The commissioners appointed to “run, mark out, and distinguish the boundary lines between the said counties of Cumberland and Bedford,” were Robert McCrea, William Miller, and Robert Moore. The boundaries of the new county embraced the entire southwestern portion of the State, from the Tuscarora Mountains westward to the Ohio and Virginia line. March 21, 1772, at the time Northumberland County was erected, the limits of Bedford County were more definitely explained. Northumberland County was given a part of the original territory of Bedford. The limits of Bedford were afterward reduced by the erection of Westmoreland in 1773, Huntingdon in 1787, Somerset in 1795, Cambria in 1804, Blair in 1846, and Fulton in 1850. The territory now wholly or in part of twenty of the present counties of Pennsylvania was in the original Bedford County. The name was taken from the county town, which was selected when the county was erected. The town was so called from the fort of that name, which had been given to it by Governor John Penn, when, by his order the fort at Raystown was built. This was in honor of one of the dukes of the house of Bedford, in England, during the latter part of the reign of King George II. The exact date of the building of Fort Bedford is not certain, but there is no doubt that the place of defense was celebrated during the French and Indian Wars. It was one of the earliest settlements west of the Allegheny Mountains. Mr. Jones in his History of the Juniata Valley claims that the earliest settlement on the Raystown Branch of the Juniata was made by a man named Ray in 1751, who built three cabins near where Bedford now stands. He further says: “In 1755 the province agreed to open a wagon road from Fort Loudon, in Cumberland County, to the forks of the Youghiogheny River. For this purpose three hundred men were sent up, but for some cause or other the project was abandoned.” This road was completed in 1758, when the allied forces of Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania marched against Fort Duquesne, under General John Forbes. A fort was built at this same time at Raystown, and called Fort Bedford. Mr. Charles N. Hickok, of Bedford, who has written much of the history of that county, claims that Rae, as he spells the name, defended his settlement as early as 1751, almost a decade before the soldiers of Forbes’ exposition arrived there. The settlement was known as “Camp at Raystown” before General Forbes was encamped there, and his first official papers were so dated. Early in April, 1757, Governor Denny ordered Colonel John Armstrong and his battalion to encamp at Raystown, “a well chosen situation on this side of the Allegheny Hills between two Indian roads.” In June following Captain Hance Hamilton led a scouting party from the “Fort at Carlisle to Raystown, but encountered no Indians.”