------------------------------------------------------------------ FORWARDED MESSAGE - Orig: 29-Jan-99 8:35 Subject: Early Roads II ------------------------------------------------------------------ From: Merle Rummel <cliffr@infocom.com> Here's the second installment of my paper on Migration Roads. This is not in competition of that by Kevin Cherry, recently distributed on the net. It is just the Same Road, just another view -because it is an Important Road. ============================================================ II. 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 VALLEY ROAD -or the GREAT WAGON ROAD As the Brethren and other German settlers moved out from Germantown PA, some regular paths of migration developed. One went west through Lancaster to Gettysburg and swung southward to Nichol's Gap in the South Mountain ridge, to Waynesboro, Franklin Co PA, on Antietam Creek. The Brethren early settled on the Antietam and Conococheague Creeks, as early as 1742, only a couple decades after they first arrive in the New World. They came from Berks County, the Oley Church. On the Conococheague they formed a church under Nicholas Martin. >From the distant hills, the ridge of mountains look bluish, and for a long way, they are called that: the Blue Ridge. They are the first range of mountains going west from the coast, past the rolling hills and streams of the piedmont. They stretch from northeast to southwest. The mountains are far from the coast down in the Carolinas, they are close in upper Pennsylvania and New York. Behind this first ridge are several higher ridges, essentially parallel, with large valleys in between. In Virginia, this first valley is called the Shenandoah, after the main river that runs in it. Various rivers break through the front rampart, into the valley: The Susquehanna and Juniata, in Pennsylvania; the Potomac, the border between Maryland and Virginia; the James, the Roanoke. The Valley, called Shenandoah in Virginia, reaches up through Maryland and into Pennsylvania. It is the valley of Antietam Creek and Conococheague Creek coming south to the Potomac, just as it is the Shenandoah River going north to the Potomac in northern Virginia. After it breaks through the ridge the James River forks in two branches -one going northeast, up the valley, and one southwest, down the valley. Similarly, the Roanoke River after it breaks through the Blue Ridge, forks into a branch going toward the James, and a branch going southwest toward the New River. The Valley itself mostly stops south of the Roanoke. The New River, coming up out of the mountains of North Carolina, has cut its own valleys, as it breaks through the Allegheny Front can goes west to the Ohio River. South of it are the several parallel valleys with the Holston and Clinch Rivers going south west into Tennessee, where they form the Tennessee River. The Great Warrior's Path went down this valley, from New York. Its into this Great Valley, that there was movement southward. The Great Warrior's Path came down the Conococheague Creek to the Potomac. Its start was among the Iroquois Indians of the Finger Lakes and Mohawk River of New York Colony. It went to the Cherokee lands in the south - to Tennesee Country. Some early Brethren came west to the Great Warrior's Path and moved on south. Alexander Mack Jr, with the Eckerlin brothers, went to a settlement on the New River, south of Fincastle, south of Big Lick on the Roanoke River. It was called "Dunkard Bottoms", they called it "Mahanaim", today it is under the Reservoir at Blacksburg VA. Brethren families moved south. A settlement, the Shenandoah Church was formed, at the Fink Settlement near Strassburg VA. But a problem developed in Virginia -it was a Royal Colony. It had a State Church, the Church of England (Anglican Church or Episcopal Church today). You could only be married or buried through the church (by fee), and you were supposed to be a member of it (infant baptism). At least they demanded that you pay your tithes to it each year. The Brethren did not stay in Virginia until the time of the Revolution, when the Church of England lost its hold on the people of the colony. The Great Wagon Road followed the Great Warrior's Path down the Valley of Virginia. From Waynesboro it came down the Path, through Hagarstown MD to the Potomac. It crossed the Potomac River at Watkins Ferry, south of Hagarstown, and followed Opequon Creek past Fort Louden and old Frederick Town (now Winchester VA). It crossed over to Strassburg on the North Fork of the Shenandoah River. It stayed in the main Valley, west of the Massanutten Moutain Ridge (which divided the North Fork and South Forks of the Shenandoah), west of the River, the Shenandoah. Towns grew up along it: Woodstock, New Market and Harrisonburg VA. It went on, Stanton and Lexington, on to the North River of the James. It went to the rare Natural Bridge, and James River City. It left the James going to Fincastle and on to the Big Lick on the Stanton or Roanoke River (now Roanoke VA). Here a branch went through the Roanoke River Gap and south to the Carolinas: the Carolina Road. The wagon road continued on down the Valley to the New River. It crossed at Ingles Ferry, to go to Dunkers Bottom, Blacksburg and Christiansburg. It went on to Stephen Holston's (Wytheville), and Stalnackers (Marion) on the Holston River, to Abingdon. It went on to Bristol on the Virginia Line, to Long Island of the Holston (Kingsport) in Tennessee, where the North Branch joins, making the headwaters of the Tennessee River, and continuing down the front of Clinch Mountain, Bean Station and Knoxville. This route is old US 11 (I-81 is closely parallel). There was an large settlement of the Brethren on the Holston and Clinch Rivers, west of the Mountains. This is the main center of Tennessee District of the Church of the Brethren. A branch of the Great Warriors Path turned west, just south of Abingdon. It crossed Moccasin Gap through Clinch Mountain, crossed the Clinch River Valley, and Powell Mountain, into the Powell River Valley, till it came to a gap in the Alleghany Front, named the Cumberland Gap, after the Duke of Cumberland. Thomas Walker and Daniel Boone pioneered this road -for the thousands that went into Kaintuck. ============================================================ Merle C Rummel Church Historian <www.cob-net.org/docs/brethrenlife.htm> <www.infinet.com/~dzimmerm/pioneer.html> <www.rootsweb.com/~ohclermo/materials.htm#StonelickChurch> ==== BRETHREN Mailing List ==== !^NavFont02F1C7D0007NGHHc7EA266 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 *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* Wishing you and your family a very Merry Christmas and a New Year filled with good health, good friends, and more than enough good luck. *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*