Farmer's Castle was a defensive fortification built by a group of pioneers from the Ohio Company of Associates

Ohio Company of Associates

The Ohio Company of Associates, also known as the Ohio Company, was a land company which is today credited with becoming the first non-American Indian group to settle in the present-day state of Ohio...

 who moved about 15 miles down the Ohio River

Ohio River

The Ohio River is the largest tributary, by volume, of the Mississippi River. At the confluence, the Ohio is even bigger than the Mississippi and, thus, is hydrologically the main stream of the whole river system, including the Allegheny River further upstream...

 from the first settlement of Marietta, Ohio

Marietta, Ohio

Marietta is a city in and the county seat of Washington County, Ohio, United States. During 1788, pioneers to the Ohio Country established Marietta as the first permanent American settlement of the new United States in the Northwest Territory. Marietta is located in southeastern Ohio at the mouth...

 to a location opposite the mouth of the Little Kanawha River

Little Kanawha River

The Little Kanawha River is a tributary of the Ohio River, 169 mi long, in western West Virginia in the United States. Via the Ohio, it is part of the watershed of the Mississippi River, draining an area of 2,320 mi² on the unglaciated portion of the Allegheny Plateau...

. They had surveyed the land during the winter of 1788-89, and moved from Marietta to their new farms in April 1789, establishing the city of Belle-prairie, or modern day Belpre, Ohio

Belpre, Ohio

Belpre is a city in Washington County, Ohio, United States, along the Ohio River. It is part of the Parkersburg-Marietta-Vienna, WV-OH Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 6,441 at the 2010 census....

. Adjacent to the island later known as Blennerhasset Island, the settlers commenced construction of the fortification of Farmer’s Castle during January 1791 for protection during the Northwest Indian War

Northwest Indian War

The Northwest Indian War , also known as Little Turtle's War and by various other names, was a war fought between the United States and a confederation of numerous American Indian tribes for control of the Northwest Territory...

.

The work was commenced the first week in January, and was prosecuted with the utmost energy, as their lives, apparently, depended on its completion. As fast as the block houses were built, the families moved into them. They were thirteen in number, arranged in two rows, with a wide street between, as shown in the engraving. The basement story was in general twenty feet square, and the upper about twenty-two feet, thus projecting over the lower one, and forming a defense from which to protect the doors and windows below, in an attack. They were built of round logs a foot in diameter, and the interstices nicely chinked and pointed with mortar. The doors and window shutters were made of thick oak planks, or puncheons, and secured with stout bars of wood on the inside. The larger timbers were hauled with ox-teams, of which they had several yokes, while the lighter for the roofs, gates, &c, were dragged along on hand sleds, with ropes, by the men. The drawing was much facilitated by a few inches of snow, which covered the ground. The pickets were made of quartered oak timber, growing on the plain back of the garrison, formed from trees about a foot in diameter, fourteen feet in length, and set four feet deep in the ground, leaving them ten feet high, over which no enemy could mount without a ladder. The smooth side was set outward, and the palisades strengthened and kept in their places by stout ribbons, or wall pieces, pinned to them with inch treenails on the inside. The spaces between the houses were filled up with pickets, and occupied three or four times the width of the houses, forming a continuous wall, or inclosure, about eighty rods in length and six rods wide. The palisades on the river side filled the whole space, and projected over the edge of the bank, leaning on rails and posts set to support them. They were sloped in this manner for the admission of air during the heat of summer.

Regional forts

Upriver at Marietta at the mouth of the Muskingum River, United States troops built Fort Harmar

Fort Harmar

Fort Harmar was an early United States frontier military fort, built in pentagonal shape during 1785 at the confluence of the Ohio and Muskingum Rivers, on the west side of the mouth of the Muskingum River. It was built under the orders of Josiah Harmar and took his name...

, and the Ohio Company of Associates built Campus Martius

Campus Martius (Ohio)

Campus Martius was a defensive fortification at the Marietta, Ohio settlement, and was home to Rufus Putnam, Benjamin Tupper, Arthur St. Clair, and other pioneers from the Ohio Company of Associates during the Northwest Indian War. Major Anselm Tupper was commander of the Campus Martius during the...

 and Picketed Point Stockade

Picketed Point Stockade

Picketed Point Stockade was the last of three fortificatons built at Marietta, Ohio. This defensive stockade was built by pioneers during the Northwest Indian War in 1791 on the east side of the mouth of the Muskingum River at its confluence with the Ohio River, and directly across the Muskingum...

. Up the Muskingum River from Marietta, associates built Fort Frye

Fort Frye

Fort Frye was a triangular-shaped defensive fortification built by a group of pioneers from the Ohio Company of Associates who moved about twenty miles up the Muskingum River from the settlement of Marietta, Ohio to a location near the mouth of Wolf Creek...

at the location of modern day Beverly, Ohio.