FORT LIGONIER | PHOTO BY HUCK BEARD

Charlie Fagan, a Ligonier-bred history buff, made it his life mission to pinpoint the exact location of a “friendly fire” incident involving George Washington.

“It became his own kind of personal quest — and therefore, by osmosis, it became mine, too,” says his son, Chas Fagan, who adds that his father would put him to bed with stories of American history instead of children’s books.

Now, experts at Fort Ligonier in Westmoreland County have made what they call their biggest discovery in 60 years — since the fort itself was identified. They now believe that they have found and verified the formerly unknown location of George Washington’s “friendly fire” incident during the French and Indian War.

Charlie Fagan never accepted that the location of the incident was unknown — and, led by his son, many others have joined the quest for an answer. “It was kind of contagious,” Chas Fagan says.

“We know what happened,” he explains. “What we don’t know is where it happened.”

What happened, according to Fort Ligonier Director of Education Matt Gault: In November 1758, Virginian troops were taking refuge in the vicinity of Loyalhanna. They made the difficult decision to stay for the winter rather than pressing on and trying to fight the French for Fort Duquesne with cold and weak troops.

French troops and their Indigenous allies came to raid Loyalhanna on November 12 of that year; Colonel George Mercer sent his troops out to defend. When shots rang out, Washington believed this was the moment for his troops to join in and help Mercer’s men defeat the enemy.

Unfortunately, it was a particularly foggy morning, contributing to a grave error from Washington: he had mistaken his allies for their enemy, believing French and Indigenous troops stood between his men and Mercer’s. In reality, he was firing on his compatriots.

On his command, his men started shooting, but when Washington saw the flash of red and blue — his own colors — he realized his mistake, to his great horror.

He personally dashed in front of the lines of fire and began to use his sword to knock down the muskets, but it was not enough to save roughly 40 wounded, missing and dead casualties.

In his own “Remarks,” a personal diary of sorts, Washington — who referred to himself, in the third person, as “G.W.” in the tome — said, “A circumstance occurred [that] involved the life of G.W. in as much jeopardy as it had ever been before or since.”

The event, which Chas Fagan depicted in his painting “Flashpoint” (on display at the Fort Ligonier Museum), took place roughly two miles from the fort itself. (It is on private property and thus has not been precisely revealed to the public.) The discovery has given way to an archaeological hot spot for Jonathan Burns, leader of the veterans archaeology program and director of the cultural resource institute at Juniata College.

Since 2022, he and his staff of volunteering veterans and students have been at the site, having received permission from the property owners to investigate with metal detectors, ground penetrating radar and shovels as they continue to unveil more pieces that can help put together the details of the disaster.

All the information is giving those at Fort Ligonier a clearer historical picture — and helping them build their case against the inevitable cross examination from military historians and experts to legally identify the area as what they believe it to be.

They have found buttons, bullets, buckles and “screw and spill” — what they call remnants of reloading and replenishing ammunition between shots. Burns is ready to offer chart after chart using the data to demonstrate the precise location, the most likely angle the attack came from and where the remains of the casualties could be.

Though the battle was hundreds of years ago, Burns says the artifacts aren’t buried very far underground; they have just been the first investigators to dig deep enough. They plan to continue their work on the site in the foreseeable future and, in the next several years, they plan to eventually publish their studies and findings as the project develops.

“I’m here to say that we are pretty confident that we’ve done our due diligence here,” Burns said. “We’ve covered multiple lines of evidence to present this body of work and make the claim that [the exact location] has been found.”