Laura Fisher has devoted much of her time in recent years to promoting a complicated historical event on whose name experts can't quite agree.

John Heller, Post-Gazette Laura Fisher. Click photo for larger image. Age: 49 Background: She was born in Summit, N.J., and moved with her family to Pittsburgh when she was in fourth grade. Occupation: Director of French & Indian War 250 Inc. and senior vice president of the Allegheny Conference In the news: Fisher will be honored tomorrow night when the Fort Pitt Museum Associates presents her with the John Forbes Medal. Education: Bachelor's degree in art history from Georgetown University; master's degree in art history from the University of Pittsburgh Family: Fisher and her husband Chester have two children, Madeleine, 10, and Aiken, 8. Quote: "Colonial history had been viewed as an Eastern Pennsylvania story. But if you look at the state's Web sites now, we are getting the message out that important events in our early history took place around Pittsburgh."

That problem, however, has not discouraged Fisher, director of French & Indian War 250 Inc. and senior vice president of the Allegheny Conference on Community Development.

She will be honored tomorrow with the John Forbes Medal, presented by the Fort Pitt Museum Associates. Other medal recipients have included Robert Griffing, a painter known for his Western Pennsylvania historical scenes, former State Poet Samuel Hazo and Meadowcroft Museum founder Albert Miller.

The award is named for British Gen. John Forbes. In 1758, he forced the French to abandon their settlement, called Fort Duquesne, at the Point in Pittsburgh, and replaced it with Fort Pitt.

Laurie Burke, president of the museum associates, said Forbes and Fisher have a lot in common.

"They both had to blaze trails through the wilderness in pursuit of an important goal," she said.

"Thanks to Laura's efforts more people have come to learn about the historical events that happened here," Burke said. "The real shot heard round the world was not at Lexington and Concord, but the shots at Jumonville Glen."

Lexington and Concord were where Massachusetts militia faced British regulars in April 1775, touching off the American Revolution. Jumonville, in Fayette County, is where Virginia militia and their Indian allies, led by a young George Washington, skirmished with French troops in 1754.

Trained as an art historian and experienced in economic development, Fisher came to head French & Indian War 250 via the Working Together Consortium, a group devoted to fostering regional growth.

Collaborating with museum curators, park directors, historians, National Park Service superintendents, business people, governors and members of Congress, Fisher has overseen what has grown into a 20-state 250th anniversary commemoration of what Winston Churchill called the "first world war."

In North America, the conflict involved Great Britain, France, Spain, Canadian settlers, English colonists and more than a dozen Native American tribes. All were vying for control of Canada and the heart of the continent between the Allegheny Mountains and the Mississippi River.

French & Indian War 250 began, under the name "War for Empire Consortium," as an effort to find ways to collectively market the region's many 18th-century historic sites. The original name, however, had the potential to cause confusion.

"Someone asked me if 'War for Empire' had something to do with 'Star Wars,' " Fisher joked in a recent interview.

What Americans usually refer to as the French and Indian War was part of a worldwide conflict known in Europe as the Seven Years' War and in Canada as the War of Conquest. Most of the early skirmishes and the first major battle took place in southwestern Pennsylvania.

"Ultimately, we went with French & Indian War 250, since that is what it is called in most [U.S.] textbooks," she said.

About the same time that plans for commemorative events were getting under way, Fred Anderson published his history of the conflict, "The Crucible of War."

Anderson, a professor of history at the University of Colorado, wrote that control of the Forks of the Ohio, where Pittsburgh now stands, was a focus of the war. He also described the strong connections between the French and Indian War, which ended in 1763, and the American Revolution, which began 12 years later.

"He was telling our story, and we already had all these wonderful sites," Fisher said. They include the Fort Pitt Museum and Bushy Run Battlefield, Fort Necessity National Battlefield, Jumonville Glen, Braddock's Grave, Fort Ligonier and the Braddock's Field Historical Society Museum.

The effort has drawn the attention of the Rendell administration.

"Colonial history had been viewed as an Eastern Pennsylvania story," she said. "But if you look at the state's Web sites now, we are getting the message out that important events in our early history took place around Pittsburgh."

The state also has provided $250,000 for marketing and advertising.

Interest in the commemoration has expanded beyond Pennsylvania's borders. Governors from 20 states have pledged cooperation in the multiyear celebration. Fisher estimated that over the past 2¹/₂ years she has talked with 50 members of Congress who have French and Indian War sites in their districts.

Commemoration events began in April with the reopening of the Fort Pitt Museum in Point State Park and continued over the spring and summer at Jumonville Glen, and at nearby Fort Necessity, where Washington surrendered for the first and only time in his military career.

Next year will see the opening of a new visitors center at Fort Necessity and a redesigned gallery at the Fort Ligonier Museum, part of a multiyear expansion and renovation project, among other events.

One of the challenges in developing public interest in a period before the Declaration of Independence in 1776 is to relate it to familiar people and events.

Fisher pointed to the successful efforts to obtain an 11-page, handwritten manuscript in which the older Washington described his adventures as a young soldier in Western Pennsylvania.

"Our long-term goal is to link the historic sites and the 'Washington Remarks' do that in a dramatic way," she said.

"Among the thousands of documents Washington wrote are very few personal documents. The 'Remarks' are extremely important in understanding Washington the man."

The more than 200-year-old manuscript cost $834,000 and was purchased primarily with funds from the Laurel Foundation.

"We were lucky we bought it when we did," Fisher said. "The market for Washington material has since gone through the roof. We wouldn't be able to touch it now."

French & Indian War 250 also has teamed up with WQED Multimedia to produce the "War That Made America," a four-hour documentary scheduled to air next fall on public television stations across the country.

One way to interest viewers in a film about lesser-known events is to relate them to something with which they are already familiar, Fisher said.

"We started with the one thing that people know -- the American Revolution -- and we take people back to show them, through the events of the French and Indian War, why the Revolution happened the way it did."