TO

"WATERFORD, PENNSYLVANIA"

"My Historical Small Town"

George Washington actually slept here.

Washington was a Major at the time of his stay here at Fort LeBoeuf, near Lake LeBoeuf.
According to a book of "History of Erie County" by Laura G. Sanford in 1894,(loaned to me by my brother, Ed), the fort was described as having 100 men and a large number of Officers,50 birch canoes, 70 pine ones and many unfinished.
The Commander at the time was Legardeur de St. Pierre,an elderly gentleman with the "air of a soldier, and a knight of the military order of St. Louis."
The fort was square, with 4 bastions and no platforms, so in each bastion was a place for a sentinel. The wall was of single logs, with no ditch outside. There were two gates of equal size, being about 10 feet wide; one fronting the Lake, the other, 300 yards distant faced the road to LeBoeuf.

The French burned the fort which had stood from 1755 to 1758. The British rebuilt it. The British fort stood until 1763, when Indians burned it down during "Pontiac's Conspiracy". Thirty years later, the Americans built their fort on the same site. The position along French Creek became the site of three successive forts.

The Waterford Hotel
The town of Waterford was laid out in 1794. The new town prospered and became a major stopping point on the route from Pittsburgh to the Great Lakes.

Among the early settlers was Amos Judson who came to Waterford from Connecticut in 1795. He opened a store, and by 1820 built a Greek Revival home which is still standing.

Near the Judson House is the Fort LeBoeuf Museum, which explains the historic role of the Indians and the Europeans on the Western Pennsylvania frontier.

The museum now serves as headquarters for the Edinboro University Archaeological Field School, which has an ongoing "dig" directly across from the museum, behind the historical Eagle Hotel, the oldest inn still in business today.


Beside the Eagle Hotel is a statue of Washington delivering the demand from the English that the French abandon their possessions. The statue symbolizes the involvement of three nations in the history of Northwestern Pennsylvania.

This is supposed to be the only statue of Washington in his British uniform. Hard to get a good picture of the statue when it's surrounded by so many trees shading it. Of course kid #5 is in this shot too, but it's the plainest of the statue I could get.

Today's paper 2/18/2001 had an article for President's Day that said Virginia's governor chose 21 year old George as an emissary for the British to make the trip from Virginia to Fort LeBoeuf to deliver a letter to the French asking them to stop making their settlements within English diminions. The French said no and a skirmish broke out between the British and French in 1754, after the French and Indian war of 1753. It took George 79 days to get from Virginia to Waterford and back.