Fort Pleasant
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Fort Pleasant
(Isaac Van Meter House) |
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The Isaac Van Meter House (ca 1780s-90s)
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| Location | Old Fields north of Moorefield, West Virginia |
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| Coordinates | 39°8′1″N 78°56′55″W / 39.13361°N 78.94861°WCoordinates: 39°8′1″N 78°56′55″W / 39.13361°N 78.94861°W |
| Built | late 18th century |
| Architectural style | Federal |
| MPS | South Branch Valley MRA |
| NRHP Reference # | 73001903 |
| Added to NRHP | July 16, 1973 |
Fort Pleasant — formerly known as Fort Van Meter and Town Fort and still also known as the Isaac Van Meter House — is a historic site located near the unincorporated community of Old Fields about 5 miles north of Moorefield in Hardy County, West Virginia, USA. Situated on the South Branch Potomac River, a young Colonel George Washington directed a fortification to be built here in 1756 during the escalating hostilities with Native Americans and French known as the French and Indian War. The fierce skirmish known as the Battle of the Trough occurred about a mile and a half away the same year. The existing Federal style house, built just after the American Revolution, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973.
According to the Geographic Names Information System, Fort Pleasant was also known throughout its existence as "Fort Hopewell" and "Waggener's Lower Fort." (The latter name distinguished it from Fort Buttermilk, also known as "Fort Waggener", about 5 miles upstream and also built by Capt. Waggener in 1756.) It was also sometimes called "Fort Van Meter", a name now commonly given to another Van Meter family fort some nine miles downstream at the northern end of The Trough which was built around the same time.
Settlement (1740s)
The area around Fort Pleasant was first settled by Isaac Van Meter (ca. 1692-1757), his wife Annetje Wynkoop, and their four children in 1744, at which time the family constructed a fortified log cabin there. George Washington first visited the "Indian Old Fields" (as the area was called) as a teenager and conversed with Isaac Van Meter there in 1747-48 while he was surveying Lord Fairfax's land grant. Washington recorded in his journal that he met with "Mr Vanmetrise" on behalf of Fairfax, who asserted that the Van Meter tract was part of his own South Branch Manor (a part of the Northern Neck Proprietary). Van Meter insisted that he had the land on the authority of the Virginia Council grants of 1730 and that they had nothing to do with Fairfax's grant. (Subsequent litigation played out until well after the Revolution, at which time the Van Meter heirs finally prevailed.)
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