What became of Edwardsville’s Fort Russell?

Q: In the Madison County Administration Building is a large mural with Fort Russell. There seems to be little information on this fort, other than it was built in the early 19th century to protect settlers in the Edwardsville area, but its location has always been a mystery. Can you shed any light on this subject?

A: From Fort McHenry and Fort Sumter on the East Coast to the Alamo in Texas to Fort Vancouver in Washington, countless cities across the country still can point with pride to military citadels that played a role in the nation’s history. We’ve always known where they were and pretty much what they looked like originally.

Sadly, Edwardsville can’t say the same for its Fort Russell. While written records do tell of a proud bastion capable of holding off Indian attacks, there are no drawings to show us what it looked like. According to “An Illustrated History of Edwardsville,” the mural you admired and even a model in the Madison County Historical Museum are educated guesses based on what we know of forts of the era.

And here’s another distressing fact: While we do know about where it was situated, even after years of intense searching we don’t know exactly — and we may never find out. Yet even amid this historical gloom, I can give you a little picture of its glory days:

Those days began in early June 1812, when the U.S. declared war on England, launching the War of 1812. Without getting into the world situation at the time, suffice it to say that France and England were locked in a bitter conflict. The Brits were doing everything they could to keep us from trading with their cross-channel enemy. As part of their campaign, England took seamen from U.S. merchant ships and made them serve in the British Navy. Closer to home, England, perhaps still licking its wounds from losing the American Revolution, began arming the Indians to help stir up trouble against Americans moving west and encroaching on more Indian land.

Soon after war was declared, Ninian Edwards realized settlers here needed a fortification to protect them from potential attacks. Edwards had been born to a family of wealthy tobacco farmers in Maryland and studied law in Kentucky, where he became the chief justice of the state’s court of appeals. Then, in 1809, President James Madison appointed him governor of the Illinois Territory, which in those days also included Wisconsin and parts of Minnesota and Michigan as well.

In the early summer of 1812, Edwards ordered the construction of a fort, which he named for Gen. William Russell, son of a prominent colonel in the Revolutionary War and a fighter himself in the War for Independence. But this was not just any fort for Edwards. Once it was built, he reportedly used it as his personal headquarters. Described in one book as a five-gun stockaded blockhouse, it also served as the main supply depot for the territorial militia. John Reynolds, who would become Illinois’ fourth governor in 1830, described it like this in his autobiography, “My Life and Times”:

“This fort was not only the seat of military operations, but was also the resort of the talent and fashion of the day,” wrote Reynolds, who served as an Army Ranger at the fort. “The governor opened his court here and presided with the character that genius and talent always bestow on the person possessing them. The (five) cannon of (King) Louis XIV were taken from Old Fort Chartres and with them Fort Russell blazed out with considerable pioneer splendor.” (One of the cannon exploded during use; the others later were sold for scrap.)

It was one of at least 94 forts and blockhouses in the southern part of the Illinois Territory. Most were small places for settlers to take refuge when threatened, but Fort Russell was different, according to at least one historian.

“It was the largest and best equipped fort in all of Illinois,” David Hanser, an architecture professor at Oklahoma State told the BND in 2012. “People forget that there was not too much north of Edwardsville during this time period, so this fort was crucial.”

Russell himself had found out how high the stakes could be. In 1773 he had seen his brother Henry captured and tortured to death after an attack by Indians during Britain’s first attempt to establish a permanent settlement in Kentucky. By the 1800s, he was overseeing 10 companies of Army Rangers defending the Western frontier. Fortunately, records seem to indicate that Fort Russell saw no hostilities. Instead, it was used to store munitions and to launch raids into northern Illinois.

According to a history on the Col. Benjamin Stephenson House website, Edwards and 400 mounted troops marched north out of the fort on Oct. 18, 1812, to burn two Kickapoo villages on the Saline Fork of the Sangamon River. In a 13-day campaign, they also reached Peoria to attack villages of the Kickapoo, Miami and Pottawatomie, capturing 80 horses and a few French settlers who were thought to be Indian sympathizers. The following year, an army of nearly 1,400 would repeat the journey. While there were no battles this time, it kept the Indians from massing.

After the war ended in early 1815, the fort was abandoned, according to the Madison County Historical Society. As a result it deteriorated rapidly and was burned in 1837. One 19th-century history of Madison County mentions an area farmer owning a bucket fashioned from the oak pickets that surrounded the fort.

Which leaves the ongoing mystery: Where exactly was it? The best guess comes from a 1941 aerial photograph of the Edwardsville area, which may show an outline of such a site about a mile northwest of Edwardsville on Springfield Drive just west of Illinois 159 (Section 34, Township 5-8). Despite talk of using the latest equipment to probe what’s under the ground, nothing definitive has ever been uncovered, Mary Westerhold, of the Madison County Historical Society, told me Wednesday.

It’s a secret that may never be unlocked.

“Things that have happened in intervening years might have destroyed any trace of the fort,” according to Greg Vogel, an anthropology professor at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. “Even if the fort had been there, we might not be able to demonstrate conclusively that it was.”

Today’s trivia

On Aug. 27, 1998, what did Topeka, Kansas, officially rename itself for a day and why?

Answer to Saturday’s trivia: If you thought taking your most recent driver’s test was hard, you should have lived in Prussia at the turn of the 20th century. On Sept. 29, 1903, it became one of the first countries in the world that forced would-be drivers to pass a test before they could get behind the wheel. But it wasn’t like what you’re probably thinking. To help you keep your car running, this test covered mechanical aptitude and was handled by the Dampfkesselüberwachungsverein (the Steam Boiler Supervision Association). Then, in 1910, Germany mandated the licensing of drivers, establishing both tests and driver’s education classes that other countries soon adopted. As driving deaths began to rise in the United States, New York put into effect the nation’s first licensing law on Sept. 1, 1910, although at first it covered only professional chauffeurs. In July 1913, New Jersey became the first state to require all drivers to pass a test for a license. The very first licensing requirement was introduced in Great Britain in 1903, but this covered only car registration, not driver ability. And way back in 1888, inventor Karl Benz (of Mercedes-Benz fame) reportedly had to obtain written permission from German authorities to drive his cars on public roads after neighbors complained about the noise and smell.

This story was originally published August 20, 2016 at 9:03 AM with the headline "What became of Edwardsville’s Fort Russell?."