At the end of the Revolutionary War, Seneca warriors and British soldiers attacked Hanna's Town as part of a larger effort to weaken the frontier and push settlers east after years of conflict over ownership of the Ohio Valley. Shifting borders, betrayed treaties, raids on American settlements, and massacres at Native American villages had escalated tension on the frontier. On July 13, 1782, while court was in session and the town was busy, farmers raised the alarm at 2 p.m. that a large force of Seneca and British rangers was approaching. Residents had only enough time to gather their families, weapons, and belongings before fleeing to the fort. As the attack began, gunfire and burning buildings threw the town into chaos, but the people withdrew to the fort and held out until dark with only twenty men and nine guns in good order. The fort was one of the few structures spared, and because it stood, most of Hanna's Town survived, though the town itself never recovered and the county seat moved to present-day Greensburg in 1786. As the danger spread, Sheriff Matthew Jack warned scattered farmsteads and later helped organize a rescue party that reached the fort, court officials saved county records by carrying them there, thirteen-year-old Peggy Shaw rescued a young child near the fort entrance before being mortally wounded, Seneca leader Guyasuta took part in the attack, and Elizabeth Hanna and her oldest daughter Jane were captured at nearby Miller's Station and taken by force to Fort Niagara, where they were imprisoned in Canada until the 1783 Treaty of Paris officially ended the war.
