Page:Historical and Biographical Annals of Columbia and Montour Counties, Pennsylvania, Containing a Concise History of the Two Counties and a Genealogical and Biographical Record of Representative Families.djvu/40

COLUMBIA AND MONTOUR COUNTIES town of Bloomsburg, on the Bloomsburg & Sullivan railroad, in Scott township, near the site of the Paper Mill. It was built of logs and surrounded by a stockade sufficiently large to accommodate the families of the neighbor¬ hood. They had hardly completed the fort before the Indians arrived and attacked it, but the defenders soon put them to flight.

Van Campen made this fort his headquarters when not engaged in scouting. One of the attractions to him was the daughter of Wheeler, for whose hand Van Campen and Col. Joseph Salmon, another scout, were rivals. Salmon finally married the girl. Van Campen's father also for a time lived near the fort.

Fort Wheeler was the only one of the long line of defenses in this section of the State that was never abandoned or destroyed by hostile hands. Time alone did the work of disintegration. Peter Mclick, one of the committee of safety for Wyoming township, lived near here. The old graveyard where the soldiers were buried is still recognizable, and the spring that supplied the fort with water is still running. The land is now owned by the Creveling family. John Crawford, grandfather of Joseph Crawford, an old citizen of Orangeville, was the second child born in this section, his birth taking place inside the stockade of the fort soon after its completion. in 1778. No vestiges of the fort are now to be seen, but the site is known to most of the residents of that section.

FORT McCLURE

At the time of the destruction of Fort Jenkins there was a line of forts reaching from the West Branch to the North Branch of the Susquehanna, comprising Forts Muncy, Freeland. Montgomery. Bosley's Mills, Wheeler and Jenkins. The loss of the latter fort left the right flank exposed to the marauders, so on Van Campen’s return from captivity he stockaded the home of Mrs. James McClure, on the bank of the Susquehanna, one mile above the mouth of Fishing creek, and on the later site of the house of Douglas Hughes, below Bloomsburg. This fortification took the name of Fort McClure, and became the headquarters for stores and expeditions as long as the defense of the frontier was necessary. This fort was never seriously attacked, though the near residents often fled to it for security, it was never more than a stockade and further fortifications were not built. A residence now stands on the site. A marker has been placed here by the Fort McClure Chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution, Bloomsburg.

FORT BOSLEY

This only fortified work in Montour county was really the stockaded stone mill of a Mr. Bosley, in the forks of the Chillisquaque, at Washingtonville. Derry township. The mill was built in 1773, stockaded in 1777. When the Indians became troublesome it was garrisoned by about twenty men and became a place of importance in the lines of defense. Captain Kemplon was in command here in 1780, and assisted in repelling many attacks of the savages.

The site of the old mill is easily recognizable by the race and dam at the lower end of the town of to-day. The headrace has been continued across the road, and the old dam site has been used as a location for the more modern mill of Snyder Brothers.

The land on which the fort or mill stood was the property in past years of Jacob Hartman and Jesse Umstead.