The 15 Minutes That Changed the World — A Ranger Presents Archaeological Findings
Join Park Ranger Brian Reedy on June 6 at 6:30 p.m. at Addison Methodist Chapel for groundbreaking findings on the historic Jumonville Glen skirmish.
Fifteen minutes. That is how long the shooting lasted at Jumonville Glen on the morning of May 28, 1754. And those fifteen minutes set off a chain of events that would shape two continents.
On June 6 at 6:30 p.m., Supervisory Park Ranger Brian Reedy will present the findings of the first serious archaeological investigation ever conducted at Jumonville Glen, at the Addison Methodist Chapel on Main Street – the National Road – in Addison, Pennsylvania. This is a presentation worth making time for.
Here is the backstory. In 1754, a 22-year-old Lieutenant Colonel named George Washington led a 40-man raiding party through a rainy night in western Pennsylvania. Guided by Seneca allies under Chief Tanacharison, they surrounded a French encampment tucked into a rocky glen. At dawn, a shot rang out. The French – who had posted no sentries – returned fire. The exchange lasted about fifteen minutes. When it was over, thirteen Frenchmen were dead and twenty-one were captured. One British soldier was killed.
The French called it an assassination. Britain and France were not formally at war. The incident became known as the Jumonville Affair, and France used it as justification to escalate hostilities that eventually became the French and Indian War – the North American theater of the Seven Years’ War, a global conflict that reshaped empires from India to the Caribbean and set the stage for the American Revolution itself. All of it, traced back to fifteen minutes in a glen in Fayette County.
For generations, historians accepted the site’s identity largely on tradition. That changed when Reedy led a four-week archaeological investigation that turned up musket balls and other artifacts from the 1754 skirmish. The evidence confirmed what people had long believed but never proven. “We can now, with high confidence, conclude the site we protect is indeed the location of the May 28, 1754 skirmish,” Reedy said at the time.
Brian Reedy is the Fort Necessity National Battlefield’s chief of interpretation – and the man who dug up the proof. Hearing him present the findings in person, a short drive up the National Road, is an opportunity that does not come along every day.
June 6. 6:30 p.m. Addison Methodist Chapel, Main Street, Addison. Free and open to the public.