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Thursday, May 22, 2008

Lake Seminole History, Part Seven


Continuing our look at historic sites around Lake Seminole, we shift today to the Georgia side of the Lake.
This is the State of Georgia marker for Fort Scott. The marker is located at Hutchinson's Ferry Landing (better known as Wingate's Lodge) in Decatur County, Georgia.
Fort Scott was an extremely important military post constructed by the U.S. Army in June of 1816. Under orders to establish a new outpost at the confluence of the Flint and Chattahoochee Rivers, just above the border of Spanish Florida, Lt. Col. Duncan L. Clinch and a battalion from the 4th U.S. Infantry arrived in the area during the first week of June of 1816. After surveying the area, they selected a commanding bluff just up the Flint River from the confluence. The site is only about 10 miles from Jackson County (as the crow flies).
Here they constructed a rough log stockade that was originally named Camp Crawford after Secretary of War William Crawford, a Georgian. The name was changed to Fort Scott later in the year.
It was from this post that Clinch launched the expedition in July of 1816 that would result in the bloody destruction of the so-called "Negro Fort" on the lower Apalachicola River. To read more about this expedition, please see a series currently underway on our sister site, Civil War Florida.
When Clinch returned from that expedition in August, he renamed the new outpost Fort Scott in honor of General Winfield T. Scott, a hero of the recent War of 1812. He also began construction of a new, much more extensive fort at the site.
We will have more on Fort Scott when our series continues.

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