Fort Pitt (Pennsylvania)
Virginia colonial protection of this area ultimately led to the development of Pittsburgh and Allegheny County, Pennsylvania by British-American colonists and immigrants.
French Colonel de Lignery ordered Fort Duquesne destroyed and abandoned at the approach of General John Forbes' expedition in late November.
[4] The late October Treaty of Easton with several Native tribes involved in the war largely dissolved the alliance that had enabled French military dominance in the region.
Chiefs of 13 American Indian nations agreed to negotiate peace with the colonial governments of Pennsylvania and New Jersey and to abandon any alliances with the French.
From prisoners captured during Maj. James Grant’s catastrophic attack on Fort Duquesne, de Lignery was reportedly surprised to learn of a fortified encampment of British troops only 50 miles away at Ligonier, Pennsylvania, with substantial reserves behind.
He was also certainly cognizant of the British lightning raid on the Native village of Kittanning (40 miles north on the Allegheny River) two years earlier.
It was built in the popular pentagram shape, with bastions at the star points, by Captain Harry Gordon, a British Engineer in the 60th Royal American Regiment.
In negotiations during the siege, Captain Simeon Ecuyer, a Swiss mercenary and the commander of Fort Pitt, gave two Delaware emissaries blankets that had been exposed to smallpox.
The effectiveness of these attempts to spread the disease are unknown, although it is known that the method used is inefficient compared to respiratory transmission, and it is difficult to differentiate from naturally occurring epidemics resulting from previous contacts with colonists.
[7][8] During and after Pontiac's War, epidemics of smallpox among Native Americans devastated the tribes of Ohio Valley and the Great Lakes areas.
In 1772, after Pontiac's War, the British commander at Fort Pitt sold the building to two colonists, William Thompson and Alexander Ross.
A redoubt, a small brick outbuilding called the Blockhouse, survives in Point State Park as the sole remnant of Fort Pitt.
Fort Pitt Foundry was an important armaments manufacturing center for the Federal government during the Civil War, under the charge of William Metcalf.
