Fort Barrington/Fort Howe – South Georgia’s Rev War Stronghold

by Denise Weimer

Site of Fort Barrington

The last of my Scouts of the Georgia Frontier novels is set at Fort Barrington, a southerly stronghold during the American Revolution against incursions from British-allied East Florida Rangers and Seminole Indians. The stockade sat on the north side of the Altamaha River thirteen miles from Darien, Georgia. Originally, Fort Barrington was a British fort established in 1751 but left incomplete when funding ran out. The seventy-five-foot-square stockade comprised two bastions at the eastern and southern corners—the latter being at the river’s edge—a two-story wooden blockhouse, a well, a storeroom, a magazine, and barracks. Ramparts in the form of low embankments extended between bastions, with large wooden spikes driven into the ground around the perimeter. When Georgia’s Royal Rangers were disbanded in 1767, twenty-five mounted men had been posted at Barrington.

Colonial map showing Barrington

The Augustine Trail, later known as the Old Post Road, ran from Savannah, Georgia, to St. Augustine, Florida, crossing the Altamaha in view of Fort Barrington where the river was about a hundred yards wide. Famed naturalist William Bartram described Barrington in ruins in April of 1773 and the ferry boat rowed by a Creek Indian man who had married a white woman. Directly across from the fort was the site of Creek native Mary Musgrove Matthew’s Mount Venture, an early trading post established with her white husband in the 1740s.

By July 1776, eighteen Patriots were defending Fort Barrington when Indians and British from East Florida raided in the area. In September, the Georgia Battalion became the Georgia brigade, with Lachlan McIntosh brigadier general and his brother William lieutenant colonel. Three hundred horsemen were temporarily stationed at Fort Barrington, lacking barracks, clothes, blankets, medicine, and tools. Another attack came in October with the British allied forces repelled by William McIntosh’s rangers. In December, Fort Barrington was renamed Fort Howe in honor of Major General Robert Howe, who conceived of a plan to establish a string of forts in southern and coastal Georgia with the headquarters at Fort Howe.

By February, Fort Howe supported a garrison of forty men. The fall of the newly built Fort McIntosh farther south on the Satilla River on February 18, 1777, led the Americans to rally at Fort Howe. In a battle where twelve Patriots were lost, they prevented the British from crossing the Altamaha River to threaten more settled areas of Georgia. Soon after, the Patriots launched an ill-fated invasion of Florida, returning in defeat in June of 1777. Desertions mounted in fall of that year.

On March 13, 1778, Lt. Col. Thomas Brown led a hundred East Florida Rangers and ten Indians across the Altamaha to capture Fort Howe with the loss of only one man, yet killing two of the Patriots, wounding four, and capturing twenty-three. The fort was burned before the British-allied troops withdrew due to internal disagreements. Prompted by the fall of Fort Howe, Georgia’s assembly authorized another Florida expedition which was also doomed by heat, heavy rain, dwindling supplies, sickness, and desertions.

A Calculated Betrothal: The death of her titled husband abandons Tabitha Gage on an isolated South Georgia plantation on the eve of revolution, left with only a log cabin on unsettled timber land.

Sergeant Edmond Lassiter comes to the aid of the dark-haired beauty fending off cattle rustlers. The Patriot scout and Loyalist widow are surprised by their shared values. When Edmond learns the same man who ruined his family is after what little Tabitha has left, he convinces her they should work together to make her land profitable—all while fighting off the British from East Florida and her greedy neighbor, who sabotages their every effort to succeed.

https://www.amazon.com/Calculated-Betrothal-Scouts-Georgia-Frontier-ebook/dp/B0D577ZJ1B/

Denise Weimer writes historical and contemporary romance from her home in North Georgia and also serves as a freelance editor and the Acquisitions & Editorial Liaison for Wild Heart Books. A mother of two wonderful young adult daughters, she always pauses for coffee, chocolate, and old houses.

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Fort Barrington site photo: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fort_Barrington,_McIntosh_County,_GA,_US.jpg