Fort Dayton

Fort Dayton, 1776, Herkimer County, Herkimer. North side of Mohawk River at West Canada Creek. Occupied site of earlier Old Fort Herkimer, a wooden blockhouse from French and Indian War, with "current" Fort Herkimer two miles east of Fort Dayton. German Flats was raided and burned in September 1778 and Fall of 1780, but the people were in the forts. After the destruction of Fort Stanwix in May 1781 Fort Dayton was the most westerly outpost. Abandoned and in ruins after the war, a mansion erected in 1884 is on the site.

This was contributed by Ken D. Johnson, Fort Plank Historian and author of The Bloodied Mohawk:

Fort Dayton was indeed constructed in 1776, by troops of the Fourth New Jersey Regiment under the command of Colonel Elias Dayton. Joseph Bloomfield, an officer in Dayton's Regiment states that the fort was named after the Colonel and that the fort was so badly located, a second fortress had immediately erected to prevent the British from seizing it in the same manner they did Mount Independence on Lake Champlain. Thus, a heavy blockhouse was built on a hill overlooking Fort Dayton to protect it from bombardment from above. Contemporary maps suggest that the works included a church which was located in the now northern part of the Village of Herkimer.

This material is covered further in The Bloodied Mohawk published in June of 2000 by Picton Press of Camden, Maine and in an article entitled "In Defense of the Facts" found at www.geocities.com/fortplankhistorian. [link opens new window]

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