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Fort Bedford was a French and Indian War-era British military fortification located at the present site of Bedford, Pennsylvania. The fort was a star-shaped log fortress erected in the summer of 1758.
Fort Bedford was constructed during the French and Indian War by British troops under the command of Colonel Henry Bouquet by order of General John Forbes. The fort was one of a string of British forts and blockhouses designed to protect British supply lines on the Forbes Road, a pioneer trail built by the British during their invasion of the Ohio Country and campaign against the French garrison at Fort Duquesne, modern day Pittsburgh.
After General Edward Braddock's campaign to take the forks of the Ohio River ended in disaster, General Forbes was placed in command of a new expedition to capture the strategic point guarded by Fort Duquesne. Forbes vowed not to make the same mistakes as his predecessor.
Braddock had led a small invasion force launched from western Maryland. His poorly defended lines of supply and communication were soon compromised. Forbes intended to launch a large invasion from eastern Pennsylvania by hacking a new pioneer wagon road over the Allegheny Mountains. His plan called for a string of forts and blockhouses to guard the supply road from hostile bands of Native Americans.
After constructing Fort Juniata Crossing near present Breezewood, Pennsylvania, Colonel Bouquet began planning Fort Bedford as the next step towards the Ohio Country.
Bouquet chose a spot adjacent to the Juniata River west of a strategic gap in the mountains called "the narrows". Keeping with the overall plan, the new site was about one day's march from the previous fort. After briefly being referred to simply as the "camp at Raystown", the new encampment was dubbed Fort Bedford in honor of John Russell, the 4th Duke of Bedford.
Bouquet searched the area for some time to find a site that was both defensible and had access to fresh water. Since he could find no spot in the area with both these characteristics, the builders placed the fort on a high spot and devised an innovative fortified elevated gallery that provided access to and water from the Juniata River. It is believed that Fort Bedford was the only fort ever constructed in America with this arrangement.
The exact location of the fort has been lost to history. Several archaeological digs have failed to yield any solid evidence of the fort's site. Using period documents, historians believe it was located somewhere along what is now East Pitt Street in the Borough of Bedford.
The fort was a log star-shaped fortress with five bastions. The walls enclosed an area of approximately 1.45 acres (5,900 m2). The main gate was located on the south side of the structure and was protected by an earthen ravelin. The north side, which faced the river, featured the unique gallery to the riverbank. The non-river sides were protected by a ditch estimated at between 4 and 9 feet (1.2 to 2.7 m) in depth.
Fort Bedford has been described as the "Grand Central Station of the Forbes campaign" during the French and Indian War. It was used as a staging ground and central storage area for the British Army's push westward towards the French garrisons. Colonel Bouquet and General Forbes used it as their headquarters for portions of the campaign. After the bulk of the army moved westward, the fort was garrisoned by about 800 men. The fort saw little action during the war and was used mainly as a forward supply base.
As the French and Indian War wound down in the frontier, the fort's garrison was moved to other forts. Captain Lewis Ourry, in command of the fort at the outbreak of Pontiac's War, listed just twelve Royal Americans on his roster to guard the fort and more than 90 local families. Despite the weakness of the garrison, the fort was not directly attacked by native warriors. Instead they raided several local settlements and attacked supply trains bound for the fort, apparently hoping to starve out the garrison. The arrival of reinforcements under Colonel Bouquet in July 1763 ended most of the local raiding.
Details of the fort during the inter-war years are sketchy and controversial. The British Army abandoned the fort sometime during this period. According to the autobiography of James Smith, leader of a colonial movement known as the "Black Boys", he and his men captured the fort in 1769. This incident is documented only in Smith's autobiography, so it may be a tall tale, although historian Gregory Evans Dowd (War Under Heaven: Pontiac, the Indian Nations, & the British Empire, 2002) notes that there is some corroborating evidence, and that some other historians believe the tale to be true. Smith called this the first British fort to fall in the era of the American Revolution. The incident was portrayed in the 1939 Hollywood film Allegheny Uprising , starring John Wayne as James Smith.
In October 1766, Garrett Pendergrass petitioned John Penn, the Provincial Governor for compensation for the use of his property. In his petition, Pendergrass claimed that "since the King's Troops evacuated that Fort, and the Avenues thereof..." In 1769 when James Smith attacked the fort to illegally free some legally arrested individuals, Fort Bedford was no longer a British Fort. The court records of Cumberland County maintain absolutely no records of Smith's capture of the 'British Fort'. No one knew that the fort had been captured until thirty years later when Smith published his self-congratulatory autobiography.
The fort was garrisoned by the Patriot-sympathizing Bedford County militia during the Revolutionary War. The fort guarded the frontier settlers against raids by British-allied native bands.
After the American War of Independence ended, the treaties of the 1780s such as the Treaty of Fort Stanwix and the Treaty of Fort McIntosh reduced the fear of Indian raids in the area of the fort. Sometime during this period, the fort was abandoned and demolished. George Washington stopped at the town of Bedford while leading troops into Western Pennsylvania to put down the Whiskey Rebellion in 1794. Records of the army's stay at that time seem to indicate that the fort had already been razed.
A reconstruction of one of the five log blockhouses was built near the site in 1958 in honor of the fort's 200th anniversary. The style of the reconstruction is not necessarily the style of the original blockhouses of Fort Bedford as no contemporary images of the fort exist. Unlike the 'cube' form of most French and Indian War blockhouses, the reconstruction resembles more so blockhouses from the 1870s of the American Midwest. It is currently a museum operated by The Bedford Heritage Trust.
Fort Duquesne was a fort established by the French in 1754, at the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers. It was later taken over by the British, and later the Americans, and developed as Pittsburgh in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. Fort Duquesne was destroyed by the French before its British conquest during the Seven Years' War, known as the French and Indian War on the North American front. The British replaced it, building Fort Pitt between 1759 and 1761. The site of both forts is now occupied by Point State Park, where the outlines of the two forts have been laid in brick.
Kittanning was an 18th-century Native American village in the Ohio Country, located on the Allegheny River at present-day Kittanning, Pennsylvania. The village was at the western terminus of the Kittanning Path, an Indian trail that provided a route across the Alleghenies between the Ohio and Susquehanna river basins.
Fort Pitt was a fort built by British forces between 1759 and 1761 during the French and Indian War at the confluence of the Monongahela and Allegheny rivers, where the Ohio River is formed in western Pennsylvania. It was near the site of Fort Duquesne, a French colonial fort built in 1754 as tensions increased between Great Britain and France in both Europe and North America. The French destroyed Fort Duquesne in 1758 when they retreated under British attack.
Point State Park is a Pennsylvania state park which is located on 36 acres (150,000 m2) in Downtown Pittsburgh, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, USA, at the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers, forming the Ohio River.
The Battle of Fort Duquesne was a British assault on the French-controlled Fort Duquesne that was repulsed with heavy losses on 14 September 1758, during the French and Indian War.
The Battle of Fort Ligonier was a battle of the French and Indian War. On 12 October 1758, French and Indian forces directed from nearby Fort Duquesne were repulsed in an attack on the British outpost of Fort Ligonier, then still under construction.
Fort Venango was a small British fort built in 1760 near the present-day site of Franklin, Pennsylvania. It replaced Fort Machault, a French fort built at the confluence of French Creek and the Allegheny River. In August 1759, near the end of the French and Indian War, after the French surrender of Fort Niagara to the British, the French burned Fort Machault and retreated north. Fort Venango was built during summer 1760. It was attacked and destroyed in June 1763 during Pontiac's War.
Fort Ligonier is a British fortification from the French and Indian War located in Ligonier, Pennsylvania, United States. The fort served as a staging area for the Forbes Expedition of 1758. During the eight years of its existence as a garrison, Fort Ligonier was never taken by an enemy. It served as a post of passage to the new Fort Pitt, and during Pontiac's War of 1763, was a vital link in the British communication and supply lines. It was attacked twice and besieged by the Native Americans, prior to the decisive victory at Bushy Run in August of that year. The fort was decommissioned from active service in 1766. Today, there is a museum next to the reconstructed fort. Inside the museum there are artifacts from the battle. An individual can take a guided tour of the fort, and on Fort Ligonier Days, the fort's cannons are fired.
Fort Loudoun was a fort in colonial Pennsylvania, one of several forts in colonial America named after John Campbell, 4th Earl of Loudoun. The fort was built in 1756 during the French and Indian War by the Second Battalion of the Pennsylvania Regiment under Colonel John Armstrong, and served as a post on the Forbes Road during the Forbes expedition that successfully drove the French away from Fort Duquesne. The fort remained occupied through Pontiac's War and served as a base for Colonel Henry Bouquet's 1764 campaign. In the 1765 Black Boys Rebellion, Fort Loudoun was assaulted by angry settlers, when their guns were confiscated after they destroyed supplies intended for Native Americans. The garrison retreated to Fort Bedford and the fort was abandoned.
George Washington's military experience began in the French and Indian War with a commission as a major in the militia of the British Province of Virginia. In 1753 Washington was sent as an ambassador from the British crown to the French officials and Indians as far north as present-day Erie, Pennsylvania. The following year he led another expedition to the area to assist in the construction of a fort at present-day Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Before reaching that point, he and some of his men, along with Mingo allies led by Tanacharison, ambushed a French scouting party. Its leader was killed, although the exact circumstances of his death were disputed. This peacetime act of aggression is seen as one of the first military steps leading to the global Seven Years' War. The French responded by attacking fortifications Washington erected following the ambush, forcing his surrender. Released on parole, Washington and his troops returned to Virginia.
Fort Pitt Museum is an indoor/outdoor museum that is administered by the Senator John Heinz History Center in downtown Pittsburgh, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania in the United States. It is at the confluence of the Monongahela and Allegheny Rivers, where the Ohio River is formed. Fort Pitt Museum is surrounded by Point State Park, a Pennsylvania state park named for the geographically and historically significant point that is between the rivers. This piece of land was key to controlling the upper reaches of the Ohio River Valley and western Pennsylvania, before, during and after the French and Indian War as well as the American Revolution.
The Forbes Expedition was a British military campaign to capture Fort Duquesne, led by Brigadier-General John Forbes in 1758, during the French and Indian War. While advancing to the fort, the expedition built the Forbes Road. The Treaty of Easton served to cause a loss of Native American support for the French, resulting in the French destroying the fort before the expedition could arrive on November 24.
Boquet is an unincorporated community in Penn Township, Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, United States.
The Forbes Road, a historic military roadway in what was then British America, was initially completed in 1758 from Carlisle, Pennsylvania, to the French Fort Duquesne at the junction of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers in what is now downtown Pittsburgh, via Fort Loudon, Fort Lyttleton, Fort Bedford and Fort Ligonier. The road, initially about 220 miles long, was named for Brigadier General John Forbes, the commander of the 1758 British-led expedition that built the road during the French and Indian War. The Forbes Road and Braddock's Road were the two main land routes that the British cut west through the wilderness during the war. The task was complicated by the Appalachian Mountains' steep northeast-to-southwest ridges, a generally broken terrain between the ridges, heavy forestation, and numerous swamps and rivers.
Fort Granville was a militia stockade located in the colonial Province of Pennsylvania. Its site was about a mile from Lewistown, in what is now Granville Township, Mifflin County. Active from 1755 until 1756, the stockade briefly sheltered pioneer settlers in the Juniata River valley during the French and Indian War. The fort was attacked on August 2, 1756, by a mixed force of French troops and Native Americans, mostly Lenape warriors. The fort’s garrison surrendered the strongpoint to these attackers, who celebrated their victory and destroyed the stockade.
Fort Juniata Crossing, also known as Fort Juniata or simply Juniata Crossing, was a British French and Indian War era fortification located along the Forbes Road, near a strategic ford of the Raystown Branch of the Juniata River about 2.4 miles (3.9 km) west of the current site of Breezewood, Pennsylvania. It was built in 1758 as a fortified supply depot, to support the British Army during the Forbes Expedition. After the campaign, it fell into disrepair and was abandoned in 1763.
Fort Shirley was a military fort located in present-day Shirleysburg, Pennsylvania. It was built in 1755 by George Croghan and later maintained by the Province of Pennsylvania during the French and Indian War. Fort Shirley was part of a defensive line of forts built in Pennsylvania during 1755 and 1756, at the start of hostilities with the French and their allied Native Americans. Although two French and Native American war parties were sent to capture it, Fort Shirley was never attacked. The fort served as the launching site for the Kittanning Expedition in September 1756, after which it was abandoned.
James Smith was a frontiersman, farmer and soldier in British North America. In 1765, he led the "Black Boys", a group of Pennsylvania men, in a nine-month rebellion against British rule ten years before the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War. He participated in the Revolutionary War as a colonel of the Pennsylvania militia and was a legislator in the Kentucky General Assembly. Smith was also an author, publishing a memoir about his captivity by Native Americans in his Narrative in 1799, and in 1812 an in-depth analysis of Native American fighting techniques, based on observations during his captivity.
John Fraser was a fur trader licensed by the Province of Pennsylvania for its western frontier, an interpreter with Native Americans, a gunsmith, a guide and lieutenant in the British army, and a land speculator. He served in several British campaigns against the French and their allies in the vicinity of Fort Duquesne. Later in life he became a prominent landowner and was appointed justice of the peace, serving on the court until his death in 1773.
Fort Lyttleton, also known as Fort Littleton, was a militia stockade located in the colonial Province of Pennsylvania. Its site was about a mile from Fort Littleton, Pennsylvania, near Dublin Township, in what is now Fulton County, Pennsylvania. Active from 1755 until 1763, the stockade was initially garrisoned by 75 Pennsylvania troops but at times had as many as 225. It was in use until 1759, then abandoned and reoccupied briefly in 1763 during Pontiac's War.
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