After more than a century of settlement following Jamestown, the Blue Ridge and Shenandoah Valley drew Scotch-Irish and German settlers into Virginia’s frontier, but French claims to the Ohio country and Virginia’s response helped bring war to the region. In 1749, as George Washington began surveying along the Potomac headwaters, Celeron claimed the Ohio drainage for France; when the French refused to withdraw, Washington became commander of the Virginia forces and faced the problem of defending a vast, rugged frontier with limited men and supplies. He responded by creating a chain of forts about a day’s ride apart, using forts built by the Virginia Regiment, county militia forts, and fortified settler homes from the Potomac River to the North Carolina border. Among these was Fort Edwards on Joseph Edwards’s land on the Cacapon River, an important link west of Fort Loudoun in Winchester and near the largest battle of the Virginia frontier on April 18, 1756, when Capt. Mercer and his men fought a larger Indian force and Mercer, Lt. Thomas Carter, and fifteen men were left dead in the field. Fort Pleasant, first called Waggener’s Lower Fort, became one of the most important posts in the chain, built by the Virginia Regiment to Washington’s specifications, supporting settlement in Hampshire County, serving later as a supply collection point for Fort Pitt, and for a time housing the Hampshire County Court. Fort Ashby was also built by the Regiment to Washington’s plan, and Daniel Morgan served there before being ambushed and severely wounded while traveling to Edwards’s. Pearsal’s Fort, associated with early settler Job Pearsal and mentioned by Washington in 1755 and 1756, guarded a difficult pass, kept communication open, served as a supply base for South Branch forts and Virginia troops at Fort Cumberland, and protected messengers, convoys, and nearby settlers. Other Hampshire County settler forts are less well documented, including Thomas Parker’s place on the North River, William’s Fort at Hanging Rock, and Henry Enoch’s fortified site at the Forks of Capon, which also became part of Washington’s chain after Braddock’s defeat. Southern Virginia was likewise well settled by the opening of the French and Indian War, and forts in the James and Roanoke River regions were as important as those farther north, seeing comparable action and settler suffering.