Stop #5 | Address: Frost Parkway, Tiffin
As General William Henry Harrison planned his advance north to capture British Fort Malden across Lake Erie in Canada, he had to consider how best to keep his troops supplied throughout the campaign. Being on the offensive meant that the army needed to transport essential items with them: munitions, food, camp equipment, and forage for the oxen and horses that hauled the wagons and artillery. Since his army planned to follow the Scioto-Sandusky Trail, which was intended for foot travel, movement promised to be slow. Therefore, Harrison ordered that small supply forts be constructed periodically along his line of march. These forts also served as fallback positions should Harrison’s plans fail.
After Fort Ferrer in Upper Sandusky, the next fort in this chain of supply depots was along the north side of the Sandusky River in present-day Tiffin. It was named Fort (sometimes referred to as Camp) Ball after Lt. Colonel James Ball whose troops began construction of the stockade in July 1813. We have a description of the fort by John Searles, an early settler who arrived after the war in 1820 with his wife and children. They, as did many early arrivals, lived in a room of one of the fort’s blockhouses until they could build their own cabin.
“The roofs of the block houses were covered with clapboards. The army road [the Scioto-Sandusky Trail, also known as Harrison’s Trail] ran along the river bank between the fort and the river. There was just room enough for the road. The fort has three block houses, one on two corners and one between these two corners, in the middle, all facing the river. Back of the block houses was an open space, inside the pickets, of about half an acre. There was room enough in the block houses for two hundred men.
Surrounding the ‘camp’ stakes about a foot in thickness were driven into the ground and on these fixed bayonets driven in horizontally in the stakes near to the top. Against these stakes logs were piled on the outside and over them dirt was thrown from the ditch that surrounded the whole. There was room in the interior for five hundred men.”
Despite having an ever-flowing spring of pure water nearby, disease took the lives of many soldiers assigned to the fort between 1813 and 1815 when the war ended and the fort was abandoned. These deaths were probably the result of the traditionally poor understanding of proper sanitation during this time, as well as the swampy conditions of the region that caused ague (malaria). The fort never came under attack from the British or Indian forces.
About “Tracking the Troops, Tippecanoe & Perry, Too!” This driving tour is a five-county collaborative project with Wyandot, Seneca, Sandusky, Wood and Ottawa counties that takes you on a self-guided driving tour following the military trail of General William Henry Harrison during the War of 1812. Harrison would later become the ninth president of the United States and has the shortest presidency, dying from pneumonia one month after having taken the oath of office.
