In the interest of preserving and appreciating our Pennsylvania heritage, a couple of footnotes might be added to Sunday’s front-page story about the weekend re-enactment of the Battle of Jumonville Glen. The F and I Grant Encampment of military re-enactors staged the battle at the Portersville Steam Show grounds on Route 19, near the Lawrence-Butler county border.

Fred Anderson, historian and author of “Crucible of War: The Seven Years’ War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754-1766,” argued persuasively that the French and Indian War was a precurser to World Wars I and II, pitting world powers in a struggle over imperial expansion. To be more specific, Anderson contends the Frend and Indian War — now known by the more accurate name the Seven Years’ War — was the first real world war.

And the spark that ignited the first real world war was the Battle of Jumonville Glen in southwestern Pennsylvania.

The battle — and the small glen where it unfolded — is named after Joseph Coulon de Villiers, Sieur de Jumonville, commander of a small band of French soldiers who were ambushed there in 1754. Col. George Washington led the band of British soldiers and Native American scouts that attacked and routed Jumonville’s troops.

Jumonville was wounded and taken prisoner. Washington extended the customary courtesies given to a captured officer. But as Washington attempted to interrogate his prisoner, one of Washington’s scouts, a Mingo chieftain named Half-King, savagely killed Jumonville with a single skull-crushing blow.

The most disturbing detail of the incident is that Washington never acknowledged it. His journal and correspondence make no mention whatsoever of the murder of Jumonville — a vicious slaying that took place under his command and before his eyes.

Professor Anderson, in his book, writes that the rarely mentioned details of Jumonville’s murder came from written accounts by others in Washinton’s raiding party.

Although Washington never mentioned it, the death of Jumonville had to have left a lasting imprint on the mental, emotional and spiritual fabric of the man who would become the father of our country; consequently, it leaves a mark on all of us. The incident shaded Washington’s regard for and dealings with Indian tribes, diplomacy, frontier development and the colonial army.

A generation after Jumonville’s death, the French army that had opposed Washington now sided with him as the American colonists fought Britain for independence. As for the native Americans, they had been largely subdued or driven west by colonial expansion — in many respects, expansion unleashed by Britain’s victory in the Seven Years’ War.

Today Jumonville is a United Methodist Church campground and spiritual retreat in Fayette County. Thousands of children and adults have visited there to experience God in nature.