By the mid-1700s, British leaders recognized that the French had established trading posts across the interior of North America through the Mississippi River system and the Great Lakes, while the Appalachian Mountains were considered the English western boundary. After George Washington's mission to the French commander at Fort LaBeour failed and his defeat at Fort Necessity in 1754, King George II sent Gen. Edward Braddock to America in 1755 with orders to defeat the French. Braddock brought regular British troops, cannons, and supplies and built a shorter road toward Fort Cumberland on his way to Fort Duquesne, passing through Hampshire County by Bloomery, Forks of Capon, Spring Gap Mountain, and Ferry Field before entering Maryland, while some supplies also moved along the Great Wagon Road past Joseph Edwards's home. George Washington, Daniel Morgan, and Daniel Boone accompanied Braddock, but when British forces met the French and their Indian allies near present-day Pittsburgh, the British were badly defeated after about four hours of fighting, losing nearly two-thirds of their force, and Braddock suffered a fatal wound. Buried in the road back to Ft. Cumberland, Braddock was followed by an army that withdrew to winter quarters in Philadelphia and never returned to the Virginia frontier. The defeat damaged British prestige among Native Americans, encouraged plunder over trade, and turned Braddock's twelve-foot road into a route from Indian lands to white settlements. After the defeat in July 1755, with the frontiers of Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania exposed, Col. George Washington, as commander of the Virginia Regiment, organized frontier defense from Ft. Cumberland to the North Carolina border through a chain of forts headquartered at Winchester and anchored by Ft. Loudoun. Using the site of Joseph Edwards's fortified homestead, he established the first link in that chain, a fort that guarded the road to the South Branch Valley forts and to Ft. Cumberland and served as the first stopping point where supplies were directed north or south. By October 1755 Washington's orders referred to a fort at Edwards's location, though no drawings or narrative descriptions survive to show exactly what it looked like. The fort sheltered soldiers protecting supply movements between Ft. Loudoun and Pearsall's fort at present-day Romney and was also meant to encourage settlers to remain, farm, and fight. On April 18, 1756, Capt. John Fenton Mercer and men of his company, delayed at the fort by flooding on the Cacapon River, left in search of Indians and were ambushed north of the fort near Edwards Run; Mercer, Ensign Thomas Carter, and fifteen soldiers were killed by a large party of Indians and French soldiers in the largest engagement with French and Indians in Virginia during the war. The event shocked leaders in Williamsburg and terrified frontier settlers. In late 1758 the road by Joseph Edwards's was again busy as soldiers and supplies moved west, and in November 1758 Gen. John Forbes captured Ft. Duquesne, while the fall of Forts Carillon, Niagara, and Quebec in 1759 effectively ended the war. After later negotiations and the Treaty of Paris, Great Britain became master of North America, immigration increased, and settlement pushed westward despite the Line of the Alleghenies. Joseph Edwards died in 1781, his land passed to his heirs, and after a court settlement in 1787 the plantation and house went to his grandson Samuel Edwards, who sold half the property to Elias Boston before eventually moving away, but the local community retained the memory of the fort and its story.