The Layout of Fort Stephenson

[From a speech by J. P. Moore, at the Annual Reunion of the Sandusky County Pioneer and Historical Society, August 31, 1892.]

Through Mr. James Kirk I got some more information. He stayed at my house two days in 1872. Mr. Kirk was then 83 years of age. He learned the blacksmith trade in the city of Columbus, with the late Judge Caldwell's father, and came to Lower Sandusky in 1818, and established a blacksmith shop in the square at the crossing of State and Front streets. He enlisted in a company at Columbus which came to take the place of troops mustered out on the 1st of June. The first fort was too small. After Mr. Kirk came here they built an addition to it on the west side as large as the original one. In the first fort there was a block-house in the northeast corner which stood nearly in the center of the square between the City Hall and the center of Croghan and Arch street. The other block-house was in the northwest corner, so that when the addition was made it brought that.block-house in the center of the northern side of the fort. Old Betsy was fired from this center block-house, fired toward the southwest. I showed Mr. Kirk over the grounds, he pointed me where the British cannon was planted, which was about the spot where Mr. A. H. Miller's barn now stands. They fired one large and one small gun, the different sounds could be distinctly heard at Fort Seneca where Mr. Kirk then was, he having been sent with dispatches to Gen. Harrison the day before, but he returned in the morning of the 3d of August and helped to bury the British dead.

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