FOOTNOTES:

MILESTo Hanover Court House,16To Edmund Taylor’s,16To Parson Todd’s, Louisa,20To Widow Nelson’s,20To Brock’s Bridge, Orange Co.,9To Garnet’s Mill,5To Bost. Ord’y, near Hind’s House,7To Raccoon Ford, on Rapidan or Porters,6To Culpepper Co.-House,10To Pendleton’s Ford, on Rappahannock,10To Douglass’s Tavern, or Wickliffe’s House,13To Chester’s Gap, Blue Ridge,8To Lehu Town,3To Ford of Shenandore River, Frederick,2To Stevensburg,10To Brown’s Mill,2To Winchester,6To Gasper Rinker’s,11To Widow Lewis’s, Hampshire,11To Crock’s Tav.,9To Reynold’s, on the So. Branch Potowmack,13To Frankford Town,8To Haldeman’s Mills,4To North Branch, Potomack,3To Gwyn’s Tav., at the Fork of Braddock’s old road, Alleghany Co., Maryland,3To Clark’s Store,6To Little Shades of Death,12To Tumblestone Tav., or the Little Meadows,3To Big Shades of Death,2To Mountain Tav., or White Oak Springs,2To Simpson’s Tav., Fayette Co., Pennsylvania,6To Big Crossing of Yoh,9To Carrol’s Tavern,12To Laurel Hill,6To Beason Town,6To Redstone, Old Fort,12To Washington Town, Washington Co., Penn.,23To Wheeling, Old Fort, Ohio Co., Vir.,35——359[54]

Mr. Brown’s notes of the journey over the mountains are:

“Set out from Hanover Friday 6th August 1790 arrived at Redstone Old Fort about the 25th Inst. The road is pretty good until you get to the Widow Nelson’s, then it begins to be hilly and continues generally so till you get to the Blue Ridge—pretty well watered. Racoon ford on Rapidan is rather bad. The little mountains are frequently in view After you pass Widow Nelson’s. Pendleton’s ford on Rappahanock is pretty good. In going overChester gap you ride about 5 miles among the mountains before you get clear, a good many fine springs in the Mo. between the Blue Ridge and the Alleghany Mo. appears to be a fine country, altho the land is pretty much broken. At Shenandore ford there is two branches of the river to cross and it is bad fording. But there is a ferry a little below the ford. There is a very cool stream of water about 14 miles below Winchester. This is a well watered country but springs are rather scarce on the road, at Winchester there are several fine springs. The South branch of Potowmack has a good ford, also the North branch. Soon after you pass Gwyns Tavern in Maryland you enter upon the Alleghany Mo. and then you have a great deal of bad road, many ridges of Mo.—the Winding Ridge—Savage, Negro, etc. and Laurel Hill which is the last, but before you get to the Mount, there is some stony bad road between the Widow Lewis’ and the Mo. after you pass Clark’s store in the Mo. you get into a valley of very pretty oak land. In many places while you are in the Mo. there is very good road between the ridges.Just before you get to the Little Shades of Death there is a tract of the tallest pines I ever saw. The Shades of Death are dreary looking valleys, growing up with tall cypress and other trees and has a dark gloomy appearance. Tumblestones, or the Little Meadows is a fine plantation with beautiful meadow ground. Crossing of Yoh, is a pretty good ford. There is some very bad road about here. It is said Gen Braddock was buried about 8 miles forward from this, near a little brook that crosses the road. Laurel hill is the highest ridge of the Mo. When you get to the top of it to look forward toward Redstone there is a beautiful prospect of the country below the Mo. You see at one view a number of plantations and Beason Town which is six miles off.”[55]

With the growth of Cumberland and the improvement of navigation of the upper Potomac, and especially the building of the canal beside it, the importance of the Braddock route across the mountains was realized by the state of Maryland and the legislature passed laws with reference tostraightening and improving it as early as 1795; acts of a similar nature were also passed in 1798 and 1802.[56]

A pilgrim who passed westward with his family over Braddock’s Road in 1796 leaves us some interesting details concerning the journey in a letter written from Western Virginia after his arrival in the “Monongahela Country” in the fall of that year. Arriving at Alexandria by boat from Connecticut the party found that it was less expensive and safer to begin land carriage there than to ascend the Potomac further. They then pursued one of the routes of Braddock’s army to Cumberland and the Braddock Road from that point to Laurel Hill. The price paid for hauling their goods from Alexandria to Morgantown (now West Virginia) was thirty-two shillings and six-pence per hundred-weight “of women and goods (freight)”—the men “all walked the whole of the way.” Crossing “the blue Mountain the Monongehaly & the Lorral Mountains we found the roads to be verry bad.”

It is difficult to say when Braddock’sRoad, as a route, ceased to be used since portions of it have never been deserted. There are interesting references to it in the records of Allegheny County, Maryland, which bear the dates 1807[57]and 1813[58]. A little later it is plain that “Jesse Tomlinson’s” is described “onNational Road” rather than on ”Braddock’s Road,” as in 1807.[59]From this it would seem that by 1817 the term “Braddock’s Road” was ignored, at least at points where the Cumberland Road had been built upon the old-time track. Elsewhere Braddock’s route kept its ancient name and, perhaps, will never exchange it for another.

Braddock’s Road in the Woods near Farmington, PennsylvaniaBraddock’s Roadin the Woods near Farmington, Pennsylvania

The rough track of this first highway westward may be followed today almost at any point in all its course between the Potomac and the Monongahela, and the great caverns and gullies which mark so plainly its tortuous course speak as no words can of the sufferings and dangers of those who travelled it during the dark halfcentury when it offered one of the few passage-ways to the West. It was a clear, sweet October day when I first came into Great Meadows to make there my home until those historic hills and plains became thoroughly familiar to me. From the Cumberland Road, as one looks southward from Mount Washington across Great Meadows and the site of Fort Necessity, the hillside beyond is well-timbered on the right and on the left; but between the forests lies a large tract of cultivated ground across which runs, in a straight line, the dark outline of a heavy unhealed wound. A hundred and fifty years of rain and snow and frost have been unable to remove, even from a sloping surface, this heavy finger mark. Many years of cultivation have not destroyed it, and for many years yet the plow will jolt and swing heavily when it crosses the track of Braddock’s Road. I was astonished to find that at many points in Fayette and neighboring counties the old course of the road can be distinctly traced in fields which have for half a century and more been under constant cultivation. If, at certain points,cultivation and the elements have pounded the old track level with the surrounding ground, a few steps in either direction will bring the explorer instantly to plain evidence of its course—except where the road-bed is, today, a travelled lane or road. On the open hillsides the track takes often the appearance of a terrace, where, in the old days the road tore a great hole along the slope, and formed a catchwater which rendered it a veritable bog in many places. Now and then on level ground the course is marked by a slight rounding hollow which remains damp when the surrounding ground is wet, or is baked very hard when the usual supply of water is exhausted. In some places this strange groove may be seen extending as far as eye can reach, as though it were the pathway of a gigantic serpent across the wold. At times the track, passing the level, meets a slight ridge which, if it runs parallel to its course, it mounts; if the rising ground is encountered at right angles, the road ploughs a gulley straight through, in which the water runs after each rain, preserving the depression once made by the road. And as Ijourneyed to and fro in that valley visiting the classic spots which appear in such tender grace in the glad sunshine of a mountain autumn, I never passed a spot of open where this old roadway was to be seen without a thrill; as James Lane Allen has so beautifully said of Boone’s old road through Cumberland Gap to Kentucky, so may the explorer feelingly exclaim concerning Braddock’s old track: “It is impossible to come upon this road without pausing, or to write of it without a tribute.”

This is particularly true of Braddock’s Road when you find it in the forests; everything that savage mark tells in the open country is reëchoed in mightier tones within the shadows of the woods. There the wide strange track is like nothing of which you ever heard or read. It looks nothing like a roadway. It is plainly not the track of a tornado, though its width and straight course in certain places would suggest this. Yet it is never the same in two places; here, it is a wide straight aisle covered with rank weeds in the center of the low, wet course; there, the forests impinge upon it where the ground is drier;here, it appears like the abandoned bed of a brook, the large stones removed from its track lying on each side as though strewn there by a river’s torrent; there, it swings quickly at right angles near the open where the whole width is covered with velvet grass radiant in the sunshine which can reach it here. In the forests more than elsewhere the deep furrow of the roadway has remained wet, and for this reason trees have not come up. At many points the road ran into marshy ground and here a large number of roundabout courses speak of the desperate struggles the old teamsters had on this early track a century ago. And now and then as you pass along, scattered blocks and remnants of stone chimneys mark the sites of ancient taverns and homesteads.

In the forests it is easy to conjure up the scene when this old track was opened—for it was cut through a “wooden country,” to use an expression common among the pioneers. Here you can see the long line of sorry wagons standing in the road when the army is encamped; and though many of them seem unable to carry their loads onefoot further—yet there is ever the ringing chorus of the axes of six hundred choppers sounding through the twilight of the hot May evening. It is almost suffocating in the forests when the wind does not blow, and the army is unused to the scorching American summer which has come early this year. The wagon train is very long, and though the van may have halted on level ground, the line behind stretches down and up the shadowy ravines. The wagons are blocked in all conceivable positions on the hillsides. The condition of the horses is pitiful beyond description. If some are near to the brook or spring, others are far away. Some horses will never find water tonight. To the right and left the sentinels are lost in the surrounding gloom.

And then with those singing axes for the perpetual refrain, consider the mighty epic poem to be woven out of the days that have succeeded Braddock here. Though lost in the Alleghenies, this road and all its busy days mirror perfectly the social advance of the western empire to which it led. Its first mission was to bind, as witha strange, rough, straggling cincture the East and the West. The young colonies were being confined to the Atlantic Ocean by a chain of forts the French were forging from Quebec to New Orleans. Had they not awakened to the task of shattering that chain it is doubtful if the expansion of the colonies could ever have meant what it has to the western world. Could Virginia have borne a son in the western wilderness, Kentucky by name, if France had held the Ohio Valley? Could North Carolina have given birth to a Tennessee if France had made good her claim to the Mississippi? Could New England and New York and Pennsylvania have produced the fruits the nineteenth century saw blossom in the Old Northwest if France had maintained her hold within that mighty empire? The rough track of Braddock’s Road, almost forgotten and almost obliterated, is one of the best memorials of the earliest struggle of the Colonies for the freedom which was indispensable to their progress. There was not an hour throughout the Revolutionary struggle when the knowledge of the great West that was to be theirs wasnot a powerful inspiration to the bleeding colonies; aye, there was not a moment when the gallant commander of those ragged armies forgot that there was a West into which he could retreat at the darkest hour over Braddock’s twelve-foot road.

That is the great significance of this first track through the “wooden country”—an awakened consciousness.

The traveller at Uniontown, Pennsylvania, is within striking distance of Braddock’s Road at its most interesting points. A six-mile climb to the summit of Laurel Hill brings one upon the old-time route which will be found near Washington’s Spring. A delightful drive along the summit of the mountain northward brings one near the notorious “Dunbar’s Camp” where so many relics of the campaign have been found and of which many may be seen in the museum of the nearby Pennsylvania Soldiers’ Orphans’ Home. Here Dunbar destroyed the quantities of stores and ammunition with which he could not advance, much less retreat. The visitor here should find “Jumonville’s Grove,” about a quarter of a mile up the valley,and should not miss the view from Dunbar’s Knob.

Less than one mile eastward of Chalk Hill, beside a brook which bears Braddock’s name, beneath a cluster of solemn pines, lies the dust of the sacrificed Braddock. If there is any question as to whether his body was interred at this spot, there is no question but that all the good he ever did is buried here. Deserted by those who should have helped him most, fed with promises that were never kept, defeated because he could not find the breath to cry “retreat” until a French bullet drove it to his throat—he is remembered by his private vices which the whole world would quickly have forgotten had he won his last fight. He was typical of his time—not worse.

In studying Braddock’s letters, preserved in the Public Records Office, London, it has been of interest to note that he never blamed an inferior—as he boasted in the anecdote previously related. His most bitter letter has been reproduced, and a study of it will make each line of more interest. His criticism of the Colonialtroops was sharp, but his praise of them when they had been tried in fire was unbounded. He does not directly criticise St. Clair—though his successful rival for honors on the Ohio, Forbes, accused St. Clair in 1758 not only of ignorance but of actual treachery. “This Behavior in the people” is Braddock’s charge, and no one will say the accusation was unjust.

With something more than ordinary good judgment Braddock singled out good friends. What men in America, at the time, were more influential in their spheres than Franklin, Washington, and Morris? These were almost the only men he, finally, had any confidence in or respect for. Washington knew Braddock as well as any man, and who but Washington, in the happier days of 1784, searched for his grave by Braddock’s Run in vain, desirous of erecting a monument over it?

Mr. King, editor of the PittsburgCommercial-Gazette, in 1872 took an interest in Braddock’s Grave, planted the pines over it and enclosed them. A slip from a willow tree that grew beside Napoleon’s grave at St. Helena was planted here but did notgrow. There is little doubt that Braddock’s dust lies here. He was buried in the roadway near this brook, and at this point, early in the last century, workmen repairing the road discovered the remains of an officer. The remains were reinterred here on the high ground beside the Cumberland Road, on the opposite bank of Braddock’s Run. They were undoubtedly Braddock’s.

As you look westward along the roadway toward the grave, the significant gorge on the right will attract your attention. It is the old pathway of Braddock’s Road, the only monument or significant token in the world of the man from whom it was named. Buried once in it—near the cluster of gnarled apple-trees in the center of the open meadow beyond—he is now buried, and finally no doubt, beside it. But its hundreds of great gorges and vacant swampy isles in the forests will last long after any monument that can be raised to his memory.

Braddock’s Road broke the league the French had made with the Alleghenies; it showed that British grit could do as muchin the interior of America as in India or Africa or Egypt; it was the first important material structure in this New West, so soon to be filled with the sons of those who had hewn it.

[1]Entick,History of the Late War, vol. i., p. 110.

[2]Entick,History of the Late War, vol. i., p. 124.

[3]Apology for the Life of George Anne Bellamy, vol. iii., p. 55.

[4]Letters of Walpole, (edited by Cunningham, London 1877), vol. ii., p. 461.

[5]EntickHistory of the Late War, vol. i., p. 142.

[6]History of the Late War, vol. i., p. 142.

[7]Gentleman’s Magazine, vol. 75, p. 389 (1755); alsoA Review of the Military Operations in North America, London, 1757, p. 35.

[8]A letter relating to the Ohio Defeat, p. 14.

[9]Walpole’sMemoirs of George II, vol. ii., p. 29.

[10]Walpole’sMemoirs of George II, vol. ii., p. 29; also LondonEvening Post, September 9-11, 1755.

[11]Walpole’sMemoirs of George II, vol. i., p. 397; Sargent’sHistory of Braddock’s Expedition, p. 153, note.

[12]Minutes taken “At a Council at the Camp at Alexandria in Virginia, April 14, 1755.” Public Records Office, London:America and West Indies, No. 82.

[13]Braddock’s MS. Letters, Public Records Office, London:America and West Indies, No. 82.

[14]For these early routes through Pennsylvania, partially opened in 1755, seeHistoric Highways of America, vol. v., chap. I.

[15]Maryland Archives; Correspondence of Governor Sharpe, vol. i., pp. 77 and 97.

[16]Preserved at the Congressional Library, Washington.

[17]Eight miles from Alexandria. See Note 26.

[18]Arguments pro and con have been interestingly summed up by Dr. Marcus Benjamin of the U. S. National Museum, in a paper read before the Society of Colonial Dames in the District of Columbia April 12, 1899, and by Hugh T. Taggart in theWashington Star, May 16, 1896. For a description of routes converging on Braddock’s Road at Fort Cumberland see Gen. Wm. P. Craighill’s article in theWest Virginia Historical Magazine, vol. ii, no. 3 (July, 1902), p. 31. Cf. pp. 179-181.

[19]London, Groombridge & Sons, 1854. Mr. Morris, in footnotes, gave what he considered any important variations of the original manuscript from the expanded version he was editing; Mr. Sargent reproduced these notes, without having seen the original.

[20]History of Braddock’s Expedition, p. 359, note.

[21]History of Braddock’s Expedition, p. 359, note.

[22]Mr. Gordon evidently used the word “self” in his entry of June 3 to throw any too curious reader off the track.

[23]History of Braddock’s Expedition, p. 387.

[24]History of Braddock’s Expedition, p. 365.

[25]In the Gordon Journal, under the date of June 10, there are two entries. One seems to have been Gordon’s and reads: “The Director of the Hospital came to see me in Camp, and found me so ill.... I went into the Hospital, & the Army marched with the Train &c., and as I was in hopes of being able to follow them in a few days, I sent all my baggage with the Army.” Without doubt this was Gordon’s entry, as no sailor could have had sufficient baggage to warrant such a reference as this, while an engineer’s “kit” was an important item. Then follow two entries (June 24 and 26) evidently recorded by one who remained at Fort Cumberland, and a second entry under the date of June 10, which is practically the first sentence of the entry under the same date in the original manuscript, and which has the appearance of being the genuine record made by the sailor detained at Fort Cumberland. The confusion of these entries in the Gordon Journal makes it very evident that one author did not compose them. The two entries for June 10 are typical of “Mr Engineer Gordon” and an unknown sailor.

[26]This form of the name of the modern Rock Creek is significant and is not given in the expanded form of this journal. “Rock’s Creek” suggests that the great bowlder known as “Braddock’s Rock” was a landmark in 1755 and had given the name to the stream which entered the Potomac near it.

[27]The use of full names in this journal is strong evidence that it is the original.

[28]The Gordon Journal assiduously reverses every such particular as this; it reads here: “there are about 200 houses and 2 churches, one English, one Dutch.”

[29]Though in almost every instance the Gordon Journal gives a more wordy account of each day’s happenings, itnever gives a record for a day that is omitted by this journal, as April 22, 23, and 28; at times, however, a day is omitted in that journal that is accounted for in this; see entries for May 9 and May 25—neither of which did Mr. Morris give in his footnotes, though the latter was of utmost significance.

[30]The words “from the French” are omitted in the Gordon Journal, which makes the entry utterly devoid of any meaning—unless that Cresap had been ordered to retire by the Ohio Company! Cresap in that document is called “a vile Rascal”; cf. PennsylvaniaColonial Records, vol. vi., p. 400. For eulogy of Cresap seeOhio State Archæological and Historical Publications, vol. xi.

[31]This is given for the 13th in the Gordon Journal.

[32]The Gordon Journal: “Mr Spendlow and self surveyed 22 casks of beef, and condemned it, which we reported to the General.”

[33]Two chaplains accompanied the two Regiments Philip Hughes was chaplain of the 44th and Lieut. John Hamilton of the 48th. The latter was wounded in the defeat.

[34]The entry of Gordon Journal reads: “Col. Burton, Capt. Orme, Mr. Spendlowe and self....”

[35]The Gordon Journal: “This morning an Engineer and 100 men....”

[36]The only hint given in the Gordon Journal as to the author of the original document is under this date. The Gordon Journal reads, “Mr. Spendlowe and self with 20 of our men went to the place where the new road comes into the old one....” “Self” here seems to refer to “Midshipman”; but Mr. Gordon often refers to himself as an engineer and never once inserts his own name, though he was a most important official. Gordon probably accompanied or followed Spendlowe.

[37]Entries written by one while detained at Fort Cumberland. If written by Gordon he hastened immediately to the front, for he was with Braddock’s advance on July 9.

[38]The Gordon Journal: “One of our Engineers, who was in front of the Carpenters marking the road, saw the Enemy first.” Who but Gordon would have omitted his name under these circumstances?

[39]This last paragraph is evidently an additional memorandum of British loss. The contents of the chest was undoubtedly £10,000.

[40]British Newspaper Accounts of Braddock’s Defeat, p. 10. PennsylvaniaColonial Records, vol. vi., p. 482.

[41]This view of Braddock’s defeat is given in the late John Fiske’s recent volume,New France and New England.

[42]LondonPublic Advertiser, November 3, 1755.

[43]LondonPublic Advertiser, November 3, 1755.

[44]Cf.British Newspaper Accounts of Braddock’s Defeat, p. 9. PennsylvaniaColonial Records, vol. vi., p. 482. LondonPublic Advertiser, November 3, 1755.

[45]Cf.British Newspaper Accounts of Braddock’s Defeat, p. 9; LondonPublic Advertiser, November 3, 1755.

[46]This chapter is from Neville B. Craig’sThe Olden Time, vol. ii., pp. 465-468, 539-544.

[47]SeeHistoric Highways of America, vol. v.

[48]Preserved in the library of Harvard University.

[49]“Many misstatements are prevalent in the country adjacent to the line of march, especially east of Cumberland, the traditionary name of Braddock’s route being often applied to routes we know he did not pursue. It is probable the ground of the application consists in their having been used by the Quarter Master’s men in bringing on those Pennsylvania wagons and pack horses procured by Dr. Franklin, with so much trouble and at so great expense of truth. Sir John Sinclair wore a Hussar’s cap, and Franklin made use of the circumstance to terrify the German settlers with the belief that he was a Hussar who would administer to them the tyrannical treatment they had experienced in their own country if they did not comply with his wishes. It is singular that a small brook and an obscure country road in Berkley County, Virginia, bear the name of Sir John’s Run, and Sir John’s Road, supposed to be taken from the name of this officer.

[50]“The original name of Cumberland was Cucucbetuc, and from its favorable position on the Potomac, was most probably the site of a Shawnee village, like Old Town; moreover, it was marked by an Indian name, a rare occurrence in this vicinity, if any judgment may be drawn from the few that have been preserved.

[51]“This interesting locality lies at the west foot of the Meadow Mountain, which is one of the most important of the Alleghany Ridges, in Pennsylvania especially, where it constitutes the dividing ridge between the eastern and western waters. A rude entrenchment, about half a mile north of the Inn on the National Road, kept by Mr. Huddleson, marks the site of this fort. This is most probably the field of a skirmish spoken of in frontier history, between a Mr. Parris, with a scouting party from Fort Cumberland, and the Sieur Donville, commanding some French and Indians, in which the French officer was slain. The tradition is distinctly preserved in the vicinity, with a misapprehension of Washington’s participation in it, arising probably from the partial resemblance between the names of Donville and Jumonville. From the positiveness of the information, in regard to the battle ground, conflicting with what we know of Jumonville’s death, it seems probable enough that this was the scene of this Indian skirmish; and as such, it possesses a classic interest, valuable in proportion to the scarcity of such places.

[52]Historic Highways of America, vol. v., ch. 4.

[53]Bouquet Papers, MSS.Preserved in British Museum: Forbes to Pitt, July 10; Forbes to Bouquet, August 2; Bouquet au Forbes, July 26, 1758.

[54]Speed’sThe Wilderness Road, pp. 56-57.

[55]Speed’sThe Wilderness Road, p. 60.

[56]Lowdermilk’sHistory of Cumberland, p. 275.

[57]Land Records of Allegheny County, Md.Liber E, fol. 191.

[58]Id., Liber G. fol. 251.

[59]Id., Liber I and J, fol. 105.

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