Site of Fort Mercer

Hugh Mercer Memorial Wall

Fort Mercer was named for Brigadier General Hugh Mercer, who had died from wounds suffered at the Battle of Princeton in January, 1777, several months before construction on the fort began.

Mercer was born in Scotland in 1725. He immigrated to Pennsylvania in 1747 and moved to Virginia in 1760. Mercer County is named for him.

This wall is located in the section of the park where Fort Mercer was, overlooking the Delaware River. The wall contains five bas relief sculptures, including a portrait of Hugh Mercer and depictions of him at the Battles of Trenton and Princeton.

Thaddeus Kościuszko Monument

A plaque on a small monument pays tribute to General Thaddeus Kościuszko for his role in engineering Fort Mercer. [3]

Born in Poland in 1746, Thaddeus Kościuszko was an officer and talented military engineer who came to America in 1776 to fight on the American side in the Revolutionary War. Kościuszko’s first assignments in America were in New Jersey, beginning with the fortifications at Fort Billingsport several miles west of here on the Delaware River.

There is a bust sculpture of Kosciuszko located about ten miles from here; it is part of the Polish American Congress Monument in Pennsauken.