The image above is an artist's rendition of what Fort Bedford might have looked like. Since photography did not exist in the 1750's, the fort can only exist in an artist's rendition. This image of the fort is based on written descriptions of it. There were five stockade walls and therefore there were five bastions ~ the blockhouses that jutted out on the corners. Inside the stockade walls there were three log buildings in which to house supplies. And an enclosed gallery connected the stockade with the river below. In 1758, the colonies were still British, and so a British Red Ensign flies over the fort.
Henry Bouquet served as a Lieutenant Colonel in General John Forbes' British Army. He commanded one of the four battalions of the Royal American regiment in 1758. He was given the task of choosing a site near Raystown, the trading post of John Wray in the Cumberland COunty frontier and constructing a fort. General Forbes wrote to Bouquet on 20 May 1758:
"As it is now time to form our Magazines I must therefore give you the trouble to Contract for 120 Waggons to be ready to enter into the Kings pay at Carlisle by the first of June in order to transport the provisions from thence backwards to Rays town, where it will be necessary to have storehouses erected for the covering the same, and a good large spott of Ground Capable of Containing a body of Troops for the protection of the Stores. For this purpose one Engineer must choose a proper Spott of Ground for this fort, and all the Carpenters belonging to the troops may be ordered up there to gett it execute as soon as possible."
The mistake that people often make is to assume that the site that Bouquet chose for the fortification was directly on the spot occupied by the trading post established a few years prior by John Wray. Hugo Frear, in the book he edited for the 1958 Fort Bedford Bicentennial, noted (as would be apparent to anyone who studies the papers published as the Pennsylvania Archives), that the fortification was never referred to in contemporary documents as Fort Raystown. After the fortification was erected, it was consistently referred to as Fort Bedford. Also, letters sent from the region are found to bear datelines either as Camp near Raystown or variously as Camp at Rays Town. Only a few letters were noted as having been written at Fort Bedford after the fortification was formally named. The letter writers did not mix the two site names; they never wrote Fort Raystown, nor did they ever write Camp at (or near) Bedford. And that is very understandable in view of the fact that there never was a fort exactly on the site of Ray's trading post, nor was the town of Bedford in existence prior to the construction of the fort in the summer of 1758.
Traveling westward about a mile past Ray's Trading Post, Colonel Bouquet liked what he saw along the south bank of the Juniata River: a gently sloping hill that had a broad flat top. Colonel Bouquet wrote to General Forbes on 28 June to explain his choice of the location for the new fort:
Since my arrival I have been almost constantly on horseback, searching with Captain Gordon for a terrain suitable for the proposed plan. We have searched without avail, and have found only high ground without water, or water in low and vulnerable places. Of the two inconveniences we finally chose the least and decided on the location which seemed least objectionable. The fort intended to contain our stores will be on a height, and will have a communication with a water supply which cannot be cut off.
The construction of Fort Bedford took place during the summer of 1758, beginning at the end of June and being completed prior to mid-August.
The fort was located on the south side of the Juniata River on the crest of the hill that slopes steeply down to the edge of the water. Measurements taken from the Pleydell map of 1758 suggest that the fort measured roughly three hundred feet along its south wall, four hundred feet along its east wall, three hundred and fifty feet along its broken north wall and two hundred feet along its west wall. Hugo Frear estimated the size of the fort, according to the Lukens survey of 1766 as measuring 'roughly 250 by 280 feet.' The fort's exterior 'stockade' walls were constructed of upright logs set into the earth, and is believed by some to have been surrounded by a dry moat that measured eight feet deep, ten feet wide at the base and fifteen feet wide at the top. Two redoubts were located to the west and south of the fort. The fortification occupied a large portion of the block currently bordered to the east by Richard Street, to the west by Juliana Street and to the south by Pitt Street.
The east wall of the stockade is believed to have been located about sixty feet west of Richard Street. The east wall of the Anderson House which presently occupies the lot at 137 E. Pitt Street would have been located in line with the east stockade wall, but the building would have been positioned outside the stockade's south wall.
The opposing west wall was located a little over four lots away, each with sixty feet frontage. According to Hugo Frear, the west wall would have been located directly opposite to the entrance of the Hotel Pennsylvania Apartments (previously, the Penn-Bedford Hotel), which occupies the property at present-day 116 E. Pitt Street. If that is accurate, then the west wall of the Espy House, located at present-day 123 E. Pitt Street, would have been located in line with the stockade's west wall. The footprint of the Espy House, though, like that of the Anderson House, would not have been included within the stockade. The Espy House was built just outside of the stockade's south wall. According to the account included in the History of Bedford, Somerset and Fulton Counties, Pennsylvania and repeated by Hugo Frear in the Bicentennial book, a small gate was positioned in the west wall, which would have given access to a redoubt outside the stockade.
The stockade's south wall fronted along a section of the Forbes Road, once called the Bedford Road, now Pitt Street, running east to west. It was in that south wall that the main gate was positioned. Five buildings front Pitt Street at the present time, stretching the length of 300plus feet between and including the Espy and Anderson Houses. The three buildings, which presently occupy the half-block between the Espy and Anderson Houses, are occupied by the businesses of Knisely & Sons, Inc., Unique Stitches Quilt Shop, and the Golden Eagle Inn at 125, 127 and 131 E. Pitt Street respectively. The building which currently houses the Golden Eagle Inn was originally built circa 1795 by Doctor John Anderson as an inn called the Pennsylvania House. The building changed hands, for a while being known as the Farmer's Home and later as the National House. All five buildings on the block would have been built over what was a dry moat along the south wall of the stockade fort.
The stockade's north / northwest wall faced the river and overlooked the steep slope of its south bank. A gate faced the river with an adjoining stairway, protected by a stockade wall, proceeding down to the river.
Covering nearly an acre and a half, and enclosed within a continuous log stockade wall, Fort Bedford would have presented a formidable sight to anyone approaching it.
The most important misconception that people have about Fort Bedford is that they think that it was constructed first and foremost as a defensive structure into which everyone ~ soldiers and townsfolk alike ~ would flee when attacked by the French and their Amerindian allies. While the structure was most definitely constructed for defense, it was for the defense of supplies for which it was primarily constructed ~ that included bags of grain, barrels of rum and other 'perishable items' such as salted meat along with tools, weapons and such. It was a supply depot, in other words. Three log buildings were built within the stockade walls, but they were not built to house men. They were built to house wooden barrels, woven reed baskets and cloth sacks filled with supplies. Use as a defensive structure for the safety of people was only a secondary purpose of the structure.
E. Howard Blackburn, in his History of Bedford and Somerset Counties, Pennsylvania, published in 1906, stated: "On the Arrival of General Forbes at Raystown, on September 15, the condition of affairs in and about the fort was by no means orderly. Here within the narrow limits of a military fort, were congregated an army of nearly six thousand men, besides sutlers, clerks and wagoners . . ." Mr. Blackburn created an image that his fellow historians at the beginning of the 20th Century embraced ~ 6,000 plus men within the narrow limits of the military fort ~ not around, but within the fort. Now the stockade fort was estimated by Hugo Frear, from available records, as having measured 250 by 280 feet. That would have encompassed roughly 70,000 square feet. That seems like a gigantic area. And so 6,000 men, if they each took up only one square foot each, would have had for their own use about 11-1/2 square feet each ~ imagine a spot measuring 3 feet by 4 feet ~ that is what each man would have had to himself. It would have been a little cramped, and kind of difficult to move around. But wait ~ there's a lot of people whose bodies require a slightly bigger than a one foot square space. So assuming that half the men were not skinny bean-poles, and would have taken up two square feet spaces. Then add the backroll and other accoutrments that each man had to carry with him. And once you crammed everyone into the fort, they would all have had to stand around like we experience today in a crowded elevator, trying not to breathe too heavily against the neck of the person standing in front of us. Forget being able to lie down to sleep at night. The stockade fort was simply not the type of fort in which everyone spent their whole day. Those forts only existed in cowboy and wild west movies. And speaking of movie forts ~ did you ever see one in which 6,000 men were congregated? The largest number of soldiers shown in movie forts was probably fifty to one hundred.
Most people probably believe that the buildings within the stockade walls were used by soldiers in which to eat, sleep and spend their days, but that wouldn't have been the case of Fort Bedford. As noted previously, Fort Bedford was constructed to safeguard supplies and food for the advancing army. The soldiers slept in log-construction buildings. But those buildings were placed within four redoubts located to the west of the fort stretching from about the present-day intersection of Pitt and West Streets to just beyond where the fair grounds are located.
The redoubts were constructed of the ground and rocks dug up from their centers and also from ditches or moats surrounding them. The soldiers would begin to dig a large, square hole in the ground, piling the loosened dirt and rocks around the perimeter of that hole. As they dug down, the walls would grow higher, and that height would be augmented by dirt and rocks dug up in a ditch or moat surrounding the outside of the walls. The floor or base of the redoubt would be leveled as much as possible and then log structures would be constructed inside the earthen walls to house the soldiers.
Another misconception that people tend to believe in regard to forts such as Fort Bedford is that teamsters would drive their wagons into the stockade fort and then unhitch them and tie the horses or oxen somewhere inside the stockade. It was undoubtedly necessary for wagons to be driven into the stockade for the purpose of having the supplies they were hauling to be unloaded and the supplies carried into the storehouses. But the horses and wagons could not remain inside the stockade; it would have become too crowded. They would have been led out of the stockade and placed in a fenced-in pasture nearby.
And speaking of animals: while adventure tales, such as the one Hervey Allen (i.e. The Forest and the Fort) are made all the more exciting by imagining the hustle and bustle of the fort being accented by the sounds of sheep and cows being driven into and sheltered in the fort, there simply would not have been room for livestock inside the fort. There were meadows on the opposite, north side of the river and to the east of the fort where livestock could have been corralled within fenced areas. Sentries assigned to watch over those fenced in livestock would have guaranteed the safety of the animals. Just to give an idea of the large number of animals passing Fort Bedford: On the 1st of October 1758, Adam Hoops, a livestock trader from Carlisle reported to Colonel Bouquet that since June ~ just within four months' time ~ he had sent through 1,647 beeves and 684 sheep "Exclusive of the Cattle and Sheep from Virginia" Granted, a drove of beef cattle would have been corralled only a short period of time before being sent on westward to the troops at Fort Ligonier or eaten here, but to corral two and three hundred head of cattle for just a day or two would require logistical control.
The fields to the south of the stockade fort were utilized for drilling and exercising the troops. Another misconception about forts during the French and Indian and the American Revolutionary Wars, supported by movies and television shows was that the soldiers spent their days pacing back and forth on the ramparts looking out over the landscape for attacking French soldiers and Indians. Granted, while some soldiers would have done that during their duty periods, the majority of them were kept busy tending to the livestock and drilling and exercising to keep from getting lazy. In regard to Fort Bedford, the majority of soldiers were kept busy working at clearing brush, trees and rocks in the work of laying out the road between Fort Bedford and Fort Ligonier.
Fort Bedford was utilized as part of the Communication between Carlisle and the Forks of the Ohio during the duration of the Forbes Expedition of 1758 and 1759. Then it continued to be occupied by the British Army until Pontiac's Rebellion was quelled by the troops under Colonel Henry Bouquet in 1765.
The British Army evacuated the fort and the entire region that would, in 1771 become Bedford County. Fort Bedford stood vacant until 1775 when it served the Bedford County Militia's needs. It started to deteriorate through those years and by the time that President George Washington brought the Federal Army west to quell the Whiskey Rebellion, it was noted as being in too much disrepair to be of any use.
