By Cathy Ingalls, Albany Regional Museum board member
How many times have we wanted to ask a relative or a friend about something we just learned but we couldn’t because they had passed on?
That’s what happened to me when I found out that my grandfather, C.E. Ingalls, publisher of the Corvallis Gazette-Times from the 1910s until 1950, had donated to Horner Museum, now known as the Benton County Historical Museum, a stirrup lost by Army Lt. Phil Sheridan in the 1850s while he was posted to Fort Hoskins, about 20 miles west of Corvallis.
Sheridan later became a respected cavalry general for the Union during the Civil War.
Drawing of Fort Hoskins. Content By FortWikiSysop - Content is available under Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike.
According to records at the museum, the soldiers thinking to play a joke on the newly arrived Sheridan provided the lieutenant with a horse, asking him if he wanted to try it out by riding across a field. Sheridan said yes.
The horse, known to the soldiers as one that liked to buck, took off at a gallop trying to dislodge the lieutenant as it went. But the story goes that Sheridan stayed on even though he lost a stirrup.
What the soldiers didn’t realize was that Sheridan was the best rider at West Point, from where he had just graduated.
Later as the story goes, a farmer found the stirrup and then somehow it made its way into my grandfather’s hands.
So much for that mystery, but there is no mystery about why Fort Hoskins was built when and where it was.
The fort was one of three constructed by the Army to monitor Native Americans living at the Siletz Agency after the Rogue River Indian War. The dual purpose of Fort Hoskins that overlooked the eastern entrance trail to the reservation was to prevent the Indians and settlers from attacking each other.
Later when the Civil War broke out, the fort was no longer needed for its original purpose and instead it was garrisoned to keep watch on pro-Confederacy Oregonians.
When the war ended in 1865, the fort was decommissioned and buildings were sold off or dismantled.
Map of Fort Hoskins. Content By FortWikiSysop - Content is available under Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike.
The fort, named for 1st Lt. Charles Hoskins, who was killed in the Battle of Monterrey in 1846 during the Mexican War, was not traditional looking as it did not have a blockhouse or other fortifications. Only a low picket fence surrounded the fort, which contained 15 to 20 buildings, including officers’ quarters, soldiers’ barracks, a storage area, guardhouse, bakery, hospital, barns and a corral.
It seems that the guardhouse was primarily used to confine drunken soldiers, a few Native Americans and deserters.
There was a two-acre parade ground that boasted a 100-foot tall flagpole measuring two feet in diameter at the bottom. Years later, a jar containing coins and a company roster were discovered buried at its base.
For Hoskins Grounds. By 46percent - Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7589800
Reports indicate that up to 150 people were assigned to the fort, where life was considered to be uneventful as there was a lack of meaningful things to do, discipline was lax, morale was low, and a lot of carousing and desertion took place.
In the 1970s, former Oregon State University professor David Brauner began leading excavations at the fort site, which was listed in 1974 on the National Register of Historic Places.
In 2002, Benton County opened Fort Hoskins Historical Park, and in 2012 the commander’s home was moved back to the fort from nearby Pedee.
The fort can be found at 22953 Hoskins Road, Philomath. They are often open for visitors check https://www.co.benton.or.us/parks/page/fort-hoskins-historical-park regarding access.