Places: Fort Niagara, Youngstown, New York

The American Revolution had a human cost, families of Loyalists and thousands of Natives who cast in their lot with the British forfeited homes and livelihoods.  With nowhere else to go many of these people congregated around this British fort, which became an impromptu refugee camp, with all the discomforts usually associated with such a place.

Fort Niagara rests near Youngstown, New York, on the banks of the Ohio River not far from Lake Ontario.  Like many forts in the region, Fort Niagara was built by the French.  The earliest structure on site was built by Robert Cavalier, Sieur de la Salle in 1678.  He named it Fort Conti, after a branch of the ruling Bourbon family.  Another French commander built a more permanent structure, called Fort Denonville, in 1687.  However, staffing and supplying this far-flung outpost from Montreal proved difficult and the site was abandoned the next year.  Finally, in 1726, a two-story fortified structure was built on site and used as a trading post.  That structure still stands and is called the French Castle today because it looks almost like a small French chateau.  Eventually, other buildings, walls and fortifications were built around the site as tensions between the French and British heated up leading to the Seven Years/French and Indian War (1755-1763). 

The Fort fell to the British in 1759 and Sir William Johnson, the British Superintendent of Indian Affairs was its initial commander.  It was renamed Fort Niagara, which is an Iroquoian word meaning land cut in two, obviously by the broad and fast-flowing Niagara River.  During the American Revolution, this was the base for the Loyalist Butler's Rangers or Queen's Rangers, led by Maj. John Butler and his son William.  In the North, this troop had the same reputation as that enjoyed by Banastre Tarleton in South Carolina or the Hessians anywhere else.  They were the royal troops everyone loved to hate and no story of cruelty at their hands could be exaggerated enough.  Particularly was this so when it involved "Monster" Joseph Brant and his Iroquois auxiliaries.  As war ravaged New York, thousands of Loyalists and Natives fled to the safety of Fort Niagara.  The British garrison barely had supplies to equip themselves and could not deal with the onslaught of refuges.  Especially was this true after the Sullivan-Clinton Expedition of 1779-1780.  While gambling dens, brothels and saloons flourished on the flats of land below the Fort, known as The Bottom, others huddled in whatever shelter they could find, or none at all, enduring winter with little food or other necessities.  In addition to the Brants, young Billy Caldwell/Sauganash, a mixed-race Potawatomi refugee also spent time here.

Eventually, most of these people found shelter in Canada.  Loyalists were offered tracts of land and the Iroquois found a new home along the Grand River.  Per the terms of the Treaty of Paris of 1783, the English were supposed to surrender Fort Niagara.  They didn't and the Americans didn't press the issue until the Jay Treaty of 1794, which affirmed that the British were to vacate Fort Niagara.  American forces took over the fort and began mending its defenses.  But the British had not given up on North America.  In 1813, they recaptured the Fort, and held it until the Treaty of Ghent of 1814 provided that they give it up, permanently.  The U.S. Army took control and garrisoned the Fort throughout the Civil War.  In the aftermath of the War, coastal defenses based on forts proved to be more and more obsolete. 

Eventually other facilities were built and christened New Fort Niagara.  This is opposed to Old Fort Niagara which is the historic part of the facility.  That portion of the fort became a state park.  The military portion of the installation is under control of the U.S. Coast Guard.