Ohio History Journal

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FORT INDUSTRY--AN HISTORICAL MYSTERY

FORT INDUSTRY--AN HISTORICAL MYSTERY

 

 

BY WALTER J. SHERMAN

 

Upon the south wall of an old brick mercantile build-

ing, at the northeast corner of Monroe and Summit

Streets, Toledo, hangs a faded inscription reading as

follows, viz: "This building stands on the site of Fort

Industry, a stockade erected by General Anthony

Wayne, in the year 1794, as a safeguard against the

British, who then held Fort Miami. It was garrisoned

by a company of United States troops, under the com-

mand of Captain J. Rhea, who held it until after the

evacuation of all the British Posts in the northwest in

the year 1796, an Act which was brought about by the

operations of Jay's Treaty with Great Britain. In July,

1805, the treaty was negotiated at Fort Industry by

which was extinguished the Indian title to all the west-

ern part of the reserve known as the Fire Lands, a tract

of about 500,000 acres, granted by the State of Con-

necticut to the sufferers by fire from the British troops

in the incursions into that state during the War of the

Revolution. Evidences of the Fort were not entirely

obliterated as late as 1836. A bluff 20 feet high was

leveled and Fort Industry Block erected 1842-1843 by

Richard Mott."

This brief and tersely expressed account of the time

and occasion for the building, occupancy and abandon-

ment of Fort Industry and its final disappearance should

and ordinarily would satisfy students of local history

who seek only the essential facts concerning this, at one

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