Originally published in the Cecil Whig
While the Battle of New Orleans and Fort McHenry grab all of the War of 1812 headlines, there were many other skirmishes, battles, and locations that share in the glory. For example, in Elkton, along the Little Elk Creek, there were two, possibly three earthen forts built in 1813 to protect the Cecil County seat from British invasion.
This is old news to many of you, but what’s new is a wide ranging study of several other War of 1812 earthen forts, much like those in Cecil County, that sprang up along the Chesapeake Bay and its estuaries. Corey Hovanec, a graduate student from Philadelphia at the University of Delaware, recently completed a study of three of these earthen forts and agreed to share some of his Master’s Thesis findings in his own words. We started by asking Corey exactly what is an “earthen fort” and he went from there.
“In its most basic form, an earthen fort consists of an embankment of soil – called a parapet – and an adjacent ditch. The parapet was used to shield troops and artillery from enemy eyes and projectiles. The ditch not only served as a source of building material, but also as an obstacle for attackers.”
“Earthen forts were especially important along Chesapeake waterways… because defense of the region was left largely to inexperienced militia. The majority of professionally trained soldiers were fighting along the Canadian front at the time. The construction of forts helped equalize the disparity between the trained British soldiers and those tasked with defending their homes.”
“(I studied) Fort Nonsense, located opposite Annapolis on the Severn River; Fort Point, located downstream of Centreville on the Corsica River; and Fort Stokes, located downstream of Easton on the Tred Avon River. All are visible at the surface, but are overgrown and eroded to the point that it’s hard to distinguish them from surrounding topography or to envision what purpose they may have once served.”
“The main goal of this study was to test and publish a method for tracing the evolution of these earthen forts, from their time of construction, over 200 years ago, to the present day, and into the future. I used laser scanning…with incredible precision. (The scanning) allowed me to create a virtual 3D model that permanently documents their current conditions. The other inputs were taken from a series of soil cores collected at Fort Point. This allowed me to examine soil characteristics and determine how much soil had moved down the embankment in the past 200 years.”
“Results showed that what currently exists on the landscape bears little resemblance to how it looked in 1813. It was also very interesting that our “reconstructed” embankment-and-ditch configurations were very similar in size and shape to specifications included in historic military manuals.”
“(Cecil County forts) include Fort Hollingsworth, Fort Defiance, and an associated fort named Fort Fredrick. Fort Hollingsworth no longer exists, but its subsurface remains were documented via an archaeology survey in 2012. Earlier reports suggest that Fort Defiance was destroyed by development, but I’ve recently seen a photograph that suggests otherwise. It appears to be heavily degraded, but some evidence of its former existence is visible at ground surface. Historical documentation indicates that Fort Frederick was related to Fort Defiance and located nearby. However, it remains undiscovered, or possibly destroyed.”
For more information about Fort Hollingsworth, Google “Little Guns on the Big Elk: Discovering Fort Hollingsworth.”
Thanks to Corey for sharing his data with us. For more information about Corey’s Master’s Thesis, contact the Historical Society of Cecil County at cecilhistory.org.