Thanks for the link — I am hoping to get up to Pennsylvania with a camera and notebook sometime this year — there is a museum in Somerset which has a collection of preserved log cabins and farm buildings, and there are many limestone-block houses and barns in the Cumberland Valley.
Archibald was brought up on military charges of stealing weapons and hoarding powder (keeping them in his Blockhouse) but history shows, he was just “keeping it dry”.
He was an old guy by the time of the Rev war (brought from Northern Ireland to Cumberland Valley as a boy and moved west as a scout with the French and Indian campaign) but LT Col Lochry fought for the entire Rev War, in his end he was scalped in 1781 in Ohio. There is a monument to him at the site of Lochry’s massacre, south of Cincinnati, I keep meaning to go.
I would have liked to follow the trail of his lost expedition from Hannastown down to Wheeling, then down the Ohio. There is a DAR chapter there named after him. Ironically, Lochry’s last will and testament was probated in the Hannastown courthouse on 13 August 1782, the very day the town was attacked by Indians, Brit scouts, and tories, and courthouse destroyed destroyed by fire. The fact that it survived was testament to the bravery of another of my ancestors, Nancy Jack, wife of Sheriff Matthew Jack, who rescued the courthouse documents during the attack
The story of the attack on Hannastown that day and how the settlers managed to survive inside the stockade with about 23 functional weapons and the use of a classic deception campaign mounted by Matthew Jack et al, is for another time!
Lochry blockhouse
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/s_395261.html
Lochry final expedition
http://www.pa-roots.com/westmoreland/lochryexpedition.html