No one knows exactly who painted the portrait of the dark-haired gentleman that crowns the elegant parlor fireplace in the Michael Rugh House. But Nancy Miller Smith, who spent years restoring this authentic Colonial and added a sympathetic addition, is pretty sure of the painting's subject.

"I believe it's him," she says, referring to Mr. Rugh, who built the house in the 1790s, when Murrysville was still very much the untamed frontier.

This lovingly restored two-story farmhouse with a timber-frame addition -- currently on the market for $1.29 million -- is one of five buildings on next Saturday's second annual Westmoreland County Historical Society Historic House Tour.

The oldest house on the tour, it bears the trappings of history. All of the interior paint colors (discovered after a year of painstaking scraping) are exact replicas of the vivid greens, yellows and reds that the sophisticated Philadelphian chose two centuries ago to reflect his status and affluence. Its original dirt floors are long gone, now covered with wide planks of fir that Mrs. Smith pulled out of the attic. But the summer kitchen's cavernous cooking fireplace still holds the swinging crane, or trammel, on which Mr. Rugh's wife, Phoebe, would have hung a kettle to boil water for tea. It now serves as the home's formal dining room.

The room's rustic stone walls -- covered with knotty pine siding when the interior designer bought the house in 1985 -- conjure a time when Native Americans outnumbered Colonists. A raiding party of Seneca Indians, in fact, burned Mr. Rugh's first log home in nearby Franklin Township in 1778. The attorney and his family became prisoners in what's now Oil City, and later, in Canada, they were held captive by the British.

The Rughs were eventually released, Mrs. Smith says, but their infant son George died in captivity and their daughter Mary stayed behind with the tribe. It wasn't until eight years later, while Mr. Rugh was serving in the newly formed U.S. House of Representatives, that Mary was ransomed back to the family for $10.

Just one room deep and 32 feet wide, the original part of the house is built of irregular courses of rough-cut sandstone that Mr. Rugh purchased from a quarry along present-day School Road. The farm's more than 300 original acres also held a barn, stillhouse and sawmill. During the 19th century, Mary and her husband, Jacob Haymaker, a future judge, built a second-story addition over the summer kitchen ell and added a gristmill.

In the 1920s, with the property whittled down to a gentlemanly three acres, another owner converted the structure into a restaurant. Longtime Murrysville residents might remember the Sunday chicken dinners Mrs. Meister served at the house in the 1940s. The goal of the house tour, says co-chair Linda Austin, is to take visitors memories back a little further, to pioneers like Mr. Rugh.

"People don't have a clue about Westmoreland County, but there is so much that relates to Western movement that happened here," she says.

Other stops on the self-driving tour include the Welty farmhouse, which was built around 1830; the Barnhart House, which dates to the mid-1850s; the Israel T. Sheffler House, built in Greensburg in 1857; and two historically significant homes in Hanna's Town, a settlement in nearby Hempfield that was burned to the ground by Native Americans in 1782. Proceeds from the house tour will go toward a long-anticipated education center in Hanna's Town.

Mrs. Smith spent four years searching for a historic home to restore, ranging as far north as Boston in the hunt. In the end, she was captivated by the Rugh House's long-hidden nine-over-six sash windows from the 1790s. One of the first projects she and her husband undertook was removing the second story above the summer kitchen to reveal its original single-story ell shape. Working with her son Mark, who holds a degree in historic preservation and restoration, they also rebuilt the walls on the first floor and returned the staircase to its original center-hall location.

Having to move the staircase was work, of course, but it also was a blessing in disguise because underneath the wood they found the ghost of the original chair rail. And that, says Mrs. Smith, allowed them to copy what was actually there instead of trying to imagine it. The mantel above the fireplace in the library -- one of five in the house -- was also reconstructed by duplicating a remnant left behind.

In 1986, Mrs. Smith and her first husband built a two-story timber-frame on the north side of the kitchen ell. The contemporary space designed by Pittsburgh architect Bill Joyce features two walls of floor-to-ceiling windows that overlook a Zen meditation garden and stretch almost to the top of the 28-foot ceiling.

"We wanted to be exposed and to enjoy the seasons," she says.

The main level holds an 18-by-14-foot family room, a 16-by-11-foot home office and a gourmet kitchen with a granite island, beechwood cabinetry and double sinks and ovens. The second level holds three bedrooms off an open landing overlooking the living room. There's also a wine cellar in the basement and a screened-in porch off the family room that faces an 1870 timber-frame barn the Smiths salvaged from Harrison City and rebuilt on the property. In the original house, a second bedroom has been turned into a luxurious master bath with a walk-in tiled shower and double pedestal sinks. And the entire house has been wired for stereo sound.

All told, the property is a happy marriage of old and new, a project that speaks as much to Murryville's illustrious history as it does one woman's dogged determination to return an old house to its proud frontier roots.

The Westmoreland County Historical Society Historic House Tour runs from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. next saturday. Tickets cost $25 in advance or $30 on tour day. Tickets are $50 each for a cocktail party from 6 to 8 p.m. Sept. 14 at the Barclay House in Greensburg. Reservations for the party are required by today by calling 724-836-1800.

Information on buying the Rugh House, 3968 Sardis Road, Murrysville: Mario Costanzo of Achieve Realty at 412-901-1725 or go to www. achieverealty.net (MLS No. 722135).