Unveiling of the Fort Halifax Monument, 1926 (4)

A 1926 newspaper article describing the ceremony for the unveiling of the Fort Halifax Monument near the site of Fort Halifax, Halifax Township, Dauphin County, Pennsylvania.

From the Harrisburg Telegraph, 15 May 1926:

Monument at Fort Halifax to Be Unveiled Today

Halifax, May 15 [1926] – (A. P.) — The site of Fort Halifax near here, one of the chain of frontier defense of the Province of Pennsylvania in the French and Indian wars is to be marked to-day with the unveiling of a monument provided through the efforts of the Pennsylvania Historical Commission and the Society of Pennsylvania Women in New York.

The monument is a large stone taken from Peters Mountain, overlooking the fort.  Attached to it is a bronze tablet bearing the following inscription:

Fort Halifax

One of the chain of Frontier

Defenses of the Provincce

of Pennsylvania in the

French and Indian Wars

Stood 500 Feet to the West

Built 1756

By

Its Commander

Colonel William Clapham

The fort was built of squared logs about 30 feet long.  It was in the shape of a quadrangle with four bastions and was on an elevation about 10 feet high surrounded by a ditch of equal depth. It housed a command of 30 men.

The fort was abandoned in 1763 after the residents of Paxtang had notified the Provincial Council that it was of no advantage as a protection and said that Fort Hunter to the south would be of much greater service in affording protection.

The program for the unveiling ceremonies calls for the invocation by Indian Chief Strongwolf; presentation of the deed of gift for the site of the marker by Henry A. Kelker Jr.; acceptance of the marker by Colonel Henry W. Shoemaker, chairman of the Pennsylvania Historical Commission; unveiling of the marker by Miss Florence Wallace Hamilton and historical addresses by A. Boyd Hamilton, Harrisburg newspaperman; Albert Cook Myers, secretary of the commission; and Judge John E. Fox, of the Dauphin County Court.

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Photo from 2019. News article from Newspapers.com.

Corrections and additional information should be added as comments to this post.

[Indians]