Fort Ligonier’s director of history and collections, Erica Nuckles, will introduce rare artifacts Fort Ligonier is adding to its French and Indian War collection with a coffee lecture at 2 p.m. March 17 in its Center for History Education.
Fort Ligonier was the successful bidder on several lots last September during auction of the collection of Walter J. O’Connor. According to museum officials, support from the Katherine Mabis McKenna Foundation assisted with adding several noteworthy items to the site at 200 S. Market St., Ligonier.
“Each of these artifacts has a story that surrounds it that includes not only the people and events associated with it, but also how it was produced, acquired and used in the 18th-century Atlantic world,” Nuckles says.
The collection includes a circa-1760s “map” powder horn depicting sites along the Forbes Road, including Fort Ligonier and Pittsburgh. The fine etching on the horn is extensive, with the map also tracing the Hudson and Mohawk rivers in New York state, officials add.
The museum also placed the winning bid on what museum officials term “a treasure trove of important documents,” including a letter from John St. Clair, quartermaster of the Forbes Campaign, to Col. James Burd written Aug. 27, 1758, when St. Clair was just east of where the fort was about to be built.
Also new to the collection is a set of 21 documents associated with Maj. James Grant and pertaining to Pontiac’s War and its impact on the Forbes Road in 1763. The set includes a letter from Col. Henry Bouquet to Grant; a letter composed at Fort Ligonier by Capt. James Robertson to Grant; and a casualty list from the critical Battle of Bushy Run.
The new acquisitions include the “Minutes” from the Treaty of Easton, a work published shortly after the October 1758 negotiations between the British forces under Gen. John Forbes and the Ohio Indians that helped to neutralize native support for the French at Fort Duquesne.
Cost for the lecture is $15.
Details: 724-238-9701 or email Candace Gross by March 14 at cgross@fortligonier.org
