Note 3 — CHRONICLES OF BORDER WARFARE (continued 4)

The first fort at Wheeling was built in the summer of 1774, by order of Lord Dunmore, under direction of Majors William Crawford and Angus McDonald. It stood upon the Ohio bank about a quarter of a mile above the entrance of Wheeling Creek. Standing in open ground, it was a parallelogram of square pickets pointed at top, with bastions and sentry boxes at the angles, and enclosed over half an acre. It ranked in strength and importance, next to Fort Pitt. Within the fort were log barracks, an officers’ house, a storehouse, a well, and cabins for families. A steep hill rises not far inland; between the fort and the base of this hill the forest had been leveled, and a few log cabins were nestled in the open. Such was Wheeling in 1777. At first the fort had been called Fincastle, for the Ohio Valley settlements were then in Fincastle County, Va.; but upon the opening of the Revolution the post, now in Ohio County, was named Fort Henry, in honor of the first state governor of Virginia.––R. G. T.