Fort Necessity National Battlefield - Uniontown PA - Wikipedia Entries on Waymarking.com

The Battle of Fort Necessity occurred on July 3, 1754 and was an early battle of the French and Indian War.
After returning to the great meadows in what is now Fayette County, Pennsylvania, George Washington decided it prudent to reinforce his position. Supposedly named by Washington as Fort Necessity or Fort of Necessity, they constructed a storehouse to store supplies such as gunpowder, rum, and flour. The crude palisade they erected was built to more to defend supplies in the fort's storehouse from Washington's own men, whom he described as loose and idle, rather than as a planned defense against a hostile enemy. It also served as a useful mustering position, situated in a pleasant mountain meadow not far after the summit of the Cumberland Gap mountain pass had been surmounted by westward moving travelers or troops, and Washington was hoping for further reinforcements.

By June 12, 1754, Washington had under his command 293 colonials and the nominal command of 100 additional regular British army troops from South Carolina. Washington spent the remainder of June 1754 extending the wilderness road further west and down the western slopes of the Allegheny range into the valley of the Monongahela River aiming for a river crossing point roughly 41 mi (66 km) near Redstone Creek and a mound on a bluff overlooking the river crossing known as Redstone Old Fort — an aboriginal mound structure that may have once been a fortification. Five years later in the war Fort Burd was constructed at the target destination and the area eventually became the site of Nemacolin Castle and Brownsville, Pennsylvania — an important western jumping off point in the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century.

Colonel Washington's chosen path west in order to reach the Ohio River basins' navigable waters as soon as possible on the Monongahela River was along Nemacolin's Trail — as opposed to following the ridge hopping high altitude path traversed by the western part of Braddock's Road which jogged to the north near the fort and passed over another notch near Confluence, Pennsylvania into the valley and drainage basin of the Allegheny River. The Redstone destination at the terminus of Nemacolin's Trail was a natural choice for an advanced base for the location was one of the few known good crossing points where both sides of the wide deep river had low accessible banks in a region where steep-to-sides characteristic of the Mon-valley were the norm.

Late in the day on July 3rd, Washington did not know the French situation. Feeling that their position was untenable, Washington accepted surrender terms which allowed the peaceful withdrawal of his forces which he completed on July 4, 1754[2]. The French subsequently occupied the fort and then burned it. Washington did not speak French, and stated later that if he had known that he was confessing to the "assassination" of Jumonville, he would not have signed the surrender document.

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