Death came quickly -- and sometimes violently -- on the Pennsylvania frontier in the 1750s. Babies born at the French settlement of Fort Duquesne often died within days of birth. Healthy young men were carried off by fevers. A stroll in the forest could end with a gunshot and the flash of a sharp knife.

Father Denys Baron, chaplain at Fort Duquesne, presided over "the customary ceremonies" following the death on July 5, 1755, of Pierre Simard. He had been killed and scalped, the priest wrote.

His assailants were most likely Indian allies of the British, whose army was bearing down on the French fort. His death was soon avenged.

On July 9, the British commander, Edward Braddock, was fatally wounded and his army was destroyed. Braddock's defeat, in the area east of Pittsburgh that now bears his name, meant the Forks of the Ohio remained in French hands for another three years.

One source of information about that period is the "Register of Fort Duquesne." In that document, which was discovered in Montreal archives in the mid-19th century, Father Baron and other priests recorded births, marriages and burials at French outposts in western Pennsylvania.

A translation of the register by the Rev. Andrew Arnold Lambing was published in Pittsburgh in 1885. The pamphlet was reprinted in 2004 to mark the 250th anniversary of the first Catholic mass celebrated at the Point.

Braddock was not the only distinguished casualty in what is often called the Battle of the Monongahela.

The French commander of Fort Duquesne, Leonard Daniel de Beaujeu, also was killed in early fighting.

Beaujeu had led fewer than 300 French and Canadian soldiers, supported by about 600 Indian allies, to face Braddock's 1,500 regulars and militia.

"At the third volley from the English, de Beaujeu fell, pierced through the forehead, it is said, with a ball," according to one of the notes that accompanies Lambing's translation.

Despite the loss of their commander, the French and Indians, firing from the woods, killed or wounded more than half of Braddock's force, including almost all the officers. The remainder fled in panic. George Washington, who served on Braddock's staff, was in the thick of the fighting but escaped injury.

French losses were estimated at fewer than 50.

Father Baron wrote in the register that Beaujeu had "been at confession and performed his devotions" -- preparing himself for possible death -- on the morning of the battle.

"His remains were interred on the twelfth of the same month, in the cemetery of Fort Duquesne under the title of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin at the Beautiful River ... with the customary ceremonies by us," he wrote. In the coming days, Father Baron recorded the burials of other French casualties.

The register makes no mention of the deaths of British prisoners, just outside Fort Duquesne, as described by James Smith. Smith, who was just 18, had been captured a few days earlier by Indians loyal to the French.

"About sun down I beheld a small party [of Indians] coming in with about a dozen prisoners, stripped naked, with their hands tied behind their backs, and their faces and part of their bodies blacked -- these prisoners they burned to death on the bank of the Alegheny River opposite to the fort," he wrote in a memoir first published in 1799 and reprinted several times. "As this scene appeared too shocking for me to behold, I retired to my lodgings both sore and sorry."

The French claimed they came to North America as much to convert Native Americans to the Catholic faith as to trade for furs. The Register contains reports of Indian baptisms, including that of Jean Christiguay on Dec. 17, 1756. Father Baron calls him "Great Chief of the Iroquois, aged ninety-five years, or thereabout, who being dangerously sick, earnestly desired Holy Baptism ..."

Too often baptism was followed by interment. Jean Daniel Norment was baptized on Sept. 18, 1755, the day he was born to Jean Gaspar Norment, a trader at the fort, and his wife, Marie Joseph Chanier. Six days later, Father Baron buried little Jean Daniel.

The following spring, the priest baptized two-month-old Ellen Candon, daughter of John and Sarah Choisy Candon. Ellen's parents, he wrote, were "Irish Catholics, who were captured by the Shawanees in coming here to join the Catholics."

Ellen's godmother at the ceremony on May 15, 1756, was Marie Norment, who had lost her little boy eight months earlier.