aves., the Reading Railroad and Stenton Ave.. Fort Mifflin, located on "Mud Island" in the Delaware River just south of Philadelphia, is a historic landmark that attracts thousands of school groups, history buffs, and curious tourists each year. The island was first fortified with earthworks during the War of 1812. Fort Miles featured giant, long-range sixteen-inch guns and 90mm anti-aircraft batteries. Fort Mifflin was used as a military prison during the Civil War. Of interest nearby is the Hope Lodge Historic Site (Whitemarsh Estate Manor House) (1748) at 553 South Bethlehem Pike, where General Washington had his headquarters. In 1776 the British occupied and fortified the island along the waterline. Nevertheless, fortifications became important while Philadelphia served from 1790 until 1800 as the national capital. ExplorePAHistory.com _______. Fort Mifflin was rebuilt again from 1794 - 98 using Pierre L'Enfants plans as a 29-gun bastioned work, and repaired in 1808. Fort Mifflin answered every call to service: garrisoned for the War of 1812, a federal prison during the Civil War and a munitions depot in the 20th century. Also spelled Wasa. It remained primarily a storage depot until the Civil War. Fort Mercer was an earthen fort on the Delaware River on its New Jersey shore constructed by the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War.Built by Polish engineer Thaddeus Kosciuszko under the command of George Washington, Fort Mercer was built in 1777 to block the approach to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in concert with Fort Mifflin on the Pennsylvania side. The new post built on the height was named Fort Tompkins, after Governor Daniel D. Tompkins of New York. Originally called Fort Island Battery and also known as Mud Island Fort, Fort Mifflin was built between 1771 and 1776 and is located on Mud Island in the Delaware River near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Overall rating Forts Mott, DuPont, and Delaware were given to New Jersey and Delaware and became parts of historic districts and state park systems. The post was abandoned and reoccupied several times during the nineteenth century. Located at 2100 Schultz Road. (1641 - unknown), Upland Swarthmore (1952 - 1953) battery headquarters only: undetermined. Actually two redoubts on a hill 800 yards behind the Middle and Left Batteries to protect the work crews constructing the fortifications. (1861), West Chester Snyder, Frank E. and Brian H. Guss. Civil War training camps were (based on period street names): It had replaced an earlier magazine located at Walnut and Ashton Streets. A Patriot battery at the mouth of Darby Creek. The U.S. Navy briefly took over seaplane operations here during WWII. British troops left in late 1774 for Boston, MA, but returned to occupy the city in September 1777. Philadelphia Barracks In 1798 work began on a new masonry structure to replace the older works, and the new fort was completed two years later. Gulph Mills Camp | Fort Mifflin was eventually obtained by the city of Philadelphia and supported by a private Fort Mifflin Society to preserve one of the most historic forts in American history. The reduced Fort Mackinac remained an active post until 1895, when the state of Michigan acquired it for a public park. (1646 - unknown), Philadelphia #11, located on the Schuylkill River at the "Middle Ferry", near the present-day Market Street Bridge and South 24th Street. Built by Thomas Sparks, the 142-foot high brick shot tower is located at 131 (East) Carpenter Street, near South Front Street and the Delaware River. Three of the fort's four bastions overlooked and controlled the water approaches to Key West. Southwest Pennsylvania - page 6 | Northwest Pennsylvania - page 7 Fort Mifflin | TCLF The fort was designed to mount 252 guns, and eventually 131 were installed. In 1795 a new fort erected on the site was named in honor of Pennsylvania's first governor, Maj. Gen. Thomas Mifflin of the Continental Army. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998. The History - Fort Mifflin on the Delaware The completed 1839 fortress appears in Eastman's painting. The federal government commissioned Fort Miles in 1934 as part of a larger effort to defend the eastern coastline from German U-boats, which military forts farther up the Delaware River could not deter. It was named for Alexander Scammel, the . Plans at that time apparently called for Fort Scammel to contain seventy-one guns and Fort Gorges ninety-five. It housed prisoners during the American Civil War. The Siege of Fort Mifflin. This map of the Delaware River, just south of Philadelphia, by English cartographer William Faden, shows three American-occupied fortifications that the British naval ships attacked during the summer and fall of 1777. Site located near Calvary Cemetery. Ordering Instructions. Username Location 0 0 Start your review of Fort Mifflin. A mine casemate was built within the fort in 1875, but was never used. Located at Third and Walnut Streets. When the dust cleared seven men lay dead and between fourteen and seventeen were wounded. Visitors can tour the gunpowder magazine which was built in 1867 and the casemates . (1777), between Fort Washington and Whitemarsh Locating coastal defenses ever farther away from Philadelphia and the Delaware River during the Second World War attested to the increasing spatial dimensions of modern warfare and long-range capabilities of new weapons. Fort Vasa Colored Troops recruitment camp located in La Mott, the largest of only eighteen such U.S.C.T. When the Civil War began in 1861 the post was ready to be garrisoned, and Union forces occupied it during the entire war. #13, undetermined The Dutch West India Company naturally responded to New Swedens threat to New Netherlands commercial monopoly on the South River by strengthening Fort Nassau, building a number of small, fortified trading posts across the river, and erecting Fort Casimir where the river met the Delaware Bay (later the site of New Castle, Delaware). A 1926 replica of the Wicaco Blockhouse was once located on grounds, built for the Sesquicentennial International Exposition by the Swedish Colonial Society of Philadelphia. P.W. The Union Prison at Fort Delaware: A Perfect Hell on Earth. Fort Mifflin was rebuilt again from 1794 - 98 using Pierre L'Enfants plans as a 29-gun bastioned work, and repaired in 1808. No guns were ever mounted, as the threat receded after the Battle of Gettysburg (July 1863). The federal government hired civil engineer Major Pierre Charles LEnfant (1754-1825) to redesign Fort Mifflin and military engineer Anne-Louis de Tousard (1749-1817) to build the bastion. The last decades of the nineteenth century became the golden age of American coastal fort building as the United States entered into imperial rivalries with Germany, Russia, England, France, Japan, and particularly Spain, which seemed a threat to American interests in Cuba and the Philippine Islands. Spending money on forts or defense also did not interest the Quaker provincial government of Pennsylvania, created by land grant to William Penn in 1681. Barricading himself in the house with thirty-five supporters, Wilson prepared for a skirmish. Pennypacker Mills Camp | Fort Meconopacka | Between the end of the Civil War and the end of the nineteenth century, the Army periodically abandoned and then reopened the installation. Worsening relations between England and her North American colonies interrupted construction until 1775, as the Continental Congress met in Philadelphia and increasingly protested British taxation and trade policies. Fort DuPont built more barracks, a hospital, and warehouses to train and equip draftees and house troops and material destined to fight in the Great War. The new fort stood well below the Swedish forts and promised to stop Swedish ships entering the bay and river. Drought is one of the chief difficulties, but not the only one--for what the drought spares, the grasshoppers are apt to devour." See also PA state marker - James Wilson. This was a temporary Patriot encampment during the Whitemarsh Campaign - after the Battle of Germantown (October 1777) and before Valley Forge (December 1777). This is one of only six historic shot towers still in existence in the country (the others are located at Baltimore, MD, Wytheville, VA, Columbus, OH, Spring Green, WI, and Dubuque, IA). Closed in January 1918 after the Delaware River froze for the winter, rendering seaplane operations useless. Their rivalry led to construction of Fort Nassau, built in 1626 by the Dutch West India Company on the east bank of the Delaware (the future site of Gloucester City, New Jersey), and Fort Christina, built in 1638 by the New Sweden Company at the confluence of the Christina River and Brandywine Creek (the future site of Wilmington, Delaware). Fort Penn (2) was the main British work protecting the city from land attack. Work on Fort Scammel began in 1808, the same year Eastman was born in Brunswick, a small town about twenty-five miles northeast of Portland. The development of Fort DuPont and Fort Mott on the nearby coasts of, respectively, Delaware and New Jersey in the later nineteenth century made Fort Delaware part of a "defensive triangle" protecting the upper Delaware River from attack. Philadelphia Shot Tower | The new fort was a quadrangle, 864 by 544 feet, surrounded by a 10-foot-high stockade. Fort Gaines (1814 - 1820?) Cold War AAA Defenses of Philadelphia Camp Stanton (1863), located west of North Broad Street near Girard College. Fort Mifflin: The Fort That Saved America - Paoli Battlefield Although the Inspector General reported in 1872 that the post was "generally very healthy," in 1870 the Surgeon General had portrayed the area surrounding Fort Rice as being "generally sterile, and sparsely timbered and watered. The fort is no longer an active military installation, although it figured prominently in the early history of the area. Fort Mifflin of Philadelphia: An Illustrated History. (1777 - 1781), Philadelphia The prisoners taken at the Battle of Gettysburg were held here. Also known as Fort at Wicaco (2) or the Grand Battery. #1, located near Green and Oak Streets on the Delaware River. It was later used as a church until about 1700, when the Gloria Dei (Old Swedes) Church was built on the site at South Christopher Columbus Blvd. Printz Stockade | Fort Mifflin Lighthouse. Camp Meigs | Save America's Treasures funding was used to stabilize the walls and install new rafters, roof, and cupola. Montresor designed a small stone fort and began construction of a southern and eastern wall of the Mud Fort (later Fort Mifflin). When their occupation ended in 1783 the fortifications became known as Fort Richmond, the name of the local New York county. In 1868 the post was rebuilt; the original buildings were destroyed and new ones erected on their sites. Construction started on the initial Fort Delaware after the War of 1812, but it was never completed because of a fire in 1831. The Eastman Forts - U.S. Army Center of Military History Recommended Reviews Your trust is our top concern, so businesses can't pay to alter or remove their reviews. The structure depicted by Eastman is the third fort constructed on the same site with the same name. Local militia and Patriot troops were quartered here intermittently between late 1775 to mid 1777, and again after 1778. (Olde Fort Mifflin Historical Society) Located on a high bluff, it overlooks the Mackinac Straits connecting Lakes Huron and Michigan. Camp Camac Woods (1861), located at North 11th Street and Montgomery Ave., near present-day Temple University. See also The Seige of Fort Mifflin from US History.org || PA state marker African American slaves, many owned by Tousard, supplied the necessary labor. A PA state militia camp, originally known as Camp Marcus Hook. Learn more. By the mid-1700s Philadelphia was the largest and most important British port in North America. Ghosts of the Revolutionary War: Fort Mifflin - J.M. Plumbley While the fort eventually fell into British hands, the Amer The Army established a barracks on the north shore of the island in 1831, and in 1845 construction of Fort Zachary Taylor began on the southwest side, on a sandy shoal about 400 yards offshore. American Revolution Fort Mifflin - RevWarTalk Valley Forge Encampment The fort had a maximum prisoner capacity of only 250 and the most it housed at one time was 215. Fort Mifflin Lighthouse, Pennsylvania at Lighthousefriends.com With the end of the War of 1812, however, Fort Mackinac finally became permanent U.S. property in 1815. It was garrisoned by the provincial militia in 1758 to enforce a trade embargo. The Swedes had built a 30-by-20-foot stockade (aka Printz Stockade) in the immediate vicinity of the Dutch fort in 1648 to intimidate them. Camp McReynolds (1862), located near Ridge Road (Ave.) and Columbia Ave.. Admission fee. This map of Mud Island was drawn in 1788 and shows the incomplete walls of the fort, building locations, and the tidelands that cover part of the island. After a number of intermittent attempts to erect a permanent fort, Congress in 1847 appropriated $1 million to construct a permanent masonry fort on the site, and work began the following year. Also known as Battery on (W. Thomas) Davis' Pier. Numbered redoubts were (based on period street names and alignments): After the Civil War the U.S. Army returned and headquartered the Department of Dakota at the fort. Educational programs and activities have included camping trips, parades, and reenactment events that take inspiration from the long history of the fort, which was commissioned in 1771. (1777), Worcester At the time Eastman painted the fort, its reservation encompassed a little over two square miles, and it had a garrison of about forty enlisted men and four officers. Fort Mifflin Bar Cut Range, NJ - LighthouseFriends As the federal government moved to modernize and strengthen American seacoast defenses, the Philadelphia region gained additional fortification in 1896 with construction of a battery on Finns Point, Pennsville, Salem County, New Jersey. Stirling Redoubt | Camp Bloomfield | Fort Mifflin had three new wooden blockhouses, barracks, Officers' quarters, magazines, surrounded by a palisade. Site now located near the western approach of the Penrose Ave. Bridge. The United States Army began to rebuild the fort in 1794 and continued to garrison and build on the site through the 19th century. The site of a Revolutionary War siege and later a Civil War prison, Fort Mifflin (also known as Mud Island) is a National Historic Landmark with educational programming and visiting hours from. In 1775, recognizing the necessity of protecting harbors from British occupation, the General Assembly of Connecticut ordered fortifications prepared between the mouth of the river Thames and the town of New London. While the Patriot capital had fallen into enemy hands, Continental strongholds still surrounded the city, preventing British supply ships from reaching port. The historic St. George's United Methodist Church was built nearby (at 235 North Fourth Street) in 1769. Camp Anthony Wayne (3) | A Swedish mill protected by two blockhouses, located on the west side of the Schuylkill River, at a place the Indians called Kingsessing, a short distance north of Fort New Korsholm. Camp Chase The army decommissioned Fort Mifflin in 1962 and returned it to the City of Philadelphia. This historic house (1758) and farmstead served as part of the Patriot encampment area before and after the Battle of Germantown (Oct. 1777). GPO S/N: 008-029-00267-1 Whitemarsh Camp | and Pennsylvania Ave.. Tour America's History: Fort Mifflin - Blogger After the Confederate capture of Fort Sumter in the Charleston, South Carolina, harbor in 1861, the U.S. and Pennsylvania governments demanded the arming of Fort Delaware. The title of the painting places the fort in New Mexico, and during the fort's active service it was in New Mexico Territory. Fort Delaware is located in the Delaware River on Pea Patch Island about forty-two miles downstream from Philadelphia. #12, undetermined Tousard used government funds to buy material from Philadelphia merchants and hire local German, Irish, and English carpenters and bricklayers. The fort was built on a twelve-acre site on House Island at the mouth of Portland's harbor. An eight-gun Water Battery was also built. (1779), Philadelphia Taken over by the Army before April 1917, and was one of the first three Army Air Service training facilities prior to the U.S. entry into World War I (Langley Field in Hampton, Virginia and Rockwell Field in San Diego, California were the other two). Some colonists who remained in New Sweden were critical of Printz's leadership, and twenty-one eventually signed a petition accusing him of exceeding his powers as governor. Local residents constructed a fortified redoubt in 1748 near Wilmington, but the Quaker assembly in Philadelphia refused to raise money for the citys fortification. Darby Creek Battery | No trace remains of the 1777 British seige batteries and outworks. In addition to single-story buildings for soldiers and supplies, Fort Miles had four-story-high control towers constructed nearby to spot and determine the position of potential threats. Subscribe to the American Battlefield Trust's quarterly email series of curated stories for the curious-minded sort! #4, located on North Eighth Street between Noble and Buttonwood Streets. Harbor Defenses of the Delaware - Wikipedia No guns were ever mounted. The surviving structures and monuments and plaques served as reminders of the central role forts played in the earliest history of the Greater Philadelphia area. During the American Revolutionary War, the British Army bombarded and captured the fort as part of their conquest of Philadelphia in autumn 1777. Unfinished redoubt to cover road from Darby to Webb's Ferry. Originally two guns, later four guns. (1814), Trainer Europeans came to the Delaware Valley in the early 17th century, with the first settlements founded by the Dutch, who in 1623 built Fort Nassau on the Delaware River (which they called the South River, or Zuyd Rivier in Dutch) opposite its confluence with the Schuylkill River in what is now Brooklawn, New Jersey.Fort Nassau was a factorij or fortified trading post. Fort Mifflin housed prisoners during the American Civil War. During the Civil War it saw use primarily as a prison for Confederate soldiers. Fort Wicaco (1) | By 1875 the post included 4 company quarters, 7 buildings for officers, a hospital, a bakery, 5 storehouses, a library, a magazine, and a guardhouse. Located at 5 Haldeman Road. Fort Taylor now stands on Key West. Fort Wasa | #17 (aka Left Battery or Pest House Battery), located on Province Island at a wharf on Mingo Creek. Site of the greatest bombardment of the American Revolution, the Fort was reconstructed beginning in the late 18th century and in use until decommissioning in 1954. (1643 - 1655), Essington Jeffery M. Dorwart,Professor Emeritus of History, Rutgers University, is the author of histories of the Philadelphia Navy Yard; Fort Mifflin of Philadelphia; Naval Air Station Wildwood; Camden and Cape May Counties, New Jersey; Office of Naval Intelligence; Ferdinand Eberstadt and James Forrestal. He also is the co-author of Elizabeth Haddon Estaugh: Building ofthe Quaker Community of Haddonfield, New Jersey, 1701-1762 (Historical Society of Haddonfield, 2013). near Callowhill Street. Starforts.com: My Visit to Fort Mifflin Mud Island Fort | The fort burned down in 1645, but was rebuilt. New Sweden soon seized Fort Casimir, but had neither the resources nor manpower to construct and hold such a fort as aggressive New Netherland Director-General Peter Stuyvesant (1612-72) sent a thousand-man expedition up the Delaware in 1655 to retake the defensive works and bring an end to New Sweden. Fort Mifflin - Wikipedia Originally called Fort Island Battery, and also known as Mud Island Fort until construction was hastily finished in 1777 by Patriot forces. Established during the Sioux campaigns in 1864 on the western bank of the Missouri River, Fort Rice had a brief and uneventful life as an Army post. Lower Battery, a five-gun work located at the foot of Washington Ave. (Reed and Swanson Streets) to defend the docks against downriver attacks. Fort Gaines | The old fort was partially dismantled in 1904 but was restored from the original plans in 1930. when the British built more batteries and started cutting the fuses on their exploding projectiles and favoring the use of solid shot to level Mifflin's . The Army had first used the site as a base of operations in 1851. Defense of the region became necessary once again with the advent of the Civil War. The onset of the Civil War in 1861 caused the Army to abandon the installation, although it saw a flurry of activity when Kit Carson briefly occupied the fort in 1863. See also Harbor Defenses of the Delaware River on NEW JERSEY page 2, Fort Gaines The complex was sold for redevelopment in 1983. Rumored construction of a huge Confederate Navy ironclad warship particularly disturbed the region, and Fort Delaware needed to mount heavy smoothbore guns and floating mines to stop enemy ironclads from attacking Philadelphia. It remained an active Army post until 1946, when it was turned over to the Veterans Administration. Historic preservationists have restored the fort. Fort Muhlenberg | President Washington and his secretary of the treasury, Alexander Hamilton (1757-1804), pressed for rebuilding Fort Mifflin and constructing river defenses, particularly with the growing threat of French and British naval incursions in the Delaware during the wars of the French Revolution. When Eastman painted this scene, the installation at the top of the hill was known as Fort Tompkins and the fortification at the waterline was Fort Wadsworth. . The regained Dutch influence on the Delaware River was short-lived. Greater Pittsburgh - page 8 The American Battlefield Trust is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. Washington: Duff Green, 1834. British palisaded entrenchments and redoubts ran from the mouth of Conoquonoque Creek near Willow Street on the Delaware River, to the "Upper Ferry" on the Schuylkill River, running between present-day Spring Garden Street and Callowhill Street. Fort Mackinac takes it name from the island on which it stands. Fort Nya (New) Gottenburg Gulph Mills Encampment Pest House Battery | : University of Delaware Press, 2008. 1 Rev War | Battlefield Red Bank National Park, NJ 2 Rev War | Fort Fort Mercer National Park, NJ 3 Civil War | Cemetery The Woodlands Cemetery Philadelphia, PA 4 Civil War | Historic Site Months of debate over whether Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, or the Continental Congress, should select sites and pay for defensive works along the river reached a critical stage after the American Declaration of Independence. (Fort Washington State Park) The new post-WWII complex evolved into the Defense Supply Center - Philadelphia, serving all branches of the military. Fort Nya (New) Korsholm Camp Union (1) (1861), located north of Ridge Road (Ave.) near Queen's Lane. Siege of Fort Mifflin - American Battlefield Trust Fort Wilson (2) Surrounded by rebel forces from the north, east and west, his troops were in desperate need of suppliesgunpowder, clothing, food, and munitions. In 1870, for example, the Surgeon General reported that the quarters "are not in good condition" and that "the fort is occupied only by a guard." The small amount of usable land prevented farmers or other commercial businesses from using the island, but the Pennsylvania Assembly and the British military saw Mud Island as a decent location for defense fortifications.