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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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
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.
"Given to poetry, confining his wit & genius to satire of local characters. These he would sing to very appreciative audiences.”
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 24th 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.
Readmore's Hallmark stores in Lima, Ohio (E. Elm st., Eastgate and Flanders ave.
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.
