An Average Day at Fort Amanda - Inventories and British Visitor

 

A Day in the Life of a Ft. Amanda Soldier  

While visitors to the Ft. Amanda park today will find a peaceful, serene place, a lovely spot to picnic or just enjoy nature, in 1813 it was anything but.  The area was a hustling bustling, noisy and rather unpleasant smelling place.

A bronze plaque on the obelisk shows a stylized version of a typical square shaped frontier fort with 4 blockhouses, in reality, Fort Amanda was rectangular shaped, enclosing an area of approx. 64,000 sq. ft (1 1/2 acres) and there were 5 blockhouses not 4.  

In addition, there were sheds for storage, corrals for horses, cattle, hogs and oxen, a gunpowder storage area, a boat building area across the river, a 19th century version of an army PX (commissary) and buildings that at one time held several thousand pounds of bacon and 9,000 gallons of whiskey.      

The Johnson Theory:  The area surrounding the monument has long been accepted as the original "footprint" of the fort however my theory suggests that the southeast end of the fort may actually have been a few feet south of the obelisk and extended 320 feet to the northwest, or approx. 200 feet into the adjacent field.   I'll be posting more about this at a later date.    

The Men  of Fort Amanda

 On Feb. 28, 1813, Captain Thompson Ward, of the Kentucky militia turned over command of Ft. Amanda to Captain Daniel Hosbrook, commander of a company of Ohio militia troops from Hamilton and Clermont counties.   Census records and letters show that some of the men were neighbors and even relatives.  Many had immigrated from New Jersey and Maryland.  The average age of the officers (Hosbrook, Davis and Schillinger) was 30.  The average age of the enlisted men was  26 and ranged from age 17 to 50   There were 3 teenagers in the company; John Hamilton, James Warbington, and John Landon.

  Formality

In today’s military, there is a definite hierarchy and chain of command between enlisted men and women and their officers with fraternization between the two, often frowned upon.  The same appears to have been the case at Fort Amanda.    Schillinger, the officer who kept a daily journal at Amanda was neighbors with at least one of the men yet he referred to him and others as “Mr.” or simply “one of the men.”   He rarely used first names.  He referred to his fellow officers by their rank and last names; i.e. Lieutenant Davis and Captain Hosbrook. 

 The Fort Amanda facility itself was a formal structured, sophisticated, well managed and disciplined military installation. Like todays military, documentation is required for almost everything and the same was true at the fort. Ensign Schillinger's civilian job was township clerk for Columbia township in Hamilton County so he was the logical choice for managing the accounting system at Amanda. He was responsible for preparing "returns;" documentation showing the number of meals distributed by which group on a given day, and where men were assigned that day. The pic below is of one of Schillinger's "returns" showing the Captain received 3 meal rations par day, the Lieutenant and Ensign 2 each and the private soldiers 1 ration per day. Every type of transaction was recorded. Military related correspondence between the officers and non-commissioned officers was also formal and in writing.

Mornings

At Fort Amanda the day began at sunrise.  Unlike Ft. St. Marys where the morning wakeup call or reveille was the firing of a small cannon, at Amanda it was probably a drum roll performed by Pvt. Lewis Bayle, company drummer.  The men lined up and a roll call taken to see if anyone had deserted during the night or if anyone was too sick to work that day.  The men were given their allotted rations for the day and work assignments and after breakfast, weather permitting, they practiced marching in different formations.  Following that they dispersed to their work assignment. 

 Typical Work Assignments

1.   Keeping the place clean.  Hygene and cleanliness were major concerns in the frontier forts, not only for appearance sake but to prevent the spread of diseases.  Each day a group was assigned to do general policing (cleanup) around the fort and included things like covering sinks (latrines/toilets), digging new ones (yes there were military specs on where to place them), disposing of animal carcasses and general cleanup.

2.   Construction work:  With increased war activities to the north, additional storage space was needed at Amanda so in addition to expanding the size of the fort the men also needed to build a smokehouse add a 5th blockhouse and build additional storage sheds.  

 

3. Ammunition:  One thing an army could never have enough of is ammunition.  In 1813 the "bullets" were called "cartridges."   A cartridge consisted of a paper tube filled with gunpowder and a lead ball.  It was tied off at both ends and when needed, a man simply chewed the end off the end of the tube, dumped the gunpowder and ball down into the barrel of the rifle. When men weren't doing other work around the fort, they were put to work making cartridges. 

A side note:  A man could be exempted from military service in 1812 if he had few front teeth.  In a battle situation, a soldier needed to be able to chew off the powder end of the cartridge so he could dump the powder and ball down into the musket.  Without front teeth that could have been difficult as well as a danger to his comrades.

4.   Slaughter house:  Beef cows and pigs were herded to Ft. Amanda on foot (to save money) usually in large droves.  There they were slaughtered, the meat smoked then placed in barrels for shipment.  Beef was the meat of choice during the summer months and pork during the winter.  One of the first assignment for Hosbrook's men was to get rid of animal carcasses left over from butchering that were strewn along the river bank. 

5.   Firewood:  Every morning, teams of men were sent into nearby woods to gathering and cutting firewood.  Enormous amounts of wood was needed for construction projects as well as for cooking fires and to heat the blockhouses and cabins.

6.  Blockhouse.:  There were 5 blockhouses at Amanda, each manned by sentries 24 hours a day. A fifth blockhouse called the "Picket blockhouse" was added in the middle of March 1813 and indications are it served not only as a sentry station but possibly the forts commissary store managed by a man named "Picket."

7.  Supply Depot:  

  

Supplies being shipped north on the Auglaize were brought to and stored at Amanda then dispensed as needed.  The chart below, shows the inventory at Fort Amanda in July of 1813. 

400 barrels of flour

20 barrels of biscuits

69 barrels of whiskey (3000 gal.)

45 barrels of salt

110,000 pounds of bacon (yes, 55 tons of bacon)

14 boxes of soap  

22 boxes of candles. 

 8.  Boat Construction:  When needed, men from Amanda went across the river to work with civilian contractors building boats.  Large numbers and various types of watercraft were built there in 1813.   

 9. Deliveries:  As orders came in for supplies needed at forts Jennings, Brown or Winchester, men at Amanda loaded the supplies into pirogues (canoes) or on large rafts and delivered the materials to  them.  

Meals

Indications are that the officers ate their meals separately from the private soldiers.  Schillinger used the term "our cook" 4 times in his journal.  For a time I had assumed that one of the private soldiers was designated as the cook for their group, but the following excerpts have caused me to rethink that.  

Mar. 6 - "This evening, our cook being sick, I had to cook supper,

Mar. 27 - "I went out with our cook to get a Broom stick." 

Apr. 7 -  "This morning our cook in company with an Indian went out hunting and kill,d five turkeys"  

July 6 -  "this morning our cook kill,d A fawn 12 oclock."

To add some variety to their meals, Schillinger often went into the woods to hunt for deer, rabbits, pheasants and turkey.  He tells us that  the men also fished in the Auglaize and would sometimes purchase fruits and vegetables from the Indians in Wapak.  While he doesn't specifically mention chickens, it wouldn't have been uncommon to see chickens running loose around the fort.   They were a good food source and by letting them roam for their own food they needed little attention.  They may also have been a number of small gardens for fresh vegetables.

Sentry Duty

As mentioned earlier, there were 5 blockhouses at Fort Amanda.  Schillinger tells us that on at least 2 occasions, sentries spotted and fired on Indians near the fort.  On March 8 he wrote:  

 Receiv,d intelligence this evening By Mr. Oliver, Express to Gen’l Harrison that the Shawonoes, had Discover,d 5  Potawatimies skulking in the woods between our fort & Wapukanati the Indian town 8 miles above on the river

Two months later on May 8th he wrote:   

Saturday the 8 1813

Cloudy Drizley weather, at 4 A.M. one of our Centinels Discovered 2 Indians approaching the fort fired at them but miss,d.  The Lieut & myself & one Man went Down the River about 6 miles to see what Discoveries we could make of Indians  found some fresh Signs of 2 or 3  returned to fort and went out in the evening and & killed some pigeons

 As for the sentry schedules, I've yet to figure them out but using post 5 for example, my thought is this. 

 On this date (Apr,. 17, 1813) James Dougherty was sentry at post 5 from 6 pm to 10 pm.  He was relieved by William Patterson at 10 pm who then manned post 5 until 4 am. Notice how

 John Hamilton's schedule overlaps both (8 pm until 2 am).  Could it be that hours between 8 and 2 were considered the hours in which the fort was most vulnerable to danger and the men on the 8 to 2 schedule "floated between the other 2" as an extra pair of eyes and to ensure that everyone was awake and alert.   Just a thought.  

Discipline

Depending on locations and situations, sleeping on sentry duty could result in execution by firing squad. It wasn't that severe at Amanda.  On April 16, 1813, Sergeant Bradbury caught John Hamilton asleep at Post 5.  He arrested him had him taken to a cabin in the fort for confinement.  The following morning Bradbury sent the following report of the incident to Ensign Schillinger, then the acting commander of the fort 

 Hamilton was in the "Ft. Amanda jail" for 3 days.  Three days later, Sergeant Swing caught 29-year-old Pvt. Archibald Job sleeping on sentry duty and arrested him.  Like Hamilton, he was released 3 days later.   

A Face From The Past

Another sentry on duty that night was 20-year-old Pvt. George Bowman, sentry on post 3.   The picture below is of Bowman taken in 1865 when he was 72 years old.  

   

The face of a man who meant business

One particularly colorful character in the company was 50 year old John  Burrows (Burris)who  friends described the 6 ft. 5" tall Burris was described by acquantainces as:

 "Given to poetry, confining his wit & genius to satire of local characters. These he would sing to very appreciative audiences.”

On March 5, Schillinger wrote that private J. Burrow (Burris) had deserted.  I'm still working on this.

The British Come to Fort Amanda

 

 The second and last attempt by the British to capture Fort Meigs (Perrysburg, Oh.) officially began on July 21, 1813.  After 2 unsuccessful attempts, at least one man must have decided that he had enough. On July 24th, 3 days after the siege began, a British deserter arrived at the gate of Fort Amanda. Whether he'd officially surrendered somewhere between Meigs and Amanda is unknown, but its highly unlikely that he passed through forts Winchester, Brown and Jennings and dozens of American soldiers along the way without having some kind of proof that he's surrendered.  That proof may have been a document called a "parole." 

Parole

During the War, it was to little advantage for armies to keep large numbers of prisoners.  Afterall prisoners needed to be guarded, fed and sheltered and those all required manpower.  One solution was once a battle was over, and the high value targets (high ranking officers) separated out, soldiers could sign a document in which they agreed to go home and not take up arms against them for the remainder of the war.   Not a gentleman's agreement or honor system because if a man  was found to have violated those conditions he could be executed on the spot.    

Consider this.  It's roughly 115 land miles from Ft. Amanda to Ft. Meigs.  We know the British soldier arrived at Amanda on the afternoon of July 24th.  If the man deserted on the first day of the  siege at Ft. Meigs (July 21) that would mean he had just traveled 115 miles in 3 days an average of 38 miles per day.   That's impressive.   

A Non-Event?

The following is Schillinger's journal entry for the day the British soldier came to Ft. Amanda.

Saturday the 24^th July

Clear & warm, sent one of our Men after the Doctor,  Capt Benagh being very sick,  went out hunting this afternoon  Kill,d nothing but a coon  One of the Brittish Deserters came to fort this evening.

  There are 2 things that I found interesting in this entry; 1) the way it's written gives the impression that to him (Schillinger), the incident was a non-event, in fact he never mentions it again.  And 2), notice the words, "One of the Brittish Deserters," and the word "one of."  Was Schillinger saying simply that he had heard that several British deserted at Meigs OR was he saying that this soldiers was the first of many expected to come to Amanda.   We'll may never know.

Did Schillinger Talk With the Deserter?

Quite possibly.  In 1813 Captain Sebree of the Kentucky militia drew a map of Fort Meigs (The Sebree map).   Keep in mind Schillinger had never been to Fort Meigs yet on the same day the British deserter arrives at Fort Amanda Schillinger makes a sketch in his journal that closely resembles the Ft Meigs drawn on Sebree's map.   In other words, the only way Schillinger could draw a map of Ft. Meigs is if someone described it to him and my thought is the person who did that was the British soldier.

 

 

 At Days End, No Shortage of Entertainment

Schillinger, a staunch Presbyterian, spent most of his evenings in his cabin writing letters to his wife Alasanna.   As for the other soldiers, they probably spent their evenings sitting around campfires laughing, telling stories and enjoying the music of the company musicians; Lewis Bayley, a drummer and Robert Ross, who played the fife.   

 

                                          Lewis Bayley

Add to that a ration of whisky or rum and for at least a brief period of time, the men could, at least temporarily, forget about the dangers of the war that surrounded them and the melancholy feeling of being a long way from home. 

 

**********************************************************

f you would like learn more about Fort Amanda and the men who passed through or were stationed there or the wives and mothers who "kept the home fires burning" these books can be purchased locally, on the net or by contacting me at djohnson43@att.net

     

                 $20                                                              $15

Available at;
Readmore's Hallmark stores in Lima, Ohio (E. Elm st., Eastgate and Flanders ave.

Casa Chic (109 W. Auglaize st)  in Wapakoneta, Ohio

The Allen County Museum (620 W. Market st) in Lima, Ohio 

Amazon.com 

If you'd like a signed copy email me at djohnson43@att.net and I'll send you the details.

If you're looking for a speaker related to this subject for  your group, simply email me at djohnson43@tt.net. I do not charge speaking fees.