Sometimes, all that is left of a soldier in the French and Indian War more than 260 years later is flattened musket balls, chipped buttons, coins and buckles.
The recent confirmation of a Westmoreland County battlefield near Fort Ligonier where George Washington had a brush with death by friendly fire provides fresh insight decades in the making.
Stories handed down by generations of Ligonier residents, archaeological sleuthing and new technologies have confirmed not only the site for what is known as the Friendly Fire Incident, but the location of battle lines and details not available from written historical accounts.
Viewing some of the 370 artifacts in the fort's museum was "very sobering" for artist Chas Fagan, of Charlotte, N.C., whose father Charles Fagan III, a Pittsburgh native and Ligonier resident, doggedly searched for the battle site for at least 40 years with other members of the Fort Ligonier Association.
"Especially jarring are the pancake, oval-shaped musket balls that hit something soft, likely a soldier," said Fagan, who was commissioned to paint "Flash Point" depicting the recently documented battlefield and a young Colonel Washington riding in front of his soldiers to stop their gunfire.
The painting, which was presented to Fort Ligonier in 2019, is on display along with battlefield artifacts and a pair of saddle pistols gifted to Washington by the Marquis de Lafayette during the Revolutionary War at the Fort Ligonier Museum, which houses one of the most extensive collections of French and Indian War artifacts and other objects.
What Does a Centuries-Old Battlefield Look Like?
Quaint and bucolic come to mind when riding through the town of Ligonier and its rural outskirts. Fields of grass bound by split wood fences unfurl in the rolling hills of the Laurel Highlands.
Overgrown fields aren't far from neatly shorn expanses, and restored log cabins and renovated homes with antique foundations sit near dilapidated farm buildings. The valley is flanked by seemingly impenetrable forests painting the lush green hills.
The housing is still sparse, with open fields aplenty and tangles of brush. It's old and lived-in, and unlike many other historic places, it hasn't been paved over.
Mercifully, a Wawa or Sheetz or other development didn't cover the Washington battlefield site, said lead archaeologist Jonathan Burns, director of Juniata College's Cultural Resource Institute and a lecturer in history and art history.
This is the place where archaeologists have confirmed the battlefield of Washington's Friendly Fire Incident in 1758, within several miles of the fort.
On private property, the roughly 10-acre site has been kept secret by Fort Ligonier to protect the owner's privacy and the battlefield's cultural resources.
For years, most people in town have known the general area of the battleground but not the exact location, said Julie Donovan, Fort Ligonier's director of marketing and public relations.
A descendant of original homesteaders in the Ligonier Valley, Donovan heard stories as a young girl about battlefields in the area.
Residents played a vital role in piecing together the history, Fagan said. "My father thought very highly of oral history. He definitely tapped into the local families."
Chas Fagan, an artist of presidential portraits, sculptures and other work, grew up hearing stories about Washington's early military forays in the Laurel Highlands and the Friendly Fire Incident.
His father, a veteran and diplomat, wanted to find the site, but not just for historical reasons.
"The fact that half the soldiers were under command by Washington was an interesting hole in history that people did not know about," his son said.
"The driver for him was the duty, the debt we have to those men who died and the location where they died. If we can find that spot, we could honor them," he said.
For more than 40 years, Charles Fagan III consulted with experts and scoured everything he could find -- letters, historical descriptions of the site, topographical maps and other logistical information that the military would consider.
"That meant years of getting to know property owners, asking if he could hike there in the winter and fall so he could see the topography."
The elder Fagan, who died earlier this year, took his son to the current confirmed site about 18 years ago while tramping around in the woods in the winter.
"I was more than a little impressed as my over-70-year-old dad was clearing logs in the snow and I was having to keep up with him."
Under Friendly Fire
The Friendly Fire Incident provided information to the British that led to their takeover of Fort Duquesne in Pittsburgh from the French, a turning point in the French and Indian War.
It was also Washington's last battle before he led the Continental Army in the American Revolution.
The incident is a lesser-known aspect of Washington's life while he was stationed at Fort Ligonier, said Fort Ligonier executive director Mary Manges.
"This find elevates the fort in the story of Washington. In that moment during the Friendly Fire Incident, we see a young Washington step forward and show us flashes of the future leader he will become."
On Nov. 12, 1758, Washington and his men were sent to assist Col. George Mercer, whose troops were fighting French soldiers with their Native American allies after raids upon the fort's horses and cattle.
Washington and his soldiers caught up with Mercer's troops at dusk during low visibility. They mistook each other for the enemy and began shooting.
According to Washington in his 1780s "Remarks" in a biography, he moved between the two lines of fire and used his sword to sweep away the muskets of his men to stop the battle.
Although Washington and other officers were able to end the mistaken skirmish, two officers and 38 soldiers were killed or went missing, according to British Gen. John Forbes.
Washington later wrote that his life was never in greater peril.
"It had such an impact on him that he wrote about it 30 years later and referred to that place and incident as the moment his life was in the most jeopardy," Manges said.
"That is a profound statement coming from Washington, who had many brushes with death."
Rather than going down in the history books as simply an awful mistake, the incident resulted in the capture of several French prisoners, one of whom revealed deteriorating conditions at French-controlled Fort Duquesne -- a prime target for the British. The information prodded Forbes to pounce more quickly than planned and English troops took Fort Duquesne later that same month.
The Fort Ligonier Association has on display Washington's "Remarks" about his early military career, including the Friendly Fire Incident.
Like a 260-Year-Old Crime Scene
The Fort Ligonier Association has hired archaeologists before, famously for siting its replica of Britain's Fort Ligonier, originally built in 1758, as well as the fort's museum.
Multiple archaeological projects through the decades have netted thousands of items. Fort Ligonier has 100,000 artifacts, artworks and historical objects in its renowned French and Indian War collection, which contains the world's largest shoe collection from that era.
At any given time, several hundred items are on display in the museum's galleries.
The Fort Ligonier Association finally nailed the "Friendly Fire" site after decades of investigation and hiring archaeologists, working with consultants and others on weeklong archaeological digs for four years that have netted several hundred artifacts so far.
A number of subject historians and consultants weighed in on the most likely site for the battle.
"This spot kept coming up as making the most sense," said Burns, who specializes in conflict and battlefield archaeology.
He has worked at other colonial era battlefields and fort sites, including Fort Shirley and Sideling Hill, both in Huntingdon County. He has led multiple field schools at and near Fort Ligonier.
Burns and others knew the battlefield was close to the Forbes Road -- a military trail built from Carlisle to Fort Duquesne (now Fort Pitt at Pittsburgh's Point State Park).
Other factors favored the "presumed" site: A local man found a trove of artifacts with a metal detector a decade ago and there were old reports of a tainted drinking water source because of burials.
On the first day that Burns' team started work on the site four years ago, they began finding artifacts within an hour.
"I knew this was the site the first season we were working," he said. "Then it was a challenge to prove that it was the Friendly Fire site."
After four weeklong digs over four years, the archaeological team unearthed a "symphony of evidence" including not just artifacts, but hits from cadaver dogs and spatial patterning of those artifacts and their origin via isotopic analysis.
The battlefield survey began with laying out a grid and intensive metal detector sweeping with high-end equipment. Archaeologists, alongside trained military veteran volunteers, painstakingly searched, found and mapped where musket balls and other items were buried.
Clusters of buttons and buckles can point to burial activities, Burns said. Items like horseshoes, wagon parts and other items found along the traces of the Forbes Road are likely incidental losses when there are no clusters of artifacts, he added.
"But as we got further away from the road, we found battlefield patterning in the spatial distribution of the artifacts," Burns said.
"It's like forensics at a crime scene after 260 years have passed."
Respecting Human Remains
The archaeological team also used ground penetrating radar to search for underground anomalies and specially trained dogs to detect human scent from graves. The goal was to define the battlefield and find the graves, yet be respectful of human remains.
The artifacts were found no deeper than 2 feet, with many discovered in the top 8-12 inches of soil.
There isn't a historic map of the battle, but one of Burns' Juanita College colleagues provided isotopic analysis of the locations of musket balls and other metal items.
"We can only get so far from what has been written down. Archaeology is the only way to learn more about this history," he said.
They already know that musket balls fired by the British and French were different calibers.
The musket balls also have different isotopic fingerprints: The French and their Native American allies got their lead from different sources than the British.
One of Burns' colleagues, Ryan Mather, head of Juanita's geology department, is a geochemist with an isotope lab on campus.
Only in the last five years has isotopic analysis been used for archaeology, Burns said.
Armed with the results of the isotopic analysis, he was able to outline the battlefield. He can pinpoint where Mercer's 500 troops were pushing out the French and where Washington and his men approached from another direction, changing the direction of fire.
The soldiers weren't marching in line, he said. The French and Native Americans were spread out and behind cover. Clusters of lead shots, some deformed, were found, signifying someone was shot or killed, Burns said.
He and Fort Ligonier still hope to find where the soldiers were buried. There are historical reports of Washington sending his troops to bury the fallen soldiers the morning after the incident.
They haven't found human remains yet. Two cadaver dogs independently tagged several areas that Burns will revisit next year. It's uncertain how much the acidic soil at the site would have hastened decomposition.
Burns wants to someday see a memorial built for the soldiers.
"There's a very good chance a grave site was disturbed with the construction of a barn in the early 1800s," he said.
All battlefields are different, he said. This one is rich in artifacts compared to others.
"Now we have over 60-some musket balls mapped with isotopic signatures, building the case and heaping the evidence."
There is more work to do next year. Burns might bring back the cadaver dogs, use ground-penetrating radar on part of the battlefield not yet scanned and remove some brush to examine more areas.
In the meantime, Burns is working on reports and academic papers on his archaeological findings for the Friendly Fire Incident.
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