Largely forgotten, a 1782 Indian raid destroyed a thriving frontier settlement whose taverns served soldiers, settlers headed west, and other travelers along the Forbes Road in Western Pennsylvania.

Gen. John Forbes built the road during the French and Indian War as the British army marched from Carlisle to present-day Pittsburgh to force the evacuation of Fort DuQuesne, a French post built in 1754. Forbes’ soldiers built Fort Pitt on the site of DuQuesne.

After the war, the road became a key highway for land-hungry settlers from the east, among them a York County man named Robert Hanna.

Hanna established a homestead along the road about 35 miles east of Pittsburgh. He operated a tavern, and laid out lots for a new village, which he called Hanna’s Town. The settlement proved popular with travelers, who found few other amenities on the trek through the forests and over the mountains.

In 1773, when the colonial government created Westmoreland County, the village became the county seat. At first, court was held in Hanna’s tavern, but eventually moved to a two-story log courthouse. Another two-story log structure served as the county jail.

During the Revolutionary War, Western Pennsylvania saw much fighting between American soldiers and British rangers and their Indian allies. At some point, the settlers at Hannastown erected a stockade, fashioned of logs placed upright in the ground, around a spring and a blockhouse at the edge of town.

By 1782, Hannastown consisted of the jail, the courthouse, the stockade, Hanna’s tavern and nearly 30 other buildings.

On Saturday, July 13, 1782, many Hannastown men went north of the village to help Michael Huffnagle harvest wheat on his farm. In mid-day, a worker spotted an Indian war party heading their way. The harvesters rushed to the village and spread the alarm. By the time the raiders reached Hannastown, the villagers were inside the stockade, with the gate closed.

“The people of this place behaved brave,” Huffnagle wrote less than a week later. They “retired to the fort, left their all a prey to the enemy, and with 20 men only, and nine guns in good order, we stood the attack till dark.”

The fighting began in the afternoon at about 2 o’clock. “At first, some of the enemy came close to the pickets (upright logs in the stockade), but were soon obliged to retire farther off. I cannot inform you what number of the enemy may be killed, as we see them from the fort carrying off several,” Huffnagle said.

Huffnagle estimated that the raiding party consisted of about 100 Indians and British. After the raiders left, “we found several jackets, the buttons marked with the king’s 8th Regiment,” he said.

When news of the raid reached Pittsburgh, a man named Ephraim Douglass gathered information about the attack and passed it on to Pennsylvania officials in Philadelphia. With the villagers inside the fort, the raiders took over their buildings, “from whence they kept a continual fire upon the fort till night, without doing any other damage than wounding one little girl within the walls,” Douglass reported.

As they departed, “they carried away a great number of horses and everything of value in the deserted houses, destroyed all the cattle, hogs and poultry within their reach, and burned all the houses in the village except two.” He explained that the raiders had torched these structures, but the fire didn’t destroy them.

As Gen. William Irvine, then headquartered at Fort Pitt, later told George Washington, a force of British soldiers, together with 500 Indian warriors, had left western New York State earlier in 1782, intending to attack Fort Pitt. Finding the fort too strong, the British “contented themselves by sending small parties on the frontier, one of which burned Hannastown,” Irvine said.

Although the villagers survived the attack, they lost their homes and possessions. Most left and never came back. Some returned to rebuild, but Hannastown never recovered. In time, the main road was realigned with the new route passing several miles to the south. The county seat was eventually moved to nearby Greensburg.

Today, a reconstructed village, known as Historic Hanna’s Town, occupies the site. It is maintained by the Westmoreland County Historical Society and Westmoreland County Parks and Recreation.

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John L. Moore is an author and storyteller based in Northumberland, Pa. Information about the eight non-fiction books in his Frontier Pennsylvania Series is available online at johnleonmoore.blogspot.com/