Fort Pleasant — formerly known as Fort Van Meter and Town Fort and still also known as the Isaac Van Meter House — is a historic site located near the

unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a region that is not governed by a local municipal corporation. Widespread unincorporated communities and areas are a distinguishing feature of the United States and Canada. Most other countries of the world either have ...

of Old Fields about 5 miles north of Moorefield in

Hardy County, West Virginia Hardy County is a county in the U.S. state of West Virginia. As of the 2020 census, the population was 14,299. Its county seat is Moorefield. The county was created from Hampshire County in 1786 and named for Samuel Hardy, a distinguished V ...

, U.S. Situated on the

South Branch Potomac River The South Branch Potomac River has its headwaters in northwestern Highland County, Virginia near Hightown along the eastern edge of the Allegheny Front. After a river distance of ,U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolu ...

, a young Colonel

George Washington George Washington (February 22, 1732, 1799) was an American military officer, statesman, and Founding Father who served as the first president of the United States from 1789 to 1797. Appointed by the Continental Congress as commander of th ...

directed a fortification to be built here in 1756 during the escalating hostilities with Native Americans and French known as the

French and Indian War The French and Indian War (1754–1763) was a theater of the Seven Years' War, which pitted the North American colonies of the British Empire against those of the French, each side being supported by various Native American tribes. At the ...

. The fierce skirmish known as the

Battle of the Trough The Battle of the Trough (March or April 1756) was a skirmish of the early French and Indian War (1754–63) fought between Native Americans and Anglo-American settlers in the valley of the South Branch Potomac River in what is now northern Har ...

occurred about a mile and a half away the same year. The existing

Federal style Federal-style architecture is the name for the classicizing architecture built in the newly founded United States between 1780 and 1830, and particularly from 1785 to 1815, which was heavily based on the works of Andrea Palladio with several inn ...

house, built just after the

American Revolution The American Revolution was an ideological and political revolution that occurred in British America between 1765 and 1791. The Americans in the Thirteen Colonies formed independent states that defeated the British in the American Revolut ...

, was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

in 1973. According to the

Geographic Names Information System The Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) is a database of name and locative information about more than two million physical and cultural features throughout the United States and its territories, Antarctica, and the associated states of ...

, Fort Pleasant was also known throughout its existence as "Fort Hopewell" and "Waggener's Lower Fort." (The latter name distinguished it from Fort Buttermilk, also known as "Fort Waggener", about 5 miles upstream and also built by Capt. Waggener in 1756.) It was also sometimes called "Fort Van Meter", a name now commonly given to another Van Meter family fort some nine miles downstream at the northern end of The Trough which was built around the same time.

History

18th century

Settlement (1740s)
The area around Fort Pleasant was first settled by Isaac Van Meter (''ca.'' 1692–1757), his wife Annetje Wynkoop, and their four children in 1744, at which time the family constructed a fortified log cabin there. George Washington first visited the "Indian Old Fields" (as the area was called) as a teenager and conversed with Isaac Van Meter there in 1747-48 while he was surveying Lord Fairfax's land grant. Washington recorded in his journal that he met with "Mr Vanmetrise" on behalf of Fairfax, who asserted that the Van Meter tract was part of his own South Branch Manor (a part of the

Northern Neck Proprietary The Northern Neck Proprietary – also called the Northern Neck land grant, Fairfax Proprietary, or Fairfax Grant – was a land grant first contrived by the exiled English King Charles II in 1649 and encompassing all the lands bounded by the Pot ...

). Van Meter insisted that he had the land on the authority of the

Virginia Council The Governor's Council (also known as the "Council of State" or simply "the Council") was the upper house of the colonial legislature (the House of Burgesses was the other house) in the Colony of Virginia from 1607 until the American Revolution i ...

grants of 1730 and that they had nothing to do with Fairfax's grant. (Subsequent litigation played out until well after the Revolution, at which time the Van Meter heirs finally prevailed.) Hostilities (1750s)
In 1756, at the outset of the

, a large new fort and its supporting structures were erected on Isaac Van Meter's property by Captain Thomas Waggener under orders from now Colonel George Washington. The fort was first known by the name of the Van Meter family, which had also assisted in its initial construction and maintenance. It was a substantial

palisade A palisade, sometimes called a stakewall or a paling, is typically a fence or defensive wall made from iron or wooden stakes, or tree trunks, and used as a defensive structure or enclosure. Palisades can form a stockade. Etymology ''Palisade' ...

d defense enclosing a

blockhouse A blockhouse is a small fortification, usually consisting of one or more rooms with loopholes, allowing its defenders to fire in various directions. It is usually an isolated fort in the form of a single building, serving as a defensive stro ...

and

log house A log house, or log building, is a structure built with horizontal logs interlocked at the corners by notching. Logs may be round, squared or hewn to other shapes, either handcrafted or milled. The term " log cabin" generally refers to a sm ...

s. (Washington's written instructions indicated a quadrangular shape with 90-foot-long walls, bastions in the corners, barracks, and a magazine.) Fort Pleasant was one in a chain of forts that ran along the frontier of the

Allegheny Mountains The Allegheny Mountain Range (; also spelled Alleghany or Allegany), informally the Alleghenies, is part of the vast Appalachian Mountain Range of the Eastern United States and Canada and posed a significant barrier to land travel in less devel ...

and for a time it served as the local headquarters for the Virginia Regiment on the South Branch. It was never attacked directly by Indians but several raids occurred nearby. Soon after its construction, the

(1756) took place a short distance to the north in and around the large river gorge known as

The Trough The Trough is a 6-mile long wooded gorge carved by the South Branch Potomac River (SBPR) and situated in the Allegheny Mountains of Hampshire and Hardy Counties, West Virginia, USA. The area was the site of a 1756 skirmish of the French and Ind ...

. In 1757, working unprotected in his fields, Isaac Van Meter was attacked,

scalp The scalp is the anatomical area bordered by the human face at the front, and by the neck at the sides and back. Structure The scalp is usually described as having five layers, which can conveniently be remembered as a mnemonic: * S: The ski ...

ed, and killed by Indians of the

Delaware Delaware ( ) is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Maryland to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and New Jersey and the Atlantic Ocean to its east. The state takes its name from the adjacent Del ...

and

Shawnee The Shawnee are an Algonquian-speaking indigenous people of the Northeastern Woodlands. In the 17th century they lived in Pennsylvania, and in the 18th century they were in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, with some bands in Kentucky a ...

tribes. Renovations (1770s & '80s)
There exists a map/drawing of Fort Pleasant signed by James Witt and dated May 1770. The drawing shows blockhouses at the corners of the fort, suggesting that the structure was either remodeled or totally rebuilt sometime after the end of the War. After the 1777 founding of Moorefield to its south, the fort was known as "Town Fort" due to its proximity to the new town. When Washington was in the region for the last time — he visited Abraham Hite at Old Fields on 28–29 September 1784 — he observed that the Fort Pleasant blockhouse was still standing. Eventually, Isaac's son Garrett Van Meter (1732-1788) had most of the old fort and original family cabin removed and built a strong brick structure — half above ground and half below — in place of them for defensive purposes. (Parts of this unwieldy structure, connected by enclosed steps, still exist.) The "Great House" (1790s)
The large brick house at Fort Pleasant was completed by Garrett's son, Isaac B. Van Meter (1757-1837), and his wife Elizabeth Inskeep Van Meter, before the end of the 18th century. (It was built on the very site of the old fort, thus both Fort and house bore the name "Fort Pleasant".) The impressive residence is a massive double-chimney

Federal Federal or foederal (archaic) may refer to: Politics General *Federal monarchy, a federation of monarchies *Federation, or ''Federal state'' (federal system), a type of government characterized by both a central (federal) government and states or ...

-style building constructed of clay bricks fabricated on the Fort Pleasant farm. Its "

giant order In classical architecture, a giant order, also known as colossal order, is an order whose columns or pilasters span two (or more) storeys. At the same time, smaller orders may feature in arcades or window and door framings within the storeys th ...

" columns — colossal columns spanning two stories — were among the first such features in the region and Fort Pleasant mansion acquired a reputation as one of the "great houses" of the South Branch Valley.

19th century

A portion of the old fort apparently survived Garrett Van Meter's renovations and the construction of the great house by his son. When

Samuel Kercheval Samuel Kercheval (March 1767 in Frederick County, Virginia – 14 November 1845 in Middletown, Virginia) was a Virginia lawyer and author. His ''A History of the Valley of Virginia'' (1st edition, 1833) provides important primary information on the ...

(1767-1845), the local historian, visited the site in 1830, he remarked that "one of the block-houses, with portholes was still standing, and the logs particularly sound".Kercheval, Samuel (1833)
''A History of the Valley of Virginia''

Winchester, Virginia Winchester is the most north western independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia. It is the county seat of Frederick County, although the two are separate jurisdictions. The Bureau of Economic Analysis combines the city of Winchester wit ...

: Samuel H. Davis Thus, the last vestiges of the old fort did not vanish until later in the 19th century.

Other Van Meter settlements

Fort Pleasant is one of five significant VanMeter family dwellings in the Old Fields area; the others are Traveler's Rest, Fort Van Meter, the Garrett VanMeter House, and Buena Vista Farms.

References

External links