Forcible Possession Of Fort Pitt

Map From Inside Book Cover

The Tories of the Upper Ohio,  By Wilbur Henry Siebert:


"...Fort Pitt did not become a permanent center of Tory and Indian operations against the neighboring settlements during the Revolutionary War. This was due, however, to the prompt action of the frontiersmen of the upper Ohio rather than to the absence of Tory leadership at Pittsburgh. Lord Dunmore of Virginia, like other provincial governors, was a firm adherent of the Crown and happened to be actively concerned in the early seventeen seventies about affairs at Pittsburg on account of the boundary dispute between his colony and Pennsylvania. In order to settle his dispute, he determined to take forcible possession of Fort Pitt and sent Doctor John Connolly, captain, commandant of the militia of that region, to carry his plan into effect. At the end of January, 1774, Connolly, with about 80 militiamen, seized the fort and usurped the entire government of Pennsylvania in and about that place."