- ---------------------------------------------------------------- FORWARDED MESSAGE - Orig: 29-Jun-99 18:19 Subject: Conococheague - ---------------------------------------------------------------- From: Merle Rummel <[email protected]> OK - I'm home -- got my son married at Newark Del, Sunday I'm sorting through 250 Brethren messages -and slowly answering some of them. I stopped at Elizabethtown College -for the first time!!! Coming west, I followed sections of the Old Wagon Road, that I'd not been on. I need to do more checking -but: I suggest that the route of US 30, from York PA to Gettysburg, Chambersburg and McConnellsburg, is a later route and not the original Old Wagon Road down the Valley, or Forbes Road to Pittsburg (he essentially started his road from Bedford, using existing trails east of there). Fort Loudon would have been a reason to establish a more direct route from the Conococheague, thus the route of US 30 (and I am sure there were early Indian paths that it followed), but that fort was after our Brethren were in the area. >From the lay of the land, and ease of route for horses and wagons - I think I will find that: the original route west started by going down the Monocacy Road from York (PA 116). At Hanover, where the Monocacy Road continued to Littlestown and down to Taneytown in Maryland (PA 194), the Old Wagon Road turned west to Gettysburg, continuing on the route of PA 116. This goes west through Gettysburg on a different street from old US 30, and out west -southwest to Fairfield and Zora. I tried a cut across to Fountain Dale -which turned out to cross a ridge of the Mountain/Hill -which the early route would not have done -and determined that the Old Wagon Road would have gone the easier way, down to Zora where PA 16 goes west to Fountain Dale and Waynesboro. It might have used the route from Waynesboro to Hagarstown (PA 316/MD 60), but I continued on PA 16 to Greencastle and US 11. (I wanted to see Zullinger, on the ridge it turns out, where some of my Rummel's stopped about 1800, while coming out to Youngstown OH.) I would be interested in seeing which was the easier route to cross the ridge to the Conococheague -which the early settlers would have used from Lancaster Co. The Old Wagon Road went down the Valley of Virginia from the Conococheague and Hagarstown. The early migration road to Bedford (and Brothers Valley, and Johnstown) continued from the Conococheague to Cove Gap (PA 16 -I have two Huston families from there at the Four Mile in Ohio/Indiana that came from the gap -one listed as Franklin Co, the other as Bedford Co). I doubt these migrants tried to climb the Mountain, the route of PA 16, but again, I didn't take the time to explore old records in that area. What I think I am seeing, is a progressive road pattern moving west. The Brethren as they migrated to the farther frontiers, seem always to have left from established Brethren communities. Since we were normally among the earliest farmers/settlers to these new areas, our migration roads became early established highways. Merle Rummel Church Historian ==== BRETHREN Mailing List ==== !^NavFont02F0A2D0006NGHHQv95A3