In May 1757 Colonel‑Commandant John Stanwix led five companies of his first battalion of the Royal American Regiment to Carlisle. He also took over command of the colonial forces of Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia, all of whom were hard‑pressed by attacks of pro‑French Indians. His senior subordinates were colonels George Washington of Virginia and John Armstrong of Pennsylvania. In addition to sending out parties of his regulars on ranging service, Stanwix was obliged to pursue deserters and hang many, cosset Catawba and Cherokee Indian mercenaries, and begin construction of an ambitious "camp of continuence" near Carlisle.1 He could not know that his project would be relocated two centuries later.
The high command of the British army had allocated a single battalion of regular troops for defense of the southern south of the Delaware River department. Half of the Stanwix battalion was shipped to Carolina under command of Lt. Col. Henry Bouquet; Stanwix's five companies were posted "in the neighborhood of Carlisle as a middle station, from whence he can distribute his
orders and be in a situation to support either Fort Cumberland Maryland, Fort Augusta at Shamokin modern Sunbury, or to support Philadelphia, if it is attacked by sea."2 This was a minor peripheral campaign in a war that was almost forgotten until the 1850s when the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania began publishing its Pennsylvania Archives and Colonial Records.
Here is what the contemporary record tells us about Stanwix's "Camp near Carlisle":
John Stanwix, 20 June 1757:3
I am throwing up some works around our camp, and if it will have no other use, keeps
our soldiers properly employed, tho' I apprehend I have undertaken too much; but as it
is supposed to be a camp of continuence, either now or hereafter, I could not make the
lines less.
John Armstrong, 30 June 1757:4
Tomorrow we begin to haul the stones for the building of a meeting house on the north
side of the square, there was no other convenient place: I have avoided the place you
once pitched for a church. The stones are raised out of Col Stanwix's entrenchment; we
will want help to this political as well as religious work.
Armstrong, 30 June 1757:5
Colonel Stanwix has begun and continues his Intrenchments on the North East part
of this town, and just adjoining to it. The town was then limited to its original bounds
of North, East, South, and West Streets.
Stanwix, 25 July 1757:6
Am at work at my retrenchments, but as I send out such large & frequent parties, with
other necessary dutys, can only spare about seventy working men a day, & these have
been very often interupted by frequent & violent gusts, so that we make but a small
figure yet, & the first month was taken up in clearing the ground, which was all full of
monstrous stumps, etc. Have built a hut in camp, where the capts & I live together, &
as you have promised to come this way about August, shall be glad you would see how
we make out.
Armstrong, 17 Sep 1757:7
...the Colonel is forming a large entrenchment, not far from Brandon's tavern ‑‑ I
have not seen it near thirty days past but believe they make a good progress considering
the Rock. The Colo. is a gentleman, quick in his sentiments, motions & expressions,
full of equity and justice, carrying his command, as much as possible can be expected
clear of any opposition to the subject. There is among his officers a number of well
bred genteel men and I'm well persuaded, Fond of doing the King's business & that
without delay.
In September Stanwix reported his progress to his superior, General the Earl of Loudoun:8
...in regard to our works we are throwing up here which if finished will certainly make
a very useful station on the vast borders of this country, and not cost a great deal of
money and will contain between a thousand and fifteen hundred men to encamp
commodiously here and water very near, but what I proposed to do this campaign with
the five companies was to finish what will cover the rear the right and left of our camp,
which your Lordship may observe by the enclosed plan of Lt Basset's only penciled out.
The plan is very strange. Like almost all military plans of the time, it is intended to guide construction, and reveals no relationship to any other landmarks. It depicts a huge oblong 250 yards long with a saw-tooth perimeter. Within are four wide bars representing four companies of soldiers, straddled by two narrow bars representing the elite grenadier company divided and posted as flankers. Notations of the tents for officers are at the heads of companies, and a single indication of the tent or hut of the commanding officer.9
The facility was usually described as an "entrenchment" or a "breastwork." because a surrounding seven feet deep ditch was dug and the dirt piled on a wall about breast high so an infantryman could fire over it. No bastions or strong points. No artillery. Many modestly fortified temporary posts were built in America for short‑term protection of "the communication" supply line in that war, but none so elaborate.
Just as odd was the effort itself. Stanwix was not ordered to build the camp. Perhaps he merely enjoyed building projects. In 1758 he built Fort Stanwix on the Mohawk at modern Rome, and in 1759 he began Fort Pitt on the Ohio at modern Pittsburgh. And perhaps he found such efforts lucrative.10
In September the Carlisle garrison was joined by seven companies of the 2nd battalion of the Royal American Regiment/60th Foot under Lt. Col. Frederick Haldimand.11 On his way to Carlisle Haldimand performed a service for the high command by criticizing barracks being built in Philadelphia. Quartering of the king's troops was an on‑going hassle in the colonies. During the previous winter there had been a nasty quarrel with Lord Loudoun, the commander‑in‑chief, threatening Philadelphia if proper billets were not provided. So the Pennsylvania government began constructing barracks just north of the then‑city. The equivalent of 1000 Spanish silver dollars was authorized for the facility. Cronies of Benjamin Franklin got the contract. They seem not to have consulted with military officers about the preferred accommodations of a barracks. Haldimand had better ideas, and the engineer Lt. Elias Meyer advised. The Philadelphia Barracks served the British regulars until 1775, and housed sundry revolutionary units until it was abandoned in 1786. However, the original printed sources merely wrote "Barracks", and careless readers jumped to the assumption that was the same place as the Carlisle camp. A few pages later clearly noted "the Barracks at Philadelphia."12
John Stanwix (pronounced "sten‑icks") was an older man (b. 1693), definitely a political officer and possessed of an agreeable manner. He certainly charmed John Armstrong, commander of the Pennsylvania forces west of the Susquehanna. Obviously through Armstrong's local influence, in October Stanwix was elected to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives. By an extraordinary coincidence, Stanwix was from Carlisle, Cumberland County, England. He had been mayor of Carlisle, military governor of Carlisle, and Member of Parliament for Carlisle. He did not take his assembly seat, and it is easy to understand why: Both of his field grade officers were in South Carolina; his senior captain was a German baron in America for only a year; Stanwix had to remain with his troops.13
Stanwix's last word on his camp:14
…in a few days I shall finish all the works I proposed this campaign and shall leave them in such a situation that Colonel Armstrong will easily preserve them. They have been the labors of five months.
At the end of November all of the regulars were withdrawn from Carlisle to winter quarters: Stanwix's to Lancaster; and 2/60 to Reading, York, and Annapolis, Maryland.15 Nothing suggests that the entrenchment was developed. It is not mentioned in the papers of Stanwix' successor General John Forbes, nor of Forbes' second in command Henry Bouquet, nor in Stanwix's return to command in Pennsylvania in 1759. From 1758 to 1764 Carlisle was the forward base for five British expeditions westward, and was a post on the communication to Fort Pitt until that was abandoned in 1772. The Stanwix camp is not noticed in wartime sources. This should not surprise us, because of a lack of mention of the forts at Carlisle and Shippensburg; nor is there evidence of similar posts on the communications north and west of Albany in New York.
All that has been found is a 1762 report by the engineer William Eyre who was sent from New York to examine flood damage at Fort Pitt: "I forgot to observe there is a breastwork thrown up at Carlisle of Earth, but its now almost in ruins." And in 1768 a court case mentioned contraband "found in a hollow log near the Breastworks."16
An 1841 source says that "breastworks were erected a little north east of the town...some remains of which still exist," but this is mixed in with notorious forgeries of the lawyer Redmond Conyngham, and must be disregarded.17
In 1863 James Hamilton, the founder of the Hamilton Library, wrote memoirs of his youth, remarking "At my earliest recollections I think there was....remains of fortifications at the corner of Bedford and North Streets." "On the commons North East part of the town the remains of fortifications were extant which I can just remember." Hamilton was born in 1793, so the breastworks were still visible circa 1800.18
That is not unusual. Earthwork structures can be very long‑lasting. The outlines of Fort Edward on the upper Hudson River, built 1756, remain visible. Conversely, earthworks are easily demolished with shovels. This writer has been over the ground north east of Bedford and East North Streets, and been unable to detect any plausible contours. Perhaps a more skilled eye and surveyors' instruments would do better.
What might confuse modern readers is the convention of 18th century letters of identifying the location the letter was written at the top of the letter‑‑the city, town, or fort. Military letters would often be from "Camp at...", "Camp near..." which did not record a specific place but vicinity. Wherever a military unit encamped was "a camp".
For the 1758, 1759, and 1760 campaigns, thousands of troops were assembled near Carlisle, far more than could have been accommodated in the Stanwix camp. Thus Captain James Young, the paymaster of the Pennsylvanians: "if you go to Carlisle before me you will consider where you & I shall encamp and save ground for me evidently next page lost.19
Now let us backtrack to 1777 when the Continental Congress decreed an arsenal at Carlisle because it was inland and safe from British seaborne attack. This installation was variously called "the Public Works", "Washington", "Washingtonburg." It included a "laboratory" factory, a school for artillery "artificers" skilled mechanics, and a unit of guards. Several brick buildings were erected. It may be that a magazine constructed by German prisoners of war "Hessians" survives from the period. After the victory, the U.S. government was flat broke and everything had to be shut down. Some discussion of the deteriorating structures being taken over by the infant Dickinson College came to naught.20
This writer has been unable to locate the Public Works exactly. Obviously, the risk of explosion of munitions debarred placing it in the town. Several travelers report it visible to the east of the road from Harrisburg. And there is some indication of people crossing the Letort Spring to get to the town, but that may be related to a separate supply depot in Carlisle. It can only be written that nothing on the record contradicts the placement of the Public Works at the site of the later barracks.21
In 1801, the U.S. government bought the property from the Penn family and the "Carlisle Barracks" name is first seen in 1807. Most of the modern military property was acquired much later. The original was of 30 acres, entirely on the east side of the Letort Spring Run, being the southern end of the post from modern Upton Hall down. Access was via Garrison Lane from East North St.22
A sampling of local historians show that they were usually exact in writing that the Stanwix camp was only near to the site of the subsequent barracks; e.g., in 1904 John B. Landis wrote that the camp was at the Carlisle shoe factory, just east of Bedford St.23 Even the Reverend Conway Wing had it right. The correct distance from the Stanwix camp to the present barracks is one‑half mile.
Military writers have not been so careful. Thus in 1932:
A military station serving as an outpost and replenishing depot for expeditions to
western western Pennsylvania occupied the present site for sic Carlisle Barracks
before the Revolutionary War.24
Writing in the mid‑1930s, Lt. Paul E. Zuver of the Barracks' Medical Field Service School contrived an enclosure reaching from the bogus Fort Lowther in the center square of the borough to the upper end of the modern barracks, crossing the Letort Spring twice.
In July or August the entrenchments were extended across the creek and joined to two
fortified storehouses built by the commissaries of General Braddock in 1755. The
original entrenchments were then abandoned at the insistence of members of the
Provincial Assembly and workmen were hired to complete the new camp on the site
of the present reservation.
The entrenchments ran from the creek on the west for nearly six hundred yards along
the ridge through the edge of the woods. In front of them was a fosse or a ditch some
four feet in depth with sharpened stakes set in it. For at least part of the length of the
breastworks a log stockade was erected to a height of ten feet with blockhouses
containing small brass field pieces at either end. At the western end of the camp was
a log barracks 40 x 125 feet set on a stone foundation and divided in the center to
accommodate two groups of thirty‑four men.
During Pontiac's War at least one other barracks and a Grand Magazine were built.25
All the above are fantasies.
Somewhat less imaginative was Lt. Col. Thomas G. Tousey, whose 1939 Military History of Carlisle and Carlisle Barracks is now the authoritative reference. While he did yeoman work on the more recent history from U.S. government sources, his treatment of colonial events is quite muddled. Never mind the several minor factual errors; these are glaring: regulars at Carlisle in March 1755; Stanwix led Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia troops to Carlisle in 1757; Stanwix was supposed to advance to the Ohio; the king was displeased with Stanwix; Carlisle was the westernmost British strongpoint; General Forbes built barracks in the Carlisle fort; "an old English armory near the town." Although he does not mention Zuver, Tousey appears to have been influenced by him: "Stanwix delayed his march to the westward and began the construction of a series of entrenchments near Carlisle (now Carlisle Barracks) for its defense."26
Tousey was unaware of the copies of the Bouquet papers in the Public Archives of Canada and of the original Loudoun papers in the Huntington Library in California, not to mention the near‑flawless research of the superb historian Stanley McC. Pargellis.27
Sometime between 1944 and 1953 someone in authority at the Carlisle Barracks was persuaded to apply historical labels to the reservation, evidently relying on Tousey‑‑streets were named for Bouquet, Thomas Butler, Benjamin Flower, and Forbes; Black Watch and Royal American Circles, both with incorrect signs; a building named in honor of Capt. Isaac Coren, who was cashiered in 1780 for skullduggery. (And probably was the sergeant of the Royal Artillery involved in a theft at Ft Pitt during the previous war.)28
By the mid‑1990s the legendary history was established and improved in the pamphlet "Historic Carlisle Barracks". The school for artillery artificers is elevated to an artillery school. The site of the deputy‑commandant's quarters "is thought to have been the headquarters for Colonel John Stanwix". i.e., the hut mentioned above.
The fundamental mistake is baldly stated: "Founded by Colonel John Stanwix of the British Army on May 30, 1757, Carlisle Barracks has..."
Once historical error is established, it is nearly impossible to root it out.