The French & Indian War

In the year 1754, the conflict known in the New World as the French and Indian War, but known in European countries as the Seven Years War began between the British and the French and their American Indian allies.
Forts such as Fort Bedford depicted above, were constructed throughout the Pennsylvania frontier. [Click on the eagle icon below for additional information.]

   

 

 The image above is of the "King's House" and the powder magazine (on the right) built concurrent with the building of Fort Bedford in the summer of 1758 in the wilderness of Cumberland County in the Colony of Pennsylvania

 The half timber structure is likely the only extant manmade building associated with the French and Indian War. Felix Melan had served as the powder magazine's keeper, so after the revolutionary War the Proprietors sold the half timber structure to him. In the years after the Revolution, the fort was deteriorating and townspople began to take logs from it for use in their own homes. Melan must have followed the others because a second structure ~ three walls made out of dressed logs from Fort Bedford ~ was attached to the half-timber building's east end. Then, in the 1820's a simple wood frame structure was built onto the east end of the log addition to the east end of the half timber building. . The building was used, from that point on, as a residence ~ apparently first by Felix Melan and later by the Henry Wertz family. The building today is known as the Fortified Bedford House."Fortified Bedford House.com/" In regard to the log building that was known as the Comandant's or King's House, A two-story stone building was added to the north end and a two-story brick building was added to the south end after the American Revolutionary War. In that form, it existed as the Rising Sun Tavern operated by Henry Wertz. It all was destroyed in a fire in 1885 and no evidence of it remains to the present day on the southeast corner of the Pitt and Julianna Streets intersection. A large red brick building called the Ridenour Block fills that corner today.