The Kanawha Trace Merle C Rummel [Mr Argus Ogborn was a Quaker Historian in Richmond, Indiana. He gave me a copy of his copy of the Bill of the Road, which he had found in a collection (unspecified) some years ago. He saw it for what it was, the mile by mile progress a Quaker settler would walk with team and wagon to travel to Richmond, but I recognized many of the named places in the Way Bill from travel, residency and research in these regions. From this I drew up and gave him a map tracing the path of the Trace. In researching families on this trace for my book on the Four Mile Church, I recognized that the Brethren used this as a major path from Virginia to Ohio. -I had frequently asked myself a question about the route of the Dunkers in Virginia to Ohio and the West, since I had early found that most of them did not use Daniel Boone's Wilderness Road. (The Flat Creek Mission, Church of the Brethren, is right on the Old Wilderness Road - Goose Creek, mouth of Mudlick, near Manchester KY, my parents lived there at the mission, Mudlick Station, head of Mudlick. I occasionally visited there, and I followed the path and story of Daniel Boone and the early Dunkers in the Kaintuck lands.) Only a few of the Carolina Brethren who followed the Wilderness Road into Kentucky, came up into Ohio. I've followed Forbes' Road and Braddock's Road in Pennsylvania, when I pastored at Beaver Dam (Maryland) and with my brother, who still pastors in Western Pennsylvania. Maryland and Pennsylvania Brethren, including some in the upper part of the Valley, would have used those routes and come down the Ohio on flatboats. But many early Dunkers lived much farther south in the Valley, and there was a major early settlement of the Brethren below Roanoke, on the front of the Blue Ridge in Franklin and Floyd Counties, the old Carolina Road, (Elder Jacob Miller families and neighbors) who came from there to western Ohio. The Kanawha Trace was their route. Virginia Dunker Family Names are found along it.] The Kanawha Trace Bill of the Road, or Waybill, begins in the north central part of North Carolina where the Moravian Brethren, Friends (or Quakers) and German Baptist Brethren (Dunkers, Church of the Brethren) had major settlements. Early Dunker Churches were along the Yadkin River starting in Wilkes County, going east to Winston Salem, then south through Salisbury, this was the area from which Daniel Boone came. [So there were Two routes from there, through the mountains, to the west.] Continued in Next Message