Plantation Number 4 was one of several towns established in 1735–36 in the
Massachusetts Bay Colony, By 1743, there were 10 families settled at Number 4. The fortification within Number 4 was established in 1744 when the people of the town voted to move several of their homes to create a fortified section of the town. The "fort" was a rectangle of six houses connected with
lean-tos. The southern end of the fort consisted of a two-story structure with a Great Hall on the second floor and an attached
guard tower. The only gate into the fortification lay below the Great Hall and was flanked by a small stable to the east and a guard house to the west. Three sides of the fortification were enclosed in a
stockade, which continued on the southwest side of the fort to enclose and protect an existing well.
King George's War In 1744, during
King George's War, many of the area's outlying farms and buildings were burned by the French and their
Native allies. Some settlers, along with some Native warriors, were killed in ambushes and small skirmishes. Other settlers were taken prisoner, to be ransomed back in
Canada. The settler families would all but abandon the fort in the fall of 1746; a small contingent of men stayed on at the fort until February of 1747. The fortification was later reoccupied by Capt.
Phineas Stevens and 30
militia men in late March of 1747. On April 7, 11 days after Capt. Stevens and his men arrived, the fort was besieged by a force combining French militia and
Abenaki warriors under the command of
Ensign Joseph Boucher de Niverville of the
French Marines. The siege lasted three days, until the French and Natives decided to head back to Canada rather than risk a direct attack on the fort, thus preventing further raids on settlements to the south and east. Reports of the incident claimed the sieging force was more than 500 strong, with numbers growing to over 700 as the story was repeated. French accounts of the siege put the number of Natives and accompanying French closer to 50 individuals. Commodore Charles Knowles, later 1st Baronet of the
Royal Navy, whilst Governor of Louisburg visiting Boston, was so impressed that he presented Stevens with “as costly and elegant a sword as could be procured in Boston”. Afterwards, the township was named Charlestown in honour of
Sir Charles Knowles, who later became
Rear-Admiral of Great Britain.
French and Indian War One Native raid made into the town in August 1754, immediately prior to the
French and Indian War, led to the capture of
Susanna Willard Johnson and her family, most of whom were eventually sold into slavery. Following Johnson's release several decades later, she wrote a popular
captivity narrative of her ordeal. 's statue at the
Bennington Battle Monument During the last of the four
French and Indian Wars, many soldiers were stationed in the Fort at Number 4 to protect the frontier. They included Colonel
Nathan Whiting's Regiment of
Connecticut, and Colonel
John Goffe's
New Hampshire Provincial Regiment. Returning from a raid on
St. Francis,
Quebec,
Robert Rogers in 1759 sought help here for his hungry
Rangers at
Fort Wentworth far up the Connecticut River. Also at that time, General
Jeffery Amherst ordered a road to be built between the fort and another fort newly captured at
Crown Point, located on the shores of
Lake Champlain in
New York. Consequently, Capt.
John Stark and a company of Rangers, together with Col. Goffe's Regiment, built the Crown Point Military Road. It was long, with many
blockhouses along its route to protect supplies and travelers through the wilderness that would later become
Vermont. With the defeat of the French in 1761, and the
Treaty of Paris in 1763, the need for the fort decreased.
American Revolutionary War While traveling to the
Battle of Bennington in 1777, John Stark (then a
brigadier general) gathered the
New Hampshire Militia regiments, numbering about 1,500 militiamen, at the site. The fort fell into disrepair after the
American Revolutionary War. ==Present-day museum==