------------------------------------------------------------------ FORWARDED MESSAGE - Orig: 29-Jan-99 15:16 Subject: Early Roads III ------------------------------------------------------------------ From: Merle Rummel <cliffr@infocom.com> Another section of my Roads Folder --these are both branches off the Great Wagon Road. ============================================================ III. THE ROADS USED BY THE BRETHREN FOR MIGRATION Merle C Rummel [I consider three things to have the greatest effect on people and events of history. There is the struggle for power: which results in wars or various types of struggle and conflicts; there are economics: depressions or hard times, good times and peaceful living, and the attendant results; there is movement and transportation: ease or difficulty of movement, including travel and commerce. There are other things that effect people and history (famines, severe weather or climatic changes, natural disasters of various kinds, and epidemics), but even most of these end with some result in the above three.] Early America used the rivers and waterways for much of its travel and transportation. Roads were worse than poor. Even Benj. Franklin, Poor Richards Almanac, complained about the pot holes and hog wallows, in Philadelphia. No road beyond the cities, was more than a pair of worn tracks through open land, usually with grass growing up in the center. The traveler was lucky if it was smooth, bad weather from storm or the thawing of spring would leave deep ruts, which dried into shaking and jaring to the steel-rimmed wagon. The roads of necessity wound around the huge forest trees, and the roots of such would lay huge bumps across the road. Trees were cut, to open the road, and the stumps left standing in the road. Ravines, gulleys, streams and rivers meant a descent to the bottom, and a climb out on the far bank, if not worse. But America moved west. Land travel was slow, seldom over 10 miles a day, often half that. It was considered that the children would easily keep up, walking nearby, and in the process find much to keep themselves entertained. (Nowhere like todays problems taking children in a long automobile trip.) The team of horses might travel a little faster, but long distance was with the ox team, which traveled even slower than a walk, but could keep going, with less food, long after the horses would quit. The normal trip took days and often months. These Roads I have traveled, some of them not in one solid stretch, and in occasion, missing some section. ========================================================= THE CAROLINA ROAD >From Big Lick, on the Roanoke River (now Roanoke VA), in the Valley of Virginia, the early Brethren settlers moved south into the Carolinas. They went out through the Roanoke River Gap and down the face of the Blue Ridge Mountains. US220 is approximately the route used -through Boone's Mills and Rocky Mount to Martinsville and into the Carolina Colony (later divided into North and South). The original roadbed is known in Franklin Co VA, to have been west of US 220, on the slopes of Cahas Mt, and farther up Maggody Creek and the Blackwater River than the present road. This is the area Elder Jacob Miller lived -but his arrival there is in 1773 (not the traditional date of 1765). His cabin site is on the west side of the Blue Ridge Parkway, on nearly the top of the ridge, at Adney Gap (land which he sold to Adney in 1800), some 10 miles south of Roanoke. He came to where Brethren already were. In 1748, the year Alexander Mack Jr left Dunkard's Bottom and returned to Germantown, David Martin, son of Elder George Adam Martin, formed the Beaver Creek Church, on the Broad River, Newberry County, South Carolina. The Brethren had already moved down the Yadkin River and were living on the Broad River. >From Franklin and Floyd Cos SC, the Carolina Road left the edge of the mountains and came almost directly south to the Moravian Center at Greensboro and Salem (now Winston-Salem NC). It then followed down the Yadkin River to Sapona Town (Lexington) and Salisbury (NC 8 and US 29). Brethren Settlements were along the Yadkin River, some being west into the Blue Ridge Mountains and others being south. The Carolina Road left the Yadkin at Salisbury and swung west to the Broad River at Charlotte NC. In York Co South Carolina the Road seems to have split, one branch going westward to Chester and south to Columbia SC (US 321), the other branch staying nearer the river to Columbia (US 21). The road ended at the Savannah River across from Augusta Georgia. Most of the Brethren in South Carolina stayed nearer the Mountains and the Broad and Catawba Rivers, although one settlement was on the Saluda River, south of Greenville, and there is even record of one somewhere on the Edisto River - possibly towards Augusta. A settlement of 7th Day Brethren (Sabbatarians) from Ephrata was even farther south in Georgia, but it died out, blame is given to swamp fever (Malaria?) ============================================================ DANIEL BOONE'S WILDERNESS ROAD In 1769 Daniel Boone left his family on the Yadkin, to try to gain some of the fur profits of storied Kaintuck. One source says that he crossed to the Holston Valley of Lee Co VA and followed the Great Warrior's Path west to Powell Valley and the Cumberland Gap. Another gives a pass through the Blue Ridge along the headwaters of the Wautagua River of Tennessee, into the Holston River Valley. He found the land of Kaintuck as wonderful as his dreams and decided to move. He also found that others were already there before him. Just across the gap, leaving behind the high ridge, into the multitudinous broken streams, he could hardly stand the stink. Thomas Walker had trapped the area recently, the decaying skinned bodies left lying scattered along the Great Warrior's Path were so nauseating it was almost impossible to travel. The Great Warrior's Path stayed in the edge of the hills, going down Goose Creek to Manchester KY (past the Flat Creek Mission) and headed north to the Ohio at the mouth of the Scioto River. It continued on north as the Scioto Trail, back to the Lake Erie, near Sandusky, the land of the Tuscaroras Indians. Daniel Boone brought his family and neighbors to Kentucky the next year. They built the little Fort on the Kentucky River - called Boonesboro, then he began to break a new route through the rough ridges to the Blue Grass plains of the Kentucky River, a road that did not go up Stinking Creek. Later, the road was widened for wagon traffic -it was the Wilderness Road. US 25E follows closely the route of the Wilderness road, from the Cumberland Gap, across Pine Mountain (with the famous "Chained Rock" on its slope) to Pineville KY, to Corbin and London, to Richmond and Boonesboro, on the Kentucky River. >From Renfro Valley and Berea on, the road is leaving the Mountainous Hills and Valleys, and entering the bluegrass of Kentucky. The edge of the Hills into the Bluegrass is very abrupt and obvious. Near Berea KY is Big Hill, standing along, out away from the edge of the Hills. There legend says that Daniel Boone, chased by the Indians, climbed the high limestone cliffs that complete circle the mountain/"hill" -and using the butt of his rifle, smashed the fingers of the Indians who tried to also gain the top against him. LOGAN'S PATH Near Mount Vernon, just below Renfro Valley, was Crab Orchard. Here Logan's Path broke from the Wilderness Road and headed northwest to Logan's Fort or Asaph, to Danville, Fort Harrod (Harrodsburg) and the Falls (Louisville). It cut through the heart of the Blue Grass of Kentucky. It is followed primarily today by US 150. From Danville, US 127 goes north to Frankfort, which became the capitol of the state of Kentucky. THE HUNTER'S TRACE Another trace used by early Brethren settlers was the Hunter's Trace, which went westward from London KY along the headwaters of the Cumberland River, to the Green River, through Somerset and Glasgow to Bowling Green KY (KY 80), then southward to the Cumberland at old Fort Nashville (Nashville TN). There was an early Brethren settlement south of Bowling Green in Warren and Simpson Counties KY and a smaller one in Davidson Co TN (Nashville). These seem to be original settlers coming from the Carolinas through the Cumberland Gap. Later settlers came up the Green River from the Ohio to Muhlenberg Co. ============================================================ Merle Rummel Church Historian ==== BRETHREN Mailing List ==== !^NavFont02F1BE60007NGHHbE7B749 Maggie's World of Courthouse Dust & Genealogy Fever http://www.infinet.com/~dzimmerm/mindex.html *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* God Put Me On Earth to Accomplish a Certain Number of Things. Right Now I am so far behind, I will never die. --- Unknown *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*