Page Contents for Fort Jennings, Ohio

Statistics & Facts

Historical Events

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Statistics & Facts

The Ohio state capital is Columbus.
The population of Fort Jennings is approximately 436 (1990), 485 (2010).
The approximate number of families is 169 (1990), 194 (2010).
The amount of land area in Fort Jennings is 1.315 sq. kilometers.
The amount of surface water is 0 sq kilometers.
The distance from Fort Jennings to Washington DC is 422 miles.
The distance to the Ohio state capital is 95 miles. (as the crow flies)
Fort Jennings is positioned 40.90 degrees north of the equator and 84.29 degrees west of the prime meridian.

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Fort Jennings Historical Events

1812
Fort Jennings, Ohio
William Jennings,1771-1831, was commander of a Kentucky regiment. He was ordered to establish a fort at this location as part of a chain of forts needed as defense posts. It appears that Fort Wayne and Fort Defiance were others in that chain. Unfortunately for Colonel Jennings' reputation, the only report about him I can find is in the account by Micah Taul, 1785 - 1850, excerpted in Anderson Chenault uisenberry, Kentucky in the War of 1812, Frankfort: Kentucky Historical Society, 1915, reprinted by Genealogical Publishing Company, 1969. There, pp. 204-206, Taul reports on his experience with Jennings in 1812 when Taul was a captain in Colonel Joshua Barbee's regiment at St. Mary's, Ohio. Col. Barbee dispatched companies of soldiers to escort supply convoys, expecting them to return to St. Mary's for further duty once the convoys had reached their destinations. Colonel Jennings, however, was enforcing his own policy that the escort companies must remain at Fort Jennings until they could escort the empty convoys back. Taul, however, had the foresight to get Col. Barbee's orders in writing. Even so, Col. Jennings tried to restrain Taul's company from leaving. Taul says (p. 205) "Colonel Jennings was a proud, vainglorious, and self-willed man, foolishly puffed up with being commandant of a regiment, and that, too, at a separate post. He was unpopular with his regiment, and I knew it." When Taul prepared to leave, Jennings ordered him to remain and, Taul having demurred, (p. 206) "...blustered about for some time. He had a tremendous stentorian voice" and he called on the Adjutant of his regiment, threatening force. Jennings' own men did not obey and the result was that all three companies of Barbee's regiment left. Jennings tried to have Taul court-martialed but nothing came of it. The next spring, Taul says, he met Jennings in Cincinnati and they settled their argument "very amicably."

From all of this, I gather that Col. Jennings, though perhaps over-zealous and sometimes petty in his administration, was successful in establishing and maintaining the fort. I own a portrait of "General Jennings," who was my 3rd -great grandfather and a note with it says he was buried on the Miller farm near "the old brick home" which was the Jennings estate. Its location is one or two miles out of Lancaster on the Richmond Road but there is no marker of the grave.

The family succession is William Jennings, John Jennings, Nancy Jennings who married George W. Dunlap, Woodford G. Dunlap who married Ella Landram, Eugenia Potts Dunlap who married Clarence Linden Williamson. They were my parents.

Submitted by: Landram Williamson
2/2000