------------------------------------------------------------------ FORWARDED MESSAGE - Orig: 30-Jan-99 19:19 Subject: Early Roads V ------------------------------------------------------------------ Roads Folder -more on Western Pennsylvania ============================================================ V. 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. ========================================================= FORBES' ROAD The French and Indian war (1754-1763), the colonial aspects of the Seven Years War between Britain and France was continuing. With the defeat and death of General Braddock, the frontier flamed with Indian atrocities. His objective, the capture of Fort Duquesne, at Pittsburg PA, was still important. In 1758, a second expedition was formed under Brigadier John Forbes, again with Col George Washington in assistance. The Army left Philadelphia on the Old Wagon Road going west. The Road went through Lancaster PA and York PA to the frontier settlements of Gettysburg and Waynesboro. From Gettysburg, Forbes Road went southward along PA 116 to near Fountain Dale where it is taken up by PA 16 to Waynesboro, Greencastle, and Mercersburg to Cove Gap and McConnelsburg. The destination was Coves Gap south of Fort Loudon, where they crossed through the ridge into the great valleys and ridges of central Pennsylvania >From McConnelsburg they had to widen the settler traces and Indian trails across Sideling Hill to Fort Bedford, to move their wagons and cannon. For its full length Forbes Road was close to the route of US 30. >From Fort Bedford the Army had to cut their own road. In true military method, they refused to allow any higher grounds above them, going always to the highest land around. They followed the heights south of the stream going out of Bedford to the southwest, then turn sharply northward, crossing US 30 and passing directly through the now Shawnee State Park. Staying on the heights to the north of US 30, they crossed the Allegheny Front, taking one full day to climb the mountain. Coming down into Somerset County, they trod the road now in front of the Brethren Camp Harmony, passed the south edge of Quemahoning Reservoir, and at the town of Boswell turned north to Laural Mountain. They came down on the ridge just south of Waterford PA and hit PA 711 just north of Ligonier PA, marching into the town area along that roadway. Here they built a major fort (rebuilt partially on the site). The outer works included the diamond downtown, about 4 blocks away (about 2 blocks wide) from the inner works on the banks above Loyalhanna Creek. The fort was log walled, with an abattis of pointed logs angling outward at the base. (The logs of an abattis are spaced so close together that a person cannot squeeze between them. This effectively prohibited an attack on the fort wall till openings were made in the abattis. This forced the engineering corps to attempt to chop an opening through the abattis, while being fired down upon by the soldiers on the wall above.) The French and Indian Army attacked British Army, coming from the Cemetery Hill southwest of town, coming across the meadow to Loyalhanna Creek at the fort, the British this time won the victory. Forbes used forced marches to get to Fort Duquesne, but no road was cleared, and historians do not know the exact route. Likely it was near the Loyalhanna, using the water gap through Chestnut Ridge, to Latrobe, passing near the later Bushy Run Battlefield (of Pontiac's War -where he hit a supply train). They entered the present city area through Turtle Creek, and from the ridge at Oakland, they saw the burning ruins of old Fort Duquesne (which they had hoped to invest before it could be destroyed, to save reconstruction). On its foundations, they built Fort Pitt. Settlers and later travelers rerouted the Forbes road to more accessible approaches, going around hills and finding easier fords over the rivers. At different times the various "Forbes" roads covered areas some 30 miles across. The final one of these is today's US 30, being normally only a few miles away from the original Army Road, usually south. Forbes Road was used by the Brethren as a better alternate route into several areas of Brethren settlement: Morrison's Cove, Brother's Valley. Its main use by the Frontier Settler was to reach Fort Pitt and the Ohio River, where they could build flatboats for migration down the Ohio to the Western Frontier. [researched by Camp Harmony Trail Camp and the Boy Scouts] papers and information are at the Ligonier (PA) Library =========================================================== Merle Rummel Church Historian ==== BRETHREN Mailing List ==== !^NavFont02F162F0006NGHH]wB039 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 *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*