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\^ 




HISTORIC HIGHWAYS OF AMERICA 

VOLUME 5 



HISTORIC HIGHWAYS OF AMERICA 

VOLUME 5 



The Old Glade (Forbes's) Road 

(PENNSYLVANIA STATE ROAD) 
BY 

Archer Butler Hulbert 

IViih Maps and Illusirations 




THE ARTHUR H. CLARK COMPANY 

CLEVELAND, OHIO 

1903 



COPYiaGHT, 1903 
BY 

The Arthur H. Clark Company 

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



CONTENTS 



PACK 

Preface 9 

I. The Old Trading Path . . 15 
II. A Blood-Red Frontier . . 35 

III. The Campaigns of 1758 . . 65 

IV. The Old or a New Road? . .81 
V. The New Road . . . .124 

VI. The Military Road to the West 163 
VII. The Pennsylvania Road .190 



^^^^-^ 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

I. Shippen's Draught of the Monon- 

GAHELA AND YOUGHIOGHENY RlV- 
ERS, AND BraDDOCK's RoaD (1759) 29 

II. Frontier Forts and Blockhouses 

IN 1756 51 

III. FoRBEs's Road to Raystown (1757) 103 

IV. The Remains of Bouquet's Redoubt 

AT Fort Pitt . . . .184 



PREFACE 

WHEN General Edward Braddock 
landed in Virginia in 1755, one of 
his first acts in his campaign upon 
the Ohio was to urge Governor Morris to 
have a road opened westward through 
Pennsylvania. His reason for wishing 
another road, parallel to the one his own 
army was to cut, was that there might be 
a shorter route than his own to the north- 
ern colonies, over which his expresses 
might pass speedily, and over which 
wagons might come more quickly from 
Pennsylvania — then the * ' granary of 
America." 

It was inevitable that the shortest route 
from the center of the colonies to the Ohio 
would become the most important. The 
road Braddock asked Morris to open was 
completed only three miles beyond the 
present town of Bedford, Pennsylvania, 
when the road choppers hurried home on 



10 PREFACE 

receipt of the news of Braddock's defeat. 

Braddock made a death-bed prophecy ; it 
was that the British would do better next 
time. In 1758 Pitt placed Braddock's un- 
fulfilled task on the shoulders of Brigadier- 
general John Forbes, who marched to 
Bedford on the new road opened by Morris ; 
thence he opened, along the general align- 
ment of the prehistoric ** Trading Path," a 
new road to the Ohio. It was a desperate 
undertaking; but Forbes completed his 
campaign in November, 1758 triumphantly 
— at the price of his life. 

This road, fortified at Carlisle, Shippens- 
burg, Chambersburg, Loudon, Littleton, 
Bedford, Ligonier, and Pittsburg became 
the great military route from the Atlantic 
seaboard to the trans-Allegheny empire. 
By it Fort Pitt was relieved during Pontiac's 
rebellion and the Ohio Indians were 
brought to terms. Throughout the Revo- 
lutionary War this road was the main 
thoroughfare over which the western forts 
received ammunition and supplies. In the 
dark days of the last decade of the eight- 
eenth century, when the Kentucky and 
Ohio pioneers were fighting for the foot- 



PREFACE 11 

hold they had obtained in the West, this 
road played a vital part. 

When the need for it passed, Forbes's 
Road, too, passed away. Two great rail- 
ways, on either side, run westward follow- 
ing waterways which the old road assidu- 
ously avoided — keeping to the high ground 
between them. Between these new and 
fast courses of human trafl&c the old Glade 
Road lies along the hills, and, in the dust 
or in the snow, marks the course of armies 
which won a way through the mountains 
and made possible our westward expansion. 

The *' Old Glade Road," the old-time 
name of the Youghiogheny division (Burd's 
or the '' Turkey Foot " Road) of this thor- 
oughfare, has been selected as the title of 
this volume, as more distinctive than the 
*' Pennsylvania Road," which would apply 
to numerous highways. 

A. B. H. 

Marietta, Ohio, December 30, 1902. 



The Old Glade (Forbes's) Road 



CHAPTER I 

THE OLD TRADING PATH 

WHEN, in the middle of the eighteenth 
century, intelligent white men 
were beginning to cross the Alle- 
gheny Mountains and enter the Ohio basin, 
one of the most practicable routes was 
found to be an old trading path which ran 
almost directly west from Philadelphia to 
the present site of Pittsburg. According 
to the Indians it was the easiest route from 
the Atlantic slope through the dense laurel 
wildernesses to the Ohio.^ The course of 
this path is best described by the route of 
the old state road of Pennsylvania to Pitts- 
burg built in the first half -decade succeeding 
the Revolutionary War. This road passed 
through Shippensburg, Carlisle, Bedford, 
Ligonier, and Greensburg; the Old Trad- 
ing Path passed, in general, through the 

1 AfEbmation of Shawanese to the Indian trader, John 
Walker; see Sir John St Clair's letter, p. 86 f£. 



16 THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

same points. Comparing this path, which 
became Forbes* s Road, with Nemacolin's 
path which ran parallel with it, converging 
on the same point on the Ohio, one might 
say that the former was the overiand path, 
and the latter, strictly speaking, a portage 
path. The Old Trading Path offered no 
portage between streams, as Nemacolin's 
path did between the Potomac and Monon- 
gahela. It kept on higher, dryer ground 
and crossed no river of importance. This 
made it the easiest and surest course ; in 
the wintry season, when the Youghiogheny 
and Monongahela and their tributaries were 
out of banks, the Old Trading Path must 
have been by far the safest route to the 
Ohio; it kept to the high ground between 
the Monongahela and Allegheny. It was 
the high ground over which this path ran 
that the unfortunate Braddock attempted to 
reach after crossing the Youghiogheny at 
Stewart's Crossing. The deep ravines drove 
him back. There is little doubt he would 
have been successful had he reached this 
watershed and proceeded to Fort Duquesne 
upon the Old Trading Path. 

As is true of so many great western 



THE OLD TRADING PATH 17 

routes, SO of this path — the bold Chris- 
topher Gist was the first white man of 
importance to leave reliable record of it. 
In 1750 he was employed to go westward 
for the Ohio Company. His outward route, 
only, is of importance here.* On Wednes- 
day, October 31, he departed from Colonel 
Cresap's near Cumberland, Maryland and 
proceeded '* along an old old Indian Path 
N30E about II Miles."* This led him 
along the foot of the Great Warrior Moun- 
tain, through the Flintstone district of 
Allegheny County, Maryland. The path 
ran onward into Bedford County, Pennsyl- 
vania, and through Warrior's Gap to the 
Juniata River. Here, near the old settle- 
ment Bloody Run, now Everett, the path 
joined the well-worn thoroughfare running 
westward familiarly known as the ** Old 
Trading Path." Eight miles westward of 
this junction, near the present site of Bed- 
ford, a well-known trail to the Allegheny 
valley left the Old Trading Path and 
passed through the Indian Frank's Town 
and northwest to the French Venango — 

• Historic Highways of America^ vol. vi, ch. i. 
•Darlington's Christopher Gist's Journals y p. 32. 



18 THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

Franklin, Pennsylvania. Leaving this on 
his right, Gist pushed on west over the 
Old Trading Path. *' Snow and such bad 
Weather " made his progress slow ; from the 
fifth to the ninth he spent between what 
are now Everett in Bedford County and 
Stoyestown in Somerset County.* On the 
eleventh he crossed the north and east 
Porks of Quemahoning — often called 
'* Cowamahony " in early records.*^ On 
the twelfth he *' crossed a great Laurel 
Mountain" — Laurel Hill. On the four- 
teenth he '* set out N 45 W 6 M to Loyl- 
hannan an old Indian Town on a Creek of 
Ohio called Kiscominatis, then NiM NW i 
M to an Indian's Camp on the said Creek. ' ' ® 
The present town of Ligonier, Westmore- 
land County, occupies the site of this Indian 
settlement. '* Laurel-hanne, signif3ring the 
middle stream in the Delaware tongue. 
The stream here is half way between the 
Juniata at Bedford and the Ohio [Pitts- 
burg]." ' Between here and the Ohio, Gist 

*//., pp. 32, 33. 

' Pennsylvania Colonial Records^ vol. v, p. 750. 
• Darlington's Christopher Gists Journals^ p. 33. 
' Id., (notes), p. 91. Cf. Errett in Magazine of West- 
ern History, May 1885, p. 53. 



THE OLD TRADING PATH 10 

mentions no proper names. The path ran 
northwest from the present site of Ligonier, 
through Chestnut Ridge '* at the Miller's 
Run Gap, and reached the creek again at 
the Big Bottom below the present town of 
Latrobe on the Pennsylvania Central Rail- 
way; there the trail forked . the 
main trail [traveled by Gist], led directly 
westward to Shannopin's Town, by a 
course parallel with and a few miles north 
of the Pennsylvania Railway."® 

The following table of distances from 
Carlisle to Pittsburg was presented to the 
Pennsylvania Council March 2, 1754: 

MILES 

'* Prom Carlisle to Major Montour's . 10 
From Montour's to Jacob Pyatt's . 25 
Prom Pyatt's to George Croghan's 

at Aucquick Old Town • . 15 

From Croghan's to the Three 

Springs 10 

From the Three Springs to Side- 

*/</., (notes), pp. 91-92. 

* Later the site of Fort Shirley, Shirleysburg, Hun- 
tington County. See Frontier Forts of Pennsylvania, 
vol. ii. p. 457. 



20 THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

ling Hill 7 

From Sideling Hill to Contz's Har- 
bour 8 

From Contz's Harbour to the top of 
Ray's Hill i 

From Ray's Hill to the i crossing 
of Juniata ^® lo 

From I crossing of Juniata to AUa- 
quapy*s Gap ^^ 6 

From Allaquapy's Gap to Ray's 
town^* 5 

From Ray's town to the Shawonese 
Cabbin^* 8 

From Shawonese Cabbins to the 
Top of Allegheny Mountain . 8 

From Allegheny Mountain to Ed- 
mund's Swamp ^* • . .8 

From Edmund's Swamp to Cowa- 
mahony Creek ^* . . .6 

From Cowamahony to Kackanapau- 
lins 5 

^® Menchtown, at the foot of Ray's Hill. 
" Mt. Dallas. 
»« Bedford. 

"Mile Hill, one mile east of Schellsburg, Bedford 
County. 
'* Buckstown, Somerset County. 
" Quemahoning — * ' Stoney Creek. ' ' 



THE OLD TRADING PATH 21 

From ICackanapaulins To Loyal 
Hanini« foot Ray's Hill . i8 

From Loyal Hanin to Shanoppin's 
Town ^7 ...... 50 

By this early measurement the total dis- 
tance between Carlisle to Pittsburg by the 
Indian path was one hundred and ninety 
miles; ninety-seven miles from Carlisle to 
Raystown and ninety-three miles from 
Raystown to Pittsburg.^® When it is 
remembered that this was the original 
Indian track totally uninfluenced by the 
white man's attention it is interesting to 
note that the great state road of Pennsyl- 
vania from Carlisle to Pittsburg, laid out 
in 1785, so nearly followed the Indian 
route that its length between those points 
(in 1 8 19) was just one hundred and ninety- 
seven miles — seven miles longer^® than 

" Ligonier, Westmoreland County. 

" Delaware Indian village of some twenty huts situ- 
ated in that part of Pittsburg contained between Penn 
Avenue, Thirtieth Street and Two Mile Run in the 
Twelfth Ward, along the shore of the Allegheny. 

"Cf. Forbes-Bouquet t pp. 102-108. 

" Proved by comparison with Dana's Description of 
the Bounty Lands in the State of Illinois; also the 
principal Roads and Route s^ pp. 55, 96. 



22 THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

that of the prehistoric trace of Indian and 
buflfalo. Perhaps there is no more sig- 
nificant instance of the practicability of 
Indian routes in the United States than 
this. The very fact that the Indian path 
was not very much shorter than the first 
state road shows that it was distinctively a 
utilitarian course. One interested in this 
significant comparison will be glad to com- 
pare the courses of the old path and that of 
the state road as given by the compass.* 

Other references to the Old Trading Path 
are made by such traders as George Cro- 
ghan and John Harris. Croghan wrote to 
Richard Peters, March 23, 1754: ** The 
road we now travel from Laurel 

Hill to Shanopens (near the forks of the 
Ohio), is but 46 miles, as the road now 
goes, which I suppose may be 30 odd miles 
on a straight line." *^ In an '* Account of 
the Road to Loggs Town on Allegheny 
River, taken by John Harris, 1754 "this 
itinerary is given : 

^ For course of Indian path by compass see Colonial 
Records^ vol. v, p. 750, 751; for route of state road by 
compass see Id., vol. xvi, pp. 466-477. 

" Pennsylvania Archives, vol. ii, p. 132. 



THE OLD TRADING PATH 23 

*' From Ray's Town to the Shawana 

Cabbins 8 M 

To Edmund's Swamp . 8 M 
To Stoney Creek . . 6 M 
To Kickener Paulin's House, (In- 
dian) 6 M 

To the Clear Fields . . . 7 M 

To the other side of the Laurel 

Hill 5 M 

To Loyal Haning . 6 M 

To the Big Bottom . . . 8 M 

To the Chestnut Ridge . . 8 M 

To the parting of the Road ^ . 4 M 
Thence one Road leads to Shanno- 
pin's Town the other to Kissco- 
menettes, old Town."*® 
So much for the Old Trading Path before 
the memorable year of 1755. It is signifi- 

•* The branch which left the main trail here led north- 
west to the Kiskiminitas River and down that river to 
Kiskiminitas Old Town at Old Town Run, seven miles 
distant from the Allegheny River. In the survey 
of the main trail previously referred to (note 20) 
we read: ** N. 64, W. 12 Miles to Loyal Hanin Old 
Town; N. 20. W. 10 Miles to the Forks of the Road." 
The discrepancy is so great as to lead one to think there 
were two routes from ** Loyal Haning " to *• the parting 
of the Road.'' 

" Pennsylvania Archives^ vol. ii, p, 135. 



24 THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

cant that the route had already .been 
" surveyed " ; Pennsylvania herself desired 
a share of the Indian trade which Virginia 
hoped to monopolize through her Ohio 
Company, which already had storehouses 
built at Wills Creek on the Cumberland 
and at Redstone Old Fort on the Monon- 
gahela. But with the beginning of hos- 
tilities with the French, precipitated by 
Washington and his Virginians in 1754, 
the Indian trade was now completely at 
a standstill. 

General Braddock and his army which 
was destined to march westward and cap- 
ture Fort Duquesne arrived at Alexandria, 
Virginia, February 20, 1755. Already 
Braddock's deputy quartermaster-general, 
Sir John St. Clair, had passed through 
Maryland and Virginia and had decided 
upon the route of the army to Fort Cum- 
berland, the point of rendezvous. Four 
days after Braddock reached Alexandria, 
Governor Morris of Pennsylvania received 
a letter from St. Clair asking him to *' open 
a road toward the head of Youghheagang 
or any other way that is nearer the French 
forts," in order that the stores to be sup- 



THE OLD TRADING PATH 26 

plied by the northern colonies might take 
a shorter course than by way of the roads 
then being opened through Maryland and 
Virginia.^ Morris immediately replied 
'* . . there is no Waggon Road from 
Carlisle West through the Mountains but 
only a Horse Path, by which the Indian 
Traders used to carry their Goods and Skins 
to and from the Ohio while that Trade 
remained open. ' ' * Though Morris usually 
made requests of the assembly in vain, the 
request concerning this road was granted, 
and Morris was empowered, in the middle 
of March, to open a road " through Carlisle 
and Shippensburg to the Yoijogain, and to 
the camp at Will Creek."* He immedi- 
ately appointed George Croghan, John 
Armstrong, James Burd, William Buchan- 
nan, and Adam Hoops to find a road to the 
three forks of the Youghiogheny — or 
*' Turkey Foot *' as the spot was familiarly 
known on the frontier. On April 29 Burd 
reported as follows to Morris: '* 
We have viewed and layed out the Roads 

•• Pennsylvania Colonial Records, vol. vi, p. 300. 
•»//., p. 30a. 
••A/., p. 318. 



26 THE OLD GLADB ROAD 

leading from hence to the Yohiogain and 
the camp at Will's Creek, and enclosed You 
have the Draughts thereof. . . We 
have dispersed our Advertisements through 
the Counties of Lancaster, York, and Cum- 
berland, to encourage Labourers to come 
to Work, and We intend to set off to begin 
to clear up on Monday first. "^ Thus, 
slowly, the Old Trading Path was widened 
into a rough roadway westward from Car- 
lisle. On May 26, John Armstrong wrote 
Governor Morris that there were over a 
hundred choppers at work.^ Five days 
later Burd wrote Richard Peters that there 
were one hundred and fifty at work ; but 
he adds, ominously: ** The People are all 
anxious to have arms, and if You can pro- 
cure me arms I would not trouble the 
General for a cover ; but if you can't they 
will not be willing to go past Ray's Town 
without a guard. "^ Little wonder: the 
van of Braddock's army had struck west- 
ward into the AUeghenies the day before 
this was written, and already the woods 

*»//..?. 377. 
"/^., p. 403. 
••//.,?. 404. 



THE OLD TRADING PATH 17 

were full of spies sent out by the French, 
and many massacres had been reported. 
The horses and wagons which Franklin 
had secured for Braddock comprised almost 
his whole equipment. These had gone to 
Fort Cumberland by the old '* Monocasy 
Road" and Watkins Ferry. «> 

On the twelfth of June Allison and Max- 
well wrote Richard Peters that " Sideling 
Hill," sixty-seven miles west of Carlisle, 
and thirty miles east of Raystown, "is 
cut very artificially, nay more so than 
We ever saw any; the first waggon that 
carried a Load up it took fifteen Hundred 
without ever stopping; " there were, how- 
ever, many discouragements — '* for four 
Days the Labourers had not one Glass of 
Liquor! " ** On June 15 William Buchan- 
nan reported that the road was cleared to 
Raystown.® But some of the wagons were 
** pretty much damnified." On the seven- 
teenth Edward Shippen wrote Morris from 
Lancaster: "I understand Mr. Burd has 

■•Sioussat's ** Highway Legislation in Maryland," 
Maryland Geological Survey (special publication), 
voL iii, part iii, p. 136. 

•* Pennsylvania Colonial Records, pp. 434, 435. 

^Id, p. 435. 



28 THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

cut the Road 5 Miles beyond Ray's Town, 
which is 90 Miles from Shippensbnrg.** " 
On the twenty-first General Braddock wrote 
as follows to Governor Morris from Bear 
Camp (seven miles west of Little Crossings) : 
** As it is perfectly understood here in what 
Part the Road making in your Province 
is to communicate w*^ that thro' w** I am 
now proceedng to Fort Du Quesne, I must 
beg that you and Mr Peters will immedi- 
ately settle it, and send an express on 
Purpose after me with the most exact 
Description of it, that there may be no 
Mistake in a Matter of so much Impor- 
tance."^ On July 3 Morris wrote Burd, 
who was in command of the working party, 
concerning this request of Braddock's. 
He takes it ' ' for granted . . that the 
Road must pass the Turkey Foot . 
and that there cou'd be no Road got to the 
Northward." Under such circumstances 
he affirmed that the nearest course to Brad- 
dock's Road would be a straight line from 
Turkey Foot (Confluence, Pennsylvania) to 
the Great Crossings of the Youghiogheny 

"A/., p. 431. 
»*/!/.. p. 446. 



THE OLD TRADING PATH 81 

(Smithfield, Pennsylvania). He asked Burd 
to settle this point and send his decision 
immediately to Braddock.* 

The working party on the Pennsylvania 
road was attacked early in July and needed 
every one of the five score men whom 
Braddock had been able to spare for their 
protection.** 

Burd replied*' from the "Top of the 
AUeghanies** on July 17, while still in 
ignorance of Braddock's utter rout: '* At 
present I can't form any Judgment where I 
shall cut the General's Road, further than 
I know our Course leads us to the Turkey 
Foot, By the Information of Mr. Croghan 
when we run the Road first. Mr. Croghan 
assured me he wou'd be on the Road with 
me in order to pilott from the Place where 
we left oflE blaizeing. Instead of that he 
has never been here, nor is there one Man 
in my Company that ever was out this Way 
to the Turkey Foot, But the Party I send 
will discover the Place where we shall cut 
the Road and inform the General, and upon 

»/</., p. 452. 

••/{/., pp. 431, 460. 

»*/<!/., p. 485. _ ... . . 



S2 THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

their return I will order 'em to blaize back 
to me." 

The news of Braddock's defeat came 
slowly to the cutters of this historic road- 
way from central Pennsylvania to the 
Youghiogheny, On Tuesday night, July 
15, a messenger was sent to them from 
Fort Cumberland, who arrived the night 
of the day the above letter was written.'® 
Dunbar wrote Morris from " near ye great 
Crossings " on the sixteenth: '* I have sent 
an Express to Captain Hogg, who is cover- 
ing the People cutting Your New Road, as 
I can't think his advancing that Way safe, 
to retire immediately."® Burd reported 
to Morris from Shippensburg July 25, that 
his party had retreated to Fort Cumberland 
from the top of Allegheny Mountain July 
17; '* St Clair told Me." he added, tenta- 
tively, *' that I had done my Duty." He 
had left before Dunbar's messenger had 
arrived.*® 

Such is the first chapter of the story of 

«/</., p. 493. 
"//.. p. 499. 

^ For road.<mtters' daim of /*500o, see Pennsylvania 
Colonial Records, vol. vi, pp. 523, 620-621. 



THE OLD TRADING PATH 88 

the white man's occupation of the Old 
Trading Path and the Old Glade Road — 
the name commonly applied to the portion 
which Burd opened from the main path 
from where it diverged four, miles west of 
Bedford to the summit of Allegheny 
Mountain. This branch was also known 
as the '' Turkey Foot Road."« The Old 
Trading Path was now a white man's road 
from Carlisle to Bedford and four miles 
beyond. But the tide of war now set over 
the mountains after Braddock's defeat, 
putting an end to any improvement of the 
new rough road that was opened. Yet not 
all the ground gained was to be lost. 
Grovemor Shirley, now in command, wildly 
ordered Dunbar to move westward again 
to retrieve Braddock's mistakes, but sanely 
added, that, in the case of defeat ''You 
are to make the most proper Disposition of 
his Majesties' Forces to cover the Fron- 
tiers of the Provinces, particularly at the 
Towns of Shippensburg and Carlisle, and 
at or near a place called McDowell's Mill, 
where the New Road to the Allegheny 

^^Land Records of Allegheny County, Maryland, 
Liber D, fol. 225. 



34 THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

Mountains begins in Pennsylvania, from 
the Incursions of the Enemy until you shall 
receive further orders," ** 

Was this a hint that Braddock had been 
sent by a wrong route and that his successor 
would march to Fort Duquesne over the 
Old Trading Path? 

«A/., p. 561. 



CHAPTER II 

A BLOOD-RED FRONTIER 

THERE is no truer picture of the dark 
days of 1755-56 along the frontiers 
of Pennsylvania and Virginia than 
that presented in the correspondence of 
Washingfton at this time. A great burden 
fell upon his young shoulders with the 
failure of the campaigns of 1755. Though 
far from being at fault, he suffered greatly 
through the faults and failures of others. 
The British army had come and had been 
routed. Now, after such a victory as the 
Indians had never dreamed possible, the 
Virginia and Pennsylvania frontiers, five 
hundred miles in lengfth, lay helpless 
before the bands of bold marauders drunk 
with the blood of Braddock's slain. 

The young colonel of the remnant of the 
Virginia Regiment took up the difficult 
task of defending the southern frontier as 
readily as though a quiet, happy life on 



86 THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

his rich farms was an alternative as impos- 
sible as alluring. But perhaps a bleeding 
border-land never in the world needed 
a twenty-three year old lad more than 
Virginia now needed her young son. A 
flood-tide of murder and pillage swept over 
the AUeghenies. The raids of the savages 
brought the people to their senses, as the 
most terrible of tales came in from the 
frontier. But soon the question arose, 
' * Where is the frontier ? * ' The great track 
Braddock had opened for the conquest 
of the Ohio valley became the pathway 
of his conquerors, and soon Fort Cumber- 
land, the frontier post, was far in the 
enemies' country. The Indians soon found 
Burd's road on the summit of the AUe- 
ghenies and poured over it by Raystown 
toward Carlisle and Shippensburg. Each 
day brought the line of settlements nearer 
and nearer the populous portions of Vir- 
ginia and Pennsylvania, until Winchester 
became an endangered outpost and fears 
were entertained for Lancaster and York, 
Hundreds now who had refused the 
despairing Braddock horses and wagons 
saw their wives and children murdered 



A BLOOD-RED FRONTIER 87 

and their homesteads burned to the ground. 

Whether Dunbar did right or wrong in 
hurrying back to Virginia, it was a bitter 
day for Virginia and Pennsylvania. When 
his army hastened from the frontier, it 
became the prey of the foes whose appetite 
that army had whetted. Yet Shirley, 
reconsidering his former scheme, ordered 
Dunbar to New York. After drawing the 
full fire of the French and Indians upon 
Virginia and Pennsylvania, this army was 
sent to New York. 

Looking backward, with the stern years 
1775-82 in mind, it is easy to see that 
then, in 1755, Pennsylvania and Virginia 
were to be put through a hard school for a 
glorious purpose. They were to be trained 
in the art of war. Of it they had known 
practically nothing. They had no effective 
militia. Of military ethics they had no 
dream. They knew not what obedience 
meant and could not understand delegated 
authority. Their liberty was license or 
nothing. Of the power of organization, 
concentration, discipline, routine, and 
method they were almost as ignorant as 
their redskinned enemies. Although the 



88 THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

men of New England had not been given 
such great obstacles to overcome, it is 
undoubtedly true that their militia was far 
more adequate than anything of which 
Pennsylvania or Virginia knew, at least 
until 1758.** And yet Braddock died 
cursing his regulars and extolling the 
colonials ! 

Washington was elected commander-in- 
chief in Virginia on his own dignified 
terms; the army was increased to sixteen 
companies and ;^40,ooo were voted for 
general defense. By October the young 
commander was at Winchester, where he 
faced a situation desperate and appalling. 
The country-side was terror-stricken, and 
few could be found even for defense; 
many chose * ' to die with their wives and 
families." The few score men who 

**See Davies's Sermon, Virginia's Danger and 
Remedy^ (Glasgow, 1756) 2d ed., p. 6; Cort's Colonel 
Henry Bouquet^ p. 74; London Public Advertiser^ 
October 3, 1755 ; Bouquet au Forbes, July 31, 1758, p. 113 ; 
" I know of only one remedy for the frightful indolence 
of the officers of these provinces, which would be to 
drum one out in the presence of the whole army" — 
Bouquet au Forbes, }vXy 1758; Bouquet Papers, 21, 
640, fol. 95. Biuy: Exodus of the Western Nations 
vol. ii, pp. 250-251- 



A BLOOD-RED FRONTIER 89 

attempted to stem the tide of retreat were 
almost powerless. *' No orders are obeyed," 
Washington wrote Dinwiddie, '* but such 
as a party of soldiers, or my own drawn 
sword enforces." Such was the frenzy of 
the retreat of the frontier population that 
threats were made '* to blow out the 
brains" of all in authority who opposed 
them. But the young commander contin- 
ued undaunted. He impressed men and 
horses and wagons, and sent them hurry- 
ing for flour and musket-balls and flints; 
he compelled men to erect little fortresses 
to which the people might flee. 

Not the least of his trials — undoubtedly 
the most discouraging — was the faithless- 
ness of the troops sent out by Grovernor 
Dinwiddie upon the reeking frontier. 
Many of them were themselves panic- 
stricken and fled back with the rabble. 
The whole militia regime was inadequate ; 
there was no authority of sufl5.cient weight 
vested in the commanding officers to enable 
them to deal even with insolence, much 
less desertion. '* I must assume the free- 
dom," Washington wrote the governor, 
'' to express some surprise, that we alone 



40 THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

should be so tenacious of our liberty as not 
to invest a power, where interest and policy 
so unanswerably demand it. . . Do 
we not know, that every nation under the 
sun finds its account therein, and that, 
without it, no order or regularity can be 
observed ? Why then should it be expected 
from us, who are all young and inexperi- 
enced, to govern and keep up a proper 
spirit of discipline without laws, when the 
best and most experienced can scarcely do 
it with them?" 

As the winter of 1755-6 approached, the 
Indian atrocities ceased and for a few 
months there was quiet. But by early 
spring the raids were renewed with merci- 
less regularity. Every day brought a new 
tale of murder and pillage ; and very soon 
every road was filled with fugitives ** bring- 
ing to Winchester fresh dismay." 

With his few men this first hero of Win- 
chester (who by the way was at his post, 
not ''twenty miles away") was again 
straining every nerve that Virginia might 
not lose the great stretch of beautiful 
country west of the Blue Ridge. *' The 
supplicating tears of women and moving 



A BLOOD-RED FRONTIER 41 

petitions of the men, melt me into such 
deadly sorrow, that I solemnly declare, if 
I know my own mind, I could offer myself 
a willing sacrifice to the butchering enemy, 
provided that would contribute to the 
people's ease." Perhaps the vacillating 
Dinwiddie threw this letter down as too 
ardent a one for a military hand to pen ; if 
so Edward Everett has raised it aloft to 
show his thrilled audiences ** the whole 
man" Washington. "The inhabitants 
are removing daily," he again wrote — 
** . . in a short time will leave this 
country as desolate as Hampshire." To 
such a degree were the people terrified that 
secret meetings were held where leaders 
openly spoke of making terms with the 
French and Indians by renouncing all 
claims to the West — no less traitors to the 
best good of the colonies than those who 
celebrated over Braddock's defeat.** 

The campaign of 1756, as conducted by 
Shirley, contained no hope of relief for 
Pennsylvania or Virginia; " so much am I 
kept in the dark," Washington exclaimed, 
** that I do not know whether to prepare for 
^Pennsylvania Colonial Records^ vol. vi, p. 503. 



42 THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

the oflfensive or defensive ; yet what might 
be absolutely necessary in the one, would be 
quite useless in the other." He well knew 
a determined stroke at Fort Duquesne, '* a 
floodgate to open ruin and woe/' was the 
only hope of the southern and central 
colonies. In the meantime he led a 
desperately exasperating life attempting to 
hold the frontier with his tatterdemalion 
army by following Pennsylvania's example 
of building a line of forts to defend the 
country. There was no destitution or dis- 
tress of which he did not know ; at times 
he was begging for blankets to cover his 
naked soldiers, and again for shoes and 
shirts; there were few gfuns in a state of 
repair and at times in days of danger hun- 
dreds flocked to him who could neither be 
fed nor armed. His life must have been 
known to Lord Fairfax who wrote in the 
following strain: " Such a medley of un- 
disciplined militia must create you various 
troubles, but having Cesar's Commentaries 
and perhaps Quintus Curtius, you have 
therein read of greater fatigues, murmur- 
ings, mutinies, and defections, than will 
probably come to your share." The fact 



A BLOOD-RED FRONTIER 48 

is, in these days there was no officer's duty 
with which Washington was not acquainted. 
He supervised the building of forts, the 
transportation of stores and gfuns and 
ammunition, here reprimanding a coarse 
mountaineer for profanity, there leading 
the scouts as they threshed a mountain for 
lurking Delawares; he personally hurried 
off wagons to endangered outposts with 
flour and powder, and then listened to and 
quieted the fears of frantic women and 
men. 

Is the splendid lesson of these years 
clear? By Providential dispensation these 
colonies were a miniature of the America 
of 1775, suddenly thrown upon its own 
resources and in war. The divine hand is 
not more clearly seen in our national 
development than in the struggle of the 
colonies between 1745 and 1763, which pre- 
pared a nation for the hour her independence 
should strike. And now it was that Wash- 
ington, Gates, Mercer, Gladwin, Lewis, 
Putnam, Crawford, Gibson, Stephen, St. 
Clair, and Stewart learned for themselves 
and then taught their countrymen to fight; 
now Washington found what it meant to 



44 THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

be the commander of bare-foot armies, 
already a hero of two defeats, he was yet 
to play the hero in bitter, pitiful extremi- 
ties, to become a dogged believer in hope- 
less, last alternatives, a burden-bearer for 
hundreds of homeless ones — a people's 
mainstay when other men were faltering. 
Now, as in 1775, his task was to rouse a 
people only half awake to the crisis; to 
demonstrate the superiority of wisely 
ordered liberty over license, and the inferi- 
ority of personal independence compared 
with a unity made strong through faithful 
cooperation, and hallowed by mutual self- 
sacrifice. And fortunate it was for all the 
colonies that England compelled them to 
learn how to carry war's heavy harness 
now, against the day when they should be 
assailed by something more disastrously 
fatal to the cause of liberty than savages 
fired to murder and pillage by French 
brandy. 

In all these wild days, the old path west- 
ward from Shippensburg and Carlisle was 
often crowded with fugitives fleeing from 
the reeking frontier, and, quite as often, 
shrouded in a cloud of dust raised by squads 



A BLOOD-RED FRONTIER 46 

of wan militia hastening westward to the 
defense of the outposts. Though no officer 
guarding this strategic passage-way became 
endeared to his countrymen as Washington, 
here heroism and devotion were displayed, 
if ever on this continent. The plans of 
England during these years will be 
described elsewhere, but it is to our pur- 
pose to know now that for the present she 
deserted the southern provinces ; that she 
was * * willing to wait for the rains to wet 
the powder, and rats to eat the bow-strings 
of the enemy, rather than attempt to 
drive them from her [southern] frontiers." 
Until 1756 the matter of the defense of 
the Pennsylvania frontier was left almost 
entirely to individual initiative. But 
already the road through Carlisle and Ship- 
pensburg had been fortified. Fort Lowther 
was erected in Carlisle as early as i7S3- 
It was an important post on the route to 
Virginia, over which the wagons and horses 
raised by Franklin for Braddock, were, in 
part, forwarded to Fort Cumberland. Here 
Governor Morris came, to be in closer touch 
with Braddock, and here the news of the 
defeat reached him. 



46 THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

Fort Franklin was erected on the old road 
at Shippensburg, twenty miles west of 
Carlisle and thirty-six from Harris Perry 
(Harrisburg). It was built sometime pre- 
vious to Braddock's time but was not used 
after 1756. Ten miles further on at Fall- 
ing Springs (Chambersburg) there was no 
fortification in 1755, nor was there one at 
Loudoun (Loudon) thirteen miles west of 
that point. Two miles south of Fort Lou- 
doun Morris erected a deposit at McDowell's 
Mill (Bridgeport, Franklin County) but, 
though the spot was well known on the 
frontier, there seems to have been no 
regular fort there until 1756.**^ It was at 
this point that the new road toward Rays- 
town diverged westward from the main 
road running south to Virginia. This 
junction was considered a strategic point 
by the time of Braddock's defeat, as shown 
by Shirley's order to Dunbar quoted at the 
close of the last chapter. 

Up to the time of Braddock's defeat the 
Pennsylvania Assembly had done nothing 
toward the preservation of the colony, save 
ordering the road cut from Carlisle to the 

^Morris to Braddock, July 3, 1755. 



A BLOOD-RED FRONTIER 47 

Youghiogheny river. They furnished not 
a man for Braddock's army and voted not a 
pound toward the expense of securing the 
wagons and horses which made Braddock's 
march possible. The stores which Gover- 
nor Morris laid in along the line of the 
road, at Shippensburg and McDowell's 
Mill, were secured and forwarded without 
aid from the Assembly. Though many 
Pennsylvanians served, in one way or 
another, in the unfortunate expedition, the 
public was divided on this issue. Some 
were loyal to the Assembly and many 
favored warlike measures. It has been 
asserted that had not Forbes's Road been 
built in 1758 its building would have been 
postponed twenty years. 

Passing this interesting speculaion, it is 
sure Braddock's defeat brought to Pennsyl- 
vania a terrible and bloody awakening; 
nothing can show this more strikingly than 
the fact that when Braddock's successor 
came, only three years later, the Pennsyl- 
vania Assembly quickly supported him by 
voting twenty-seven hundred men for 
offensive service and appropriating half a 
million dollars for war. 



48 THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

The change was not more striking than 
was the need for it. All the terrifying 
scenes in Virginia were reproduced in 
Pennsylvania; the savages poured through 
the mountain gaps and fell with unparal- 
leled fury upon a hundred defenseless 
settlements. Pennsylvania had not ex- 
panded further at this time than to the 
Blue Mountains. Her frontier was not, 
therefore, nearly as broad as Virginia's, 
and the frontier firing-line was not so far 
removed from the populated districts. At 
the same time it is probable that the 
Indians from Logstown and Kittanning 
could get a scalp quicker (so far as distance 
was concerned) from Pennsylvania than 
from Virginia — and the French paid as 
much for one as for the other ! 

Late in 1756 the Pennsylvania Assembly, 
now awakened to the condition of affairs 
caused by their shortsighted, prejudiced 
policy, took the matter of protection of the 
frontier into their own hands. Failing to 
furnish the ounce of prevention, they came 
quickly with the pound of cure. A chain 
of forts was planned which, stretching 
along the barrier wall of the Blue Moun- 



A BLOOD-RED FRONTIER 49 

tains from the Potomac to the Delaware, 
should guard the more prominent gaps. 
"' Sometimes the chain of defenses ran on 
the south side, and frequently both sides of 
the mountains were occupied, as the needs 
of the population demanded. Some of 
these forts consisted of the defenses previ- 
ously erected by the settlers, which were 
available for the purpose, and of which the 
government took possession, while others 
were newly erected. Almost without 
exception they were composed of a stockade 
of heavy planks, inclosing a space of 
ground more or less extensive, on which 
were built from one to four blockhouses, 
pierced with loopholes for musketry, and 
occupied as quarters by the soldiers and 
refugee settlers. In addition to these reg- 
ular forts it became necessary at various 
points where depredations were most fre- 
quent, to have subsidiary places of defense 
and refuge, which were also garrisoned 
by soldiers and which generally comprised 
farmhouses, selected because of their su- 
perior strength and convenient location, 
around which the usual stockade was 
thrown, or occasionally blockhouses erected 



60 THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

for the purpose. The soldiers who gar- 
risoned these forts were provincial troops, 
which almost without exception were 
details from the First Battalion of the 
Pennsylvania Regiment, under the com- 
mand of that brave and energetic officer, 
Lt. Colonel Conrad Weiser."^ The ap- 
pended map is a photograph of the original 
which was made in this year, 1756 — for 
the forts of 1757 are not included. It is of 
particular interest because it gives the 
complete cordon of forts along the frontier 
from the Hudson to the last fort in Virginia 
which Washington was building. Among 
other things this map shows clearly how 
much wider were the frontiers of the south- 
em than those of the northern colonies. 
The most westerly fort in Virginia was 
fifty miles further west than Fort Du- 
quesne. The Appalachian range trends 
southwesterly and its influence upon the 
expansion of the colonies is most significant. 
In this year, though a western campaign 
on Fort Duquesne did not materialize, the 
line of the old road was greatly strength- 
ened and a blow was struck at the Indians 
*« Frontier Forts of Pennsylvania^ vol. i, pp. 4, 5. 



■n 



'4 
■i 



I 



A BLOOD-RED FRONTIER 6B 

on tl\e Allegheny that was timely and 
effective. The former was a most impor- 
tant task — of far greater importance than 
was dreamed at that date. No one then 
knew the part this road westward from 
Carlisle was to play in our national develop- 
ment; it could not have been conceived, in 
1756, that this route was to be the only 
fortified highway into the West — the most 
important military road of equal length on 
the continent throughout the eighteenth 
century. 

That Fort Lowther at Carlisle was in 
ruins in 1756 is shown by the following 
letter written by William Trent to Richard 
Peters February 15, 1756, which also gives 
a realistic picture of the state of affairs 
which compelled the Pennsylvania As- 
sembly to begin the fort- building of that 
year : ' ' All the people had left their houses, 
betwixt this and the mountain, some come 
to town and others gathering into the little 
f orts.*^ They are moving their effects from 
Shippensburg; every one thinks of flying 
unless the Government fall upon some 
effectual method, and that immediately, of 
*'* Cabins fortified by their owners and neighbors. 



54 THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

securing the frontiers, there will not be 
one inhabitant in this Valley one month 
longer. There is a few of us endeavoring 
to keep up the spirits of the people. We 
have proposed going upon the enemy 
tomorrow, but whether a number sufficient 
can be got, I cannot tell ; no one scarce 
seems to be affected with the distress of 
their neighbours and for that reason none 
will stir but those that are next the enemy 
and in immediate danger. A fort in this 
town would have saved this part of the 
country, but I doubt this town in a few 
days, will be deserted, if this party [of 
savages] that is out should kill any people 
nigh here." Commissioner Young was at 
Carlisle soon after, putting Fort Lowther 
into proper condition; he wrote Governor 
Morris: " I have endeavored to put this 
large fort in the best possible defense I can ; 
but I am sorry to say the people of this 
town cannot be prevailed on, to do any- 
thing for their own safety. . . They 
seem to be lulled into fatal security, a 
strange infatuation, which seems to prevail 
throughout this province.*' The fort was 
not completed in July ; Colonel Armstrong 



A BLOOD-RED FRONTIER 66 

wrote Morris on th^ twenty-third of that 
month. '* The duties of the harvest field 
have not permitted me to finish Carlisle 
Port with the soldiers, it should be done 
otherwise, the soldiers cannot be so well 
governed, and may be absent or without 
the gates at the time of the greatest neces- 
sity." In the same letter Colonel Arm- 
strong — the Washington of Pennsylvania — 
wrote: '* Lyttleton, Shippensburg and Car- 
lisle (the two last not finished) are the only 
forts now built that will in my opinion be 
serviceable to the public. " It is significant 
that these three forts were on the old road 
westward, showing that this route was of 
utmost importance in Armstrong's eyes. 

Port Lyttleton was one of four important 
forts erected, at Armstrong's direction, by 
Governor Morris west of the Susquehanna 
late in 1755 and early in 1756. It was built 
*'at Sugar Cabins upon the new road"; 
wrote Morris to Shirley February 9: *' It 
[Port L3rttleton] stands upon the new road 
opened by this Province towards the Ohio, 
and about twenty miles from the settle- 
ments, and I have called it Port Lyttleton, 
in honor of my friend George. This fort 



66 THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

will not only protect the inhabitants in that 
part of the Province, but being upon a road 
that within a few miles joins General Brad- 
dock's road, it will prevent the march of 
any regulars into the Province and at the 
same time serve as an advance post or 
magazine in case of an attempt to the west- 
ward." The site of this fort was on land 
now owned by Dr. Trout, of McConnells- 
burg, Pennsylvania — about sixty feet on 
the north side of the old state road. ^ 

Port Morris at Shippensburg was build- 
ing in November 1755; '* we have one 
hundred men working," wrote James Burd, 
'' . . with heart and hand every day. 
The town is full of people, five or six 
families in a house, in great want of arms 
and ammunition ; but, with what we have 
we are determined to give the enemy as 
warm a reception, as we can. Some of 
our people have been taken prisoners, but 
have made their escape, and came to us 
this morning." There had, as noted, been 
some sort of fortification here at an earlier 
date, Fort Franklin. As said previously, 
Fort Morris was still uncompleted July 23, 
^Frontier Forts of Pennsylvania, vol. i, p. 558. 



A BLOOD-RED FRONTIER 67 

1756. It was in Port Franklin, undoubt- 
edly, that the magazine was placed during 
Braddock's campaig^n. Port McDowell, at 
McDowell's Mill, was also erected in 1756, 
being an important point at the junction 
of the old road into Virginia and the new 
road to Raystown. The savage onslaughts 
of the Indians were felt no more severely 
in any quarter than near here. At Great 
Cove, in November 1755, forty-seven per- 
sons were murdered or taken captive out of 
a total population of ninety-three. The 
strategic position of Fort McDowell at the 
junction of the roads was emphasized by 
Colonel Armstrong, who, after saying that 
Ports Lyttleton, Shippensburg, and Carlisle 
were the only ones that would be useful to 
the public, added: " McDowell's, or there- 
abouts, is a necessary post; but the present 
fort is not defensible." 

Port Loudoun was erected on the old 
road in 1756, one mile east of the present 
village of Loudon, Pranklin County. The 
spot was historic even before it was forti- 
fied, the settlement here being one of the 
oldest in that section of the state. This 
point was a famous rendezvous both in the 



68 THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

early days when the Old Trading Path was 
the main western highway, and in after 
days when the path became Forbes's Road. 
From here the pack-horse trains started 
westward into the mountains loaded — two 
hundred pounds to a horse — with goods 
which had come this far in wagons from 
Lancaster and Philadelphia. The site of 
Fort Loudoun therefore marks the western 
extremity of the early colonial roadways 
and the eastern extremity of the ** packers' 
paths" or trading paths which offered, 
until 1758, the only route across the moun- 
tains.** Fort Loudoun was built late in 
1755, after considerable debate as to its 
location. Colonel Armstrong, after exam- 
ining a spot near one Barr's, finally deter- 
mined to locate it '* on a place in that 
neighborhood, near to Pamell's Knob, 
where one Patton lives . . as it is near 
the new road; it will make the distance 
fom Shippensburg to Fort Lyttleton two 
miles further than by McDowell's. " 
Ten miles southwest of Shippensburg, 

^* Braddock's Road cannot be considered as a wagon 
road at this time; long before hostilities had ceased it 
had become impassable for wagons. 



A BLOOD-RED FRONTIER 69 

Benjamin Chambers, a noted pioneer, 
erected Port Chambers at Palling Spring, 
the present Chambersburg. It was a 
private fort completed in 1756; by some 
means the owner had secured two four- 
pound cannon which he mounted in his 
little fort, the roof of which he had already 
covered with lead. It was feared that 
Chambers's little fort would be captured by 
the savages and the guns turned upon Ship- 
pensburg and Carlisle. But their owner 
repudiated the insinuation and even held 
the guns from Colonel Armstrong, who was 
armed with the governor's order to sur- 
render them. Incidentally, also, he made 
good his boasts and held the fort with 
equal pugnacity from the savages. Colonel 
Chambers was of great assistance to Gen- 
eral Forbes in the days of 1758, and, as an 
aged man, sent his three sons, raised in 
the lead-roofed fortress with its " Great 
Guns," to Boston in 1775 to fight again for 
the land he had helped to conquer from the 
Indians in the dark days of Braddock and 
Porbes. Such men as Benjamin Chambers 
made Porbes's Road a possibility. The 
state road built westward over the track of 



60 THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

Forbes's and Bouquet's armies is well 
known in eastern Pennsylvania as the 
** Chambersburg and Pittsburg turnpike." ^ 

These forts west of the Susquehanna 
were garrisoned by the eight companies 
of the second battalion of the Pennsyl- 
vania regiment. While the work of com- 
pleting the forts not yet finished went on, 
a campaign of more importance than was 
realized was conceived by ex-Grovemor 
Morris and explained to Grovemor Denny 
and the Council. It comprised a bold 
stroke by Lieutenant-colonel Armstrong at 
the Indian-infested region of Kittanning on 
the Allegheny. Here the Delaware Cap- 
tain Jacobs held bloody sway, having, 
according to the report of an Indian spy 
who had recently visited the spot, nearly 
one hundred white prisoners from Virginia 
and Pennsylvania captive at that point. 

Port Shirley was appointed the place of 
rendezvous and the little campaign was 
kept as secret as possible. As the map 
shows, Fort Shirley (no. 23), Fort Lyttleton 
(no. 24) and Shippensburg form a triangle, 
the longest side of which marks the straight 
^Frontier Forts of Pennsylvania, vol. i, p. 536. 



A BLOOD-RED FRONTIER 61 

line between the two latter posts. Fort 
LfOudoun was near this line between Fort 
Lyttleton and Port Morris at Shippensburg. 
Near Port Loudoun a branch of the old 
Kittanning Path ran northwesterly by 
Port Shirley and onward to the Alle- 
gheny.*^ Over this track the bold band, 
which rendezvoused at Port Shirley late in 
August, was to enter the Indian land. It 
numbered three hundred and seven men, 
almost precisely the size of Washington's 
party which precipitated war in 1754. But 
with the gloomy fate of Washington's band 
and Braddock's army in mind this must have 
been a thoughtful company of men that 
proceeded from Fort Shirley on the next 
to the last day of August 1756. Their 
success was all out of proportion to their 
expectation but not out of proportion to 
their bravery. Within a week Kittanning 
was reached, surrounded when it was dark- 
est before dawn, and savagely attacked in 
the grey of the misty morning. The town 
was utterly destroyed, some three score 
savages killed and eleven prisoners rescued 
and brought back over the mountains. 
^^ Historic Highways of America^ vol. ii, p. 85. 



62 THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

The moral effect of this dash toward the 
Allegheny was of exceeding benefit to the 
whole frontier, and Armstrong — always 
feared by the Indians — ^became their 
especial bite noire. The expedition, having 
been made from lethargic Pennsylvania, 
had a wholesome effect upon all the other 
colonies and did much to cement them into 
the common league which accomplished 
much before two years had passed. Arm- 
strong, as one of the builders of the new 
road through Raystown, as efi&cient officer 
in the work of fortifying this route, and 
now as leader of an offensive stroke at once 
daring and successful, was slowly being 
fitted for more useful and more important 
duties when the flower of Pennsylvania's 
frontier should be thrown across the AUe- 
ghenies upon Fort Duquesne. 

This officer's opinion, already quoted, 
that the only forts worth the candle west 
of the Susquehanna were the three or four 
which fortified the main route westward 
from Carlisle to Raystown, appears to have 
met the approval of those in authority by 
1757; oil April lo, Governor Denny wrote 
to the Proprietaries: "Pour Ports only 



A BLOOD-RED FRONTIER 68 

were to remain over Susquehannah, viz., 
Lyttleton, Loudoun, Shippensburg, and 
Carlisle."® If this is considered a back- 
ward step it must also be considered as a 
concentration of energy in a most telling 
manner. If the frontier from the Susque- 
hanna to the Maryland line could not be 
held at every point the decision seems to 
have been that the line of the old road 
must be secured at all costs, whereupon 
all the public forts were abandoned save 
the four which guarded this western high- 
way. But the decision meant more than 
this. It was in fact an oflFensive measure. 
Instead of holding a line of forts at the 
mountain gaps as a shield to the settle- 
ments, the line of the roadway westward 
was to be protected and even prolonged — 
a bristling sword-point stretching over the 
AUeghenies into the very heart of the 
French and Indian region. This is proved 
by the building of a new fort yet further 
west than Lyttleton — at Raystown, near 
the point where Burd's road, cut in 1755 
toward the Youghiogheny, left the Old 
Trading Path. This significant undertak- 
^ Pennsylvania Archives^ vol. iii, p. 1x9. 



64 THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

ing was evidently on the tapis early in the 
winter. On February 22, Armstrong wrote 
Burd: "This is all that can possibly be 
done, before the grass grows and proper 
numbers unite, except it is agreed to 
fortify Raystown, of which I, yet, know 
nothing. ' ' On the fifth of May he addressed 
a letter to the governor in which he said : 
" . . prompts me to propose to your 
Honour what I have long ago suggested, to 
the late Governor and gentlemen commis- 
sioners, that is the building a fort at Rays- 
town without which the King's business 
and the country's safety can never be 
effected to the westward. . . 'Tis true 
this service will require upwards of five 
hundred men, as no doubt they will be 
attacked if any power be at Fort Du- 
quesne, because this will be a visible, large 
and direct stride to that place." Thus it is 
clear that every step westward on the new- 
cut roadway from Fort Lyttleton toward 
Raystown was a step toward Fort Duquesne, 
and every fortification built on this track 
was a " visible, large and direct " stroke at 
the power of France on the Ohio. A fort 
was erected at Raystown within the year. 



CHAPTER III 

THE CAMPAIGNS OF 1/58 

«T)ETWEEN the French and the earth- 
J3 quakes/' wrote Horace Walpole in 
1758 to Mr. Conway, ** you have no 
notion how good we have grown ; nobody 
makes a suit of clothes now but of sackcloth 
turned up with ashes." The years 1756 
and 1757 were crowded with disappoint- 
ments. With the miscarriage of the three 
campaigns of 1755, Grovemor Shirley 
became the successor of the forgotten Brad- 
dock and assembled a council of war at 
New York composed of Governors Shirley, 
Hardy, Sharpe, Morris, and Fitch, Colonels 
Dunbar and Schuyler, Majors Craven and 
Rutherford, and Sir John St. Clair. As 
though in very mockery, the king's instruc- 
tions to the betrayed and sacrificed Brad- 
dock were read to the council, after which 
Greneral Shirley announced a scheme for 
campaigns to be conducted during the new 



66 THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

year. The new ' ' generalissimo ' ' proposed 
four campaigns: one army of five thousand 
men was to assemble at Oswego, four thou- 
sand of whom were to be sent to destroy, 
first, Fort Frontenac, then Forts Niagara, 
Presque Isle, La Boeuf, and Detroit; a 
second army of three thousand provincials 
was to march over Braddock's Road against 
Fort Duquesne ; an army of one thousand 
men was to advance to Crown Point on 
Lake Champlain and erect a fort there ; a 
fourth army of two thousand men was to 
'* carry fire and sword " up the Kennebec 
River, across the portage, and down Rivifere 
Chaudifere to its mouth near Quebec. The 
Council agreed, as councils will, to all this 
Quixotic program ; insisting, however, that 
ten thousand men should be sent to Crown 
Point and six thousand to Oswego. 

In spite of Shirley's earnestness things 
moved very slowly, and the bickering 
between governors and assemblies and the 
jealousy of men out of power of those in 
power retarded every movement. The 
deadlock in Pennsylvania resulted in the 
abandonment of that province and Virginia 
so far as offensive measures were concerned, 



THE CAMPAIGNS OP 1768 67 

and the two governors busied themselves 
in fortifying their smoking frontiers, as 
described above. And finally the northern 
campaigns toward the lakes came to a sud- 
den stand when General Shirley was super- 
seded in his command by Lord Loudoun 
who, lacking the sense to forward Shirley's 
plans, ofl&ciously altered them completely 
at a time when everything depended on 
quick and concerted action. As a result, 
Loudoun moved northward at a snail's pace. 
It seemed as though affairs in America 
were momentarily paralyzed by the shock 
of the tremendous conflict now opened on 
the continent. On the eighteenth of May 
England had declared war on France and 
twenty-two days later France responded, 
and the most terrible conflict of the eigh- 
teenth century opened, in which the great 
Frederick eventually humbled, with Eng- 
land's help, the three empresses whose 
hatred he had drawn upon himself. But 
while Louis sent an army of one hundred 
thousand against Frederick, he had yet 
twelve thousand to hurry over to New 
France to make good the successes of 1755. 
These sailed under that best and bravest of 



68 THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

Frenchmen since the days of Champlain, 
Montcalm, on the third of April. In three 
months Montcalm had swept down Lake 
Champlain to Fort Ticonderoga. Then, as 
if to make sport of his antagonist — Lou- 
doun, who had abandoned Shirley's Oswego 
scheme — Montcalm returned to Montreal, 
hurried with three thousand soldiers down 
the St. Lawrence and across to Oswego, 
which surrendered at once with its twelve 
hundred defenders. The outwitted Lou- 
doun crawled slowly up to Lake George; 
the winter of 1756-57 came on, and the two 
commanders glared at each other across the 
narrow space of snow and ice that separated 
them. The two important campaigns 
planned by Shirley were utter failures, and 
the westward campaign against Fort Du- 
quesne was not even attempted. The 
French were strengthening everywhere. 
" Whoever is in or whoever is out," 
exclaimed Chesterfield, '* I am sure we 
are undone both at home and abroad. . . 
We are no longer a nation. ' * But one of 
Shirley's coups had succeeded; Winslow 
captured Beaus6jour. In the west Arm- 
strong had razed the Indian town of Kittan- 



THE CAMPAIGNS OF 1768 69 

ning on the Allegheny. On the other 
hand these minor successes were far over- 
balanced by the destruction of Oswego and 
Fort Bull, between the Mohawk and Lake 
Oneida, and the menacing position Mont- 
calm had assumed with the strengthening 
of Ticonderoga, Crown Point, and Fron- 
tenac. 

Pitt, a fine example of a man too power- 
ful to hold office with peace, was forced 
into the premiership again near the end of 
this black year of 1756. Parliament 
refused to support him, the Duke of Cum- 
berland, captain-general of the army, 
opposed him, and the king hated him ; early 
in April 1757 he was dismissed. England 
had found her man but the pigmies in 
power shrank from acknowledging him. 
With that sublime confidence which once 
or twice in a century betokens latent genius, 
Pitt exclaimed: " I am sure I can save this 
country, and that nobody else can. * ' Mean- 
time Chesterfield was sighing: '* I never 
saw so dreadful a time." The year of 1757 
dragged on as gloomily as its predecessor. 
Montcalm, master of the situation, pushed 
southward upon Fort William Henry on 



70 THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

Lake George, and General Webb at Port 
Edward. Loudoun abandoned the scene 
and went gallantly sailing with the fleet 
against Louisbourg. Fort William Henry 
surrendered and Montcalm spread terror to 
Albany and New York. Had he pressed 
his advantage it is questionable if he could 
not have occupied the whole Hudson Val- 
ley. Why he did not could have been 
explained better in Quebec than in New 
York. It was ever the foe behind Mont- 
calm that was his worst enemy, and which 
eventually compassed his ruin. 

If ofl&cial jealousies were now the bane 
of New France, incapacity until now had 
handicapped her enemies. When Pitt was 
forced out of ofl&ce in April, England was 
" left without a government." ** England 
has been long in labor, ' ' said the Prussian 
Frederick, " and at last she has brought 
forth a man. * ' Her hour was long delayed, 
but early in 1758 Pitt was again made Sec- 
retary of State with old Newcastle First 
Lord of the Treasury. ** It was a partner- 
ship of magpie and eagle. The dirty work 
of government, intrigue, bribery, and all 
the patronage that did not affect the war, 



THE CAMPAIGNS OF 1768 71 

fell to the share of the old politician. If 
Pitt could appoint generals, admirals, and 
ambassadors, Newcastle was welcome to 
the rest. ' I will borrow the Duke's ma- 
jorities to carry on the government,' said 
the new secretary."^ 

Seldom indeed has the elevation of one 
man to power produced such almost instan- 
taneous results as did the elevation of Pitt. 
The desperateness of England's condition 
undoubtedly intensified, by contrast, the 
successes which came when he assumed 
full power. England had been fighting, 
not France and her allies, but the stars ; all 
the bravery and sturdiness of her soldiers 
and sailors could not counteract the ignor- 
ance and incapacity of those who had 
heretofore commanded them. Now, capac- 
ity and ability were in league; like an 
electric shock the realization of this signi- 
ficant union passed from man to man. 
The people felt it, and the army and navy ; 
the political pigmies about the throne felt 
it, as well as the king. Pitt, vain as any 
genius, asked for the latter's confidence; 
the reply was "deserve it and you shall 

**Parkman: Montcalm and Wolfe, vol. ii, p. 41. 



72 THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

have it " — and a Hanoverian king of Eng- 
land kept his word. '' I shall now have no 
more peace," he had sighed when Pelham 
died; and had not the reins of power soon 
passed into the hands of Pitt it is doubtful 
if he ever could have had peace with honor. 
It was the skilful surgeon's knife that 
England needed, and no time for men who 
feared the sight of blood ; the " Great Com- 
moner " proved the skilful surgeon and at 
once gave England a motto Pelham never 
knew : * * Neither fleet nor army should eat 
the bread of the nation in idleness." 

Pitt at once displayed a prime qualifica- 
tion for his post of honor by choosing with 
unfailing discernment men who should lead 
both fleets and armies from idleness into 
action. His American campaign of 1758 
embraced three decisive movements, an 
attack on Louisbourg — stepping-stone to 
Quebec — an invasion upon Montcalm on 
Lake Champlain, and an expedition to Fort 
Duquesne. For these three movements he 
chose two of the three leaders. The two 
he chose completed their assignments with 
utmost courage and success. The third, 
Abercrombie, whom Pitt could not prevent 



THE CAMPAIGNS OP 1768 73 

succeeding the incompetent Loudoun — met 
with defeat. As if to reafl&rm his sagacity, 
Ferdinand of Brunswick, whom Pitt sent 
to Frederick the Great in the place of the 
disgraced Duke of Cumberland, was also 
signally victorious over the foes who had 
compelled the king's brother, the year 
before, to sign a convention in which he 
promised to disband his army. 

Admiral Boscawen set Amherst down 
before Louisbourg with fourteen thousand 
men at the beginning of June, young Wolfe 
leading the army up from the boats over 
crags which the French had left unguarded 
because they were, seemingly, inaccessible. 
At the same time Abercrombie was gath- 
ering his army, of equal strength, at the 
head of Lake George, preparatory to pro- 
ceeding northward upon Fort Ticonderoga. 

The command of the Fort Duquesne 
campaign was given by Pitt to Brigadier 
John Forbes, a Scot, ten years younger 
than his century. Of Forbes little seems 
to be known save that he began life as a 
medical student; abandoning his profession 
for that of arms he made a brave and good 
officer. That Pitt chose him to retrieve 



74 THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

the dead Braddock's mistakes speaks loudly 
of his commanding abilities; the numerous 
quotations from his correspondence given 
elsewhere in this monograph will present 
a clearer picture of this almost unknown 
hero than has ever yet been drawn. 
*' Though a well-bred man of the world," 
writes Parkman, ** his tastes were simple; 
he detested ceremony, and dealt frankly 
and plainly with the colonists, who both 
respected and liked him."" The corre- 
spondence between Forbes and his chief 
assistant, Lieutenant-colonel Henry Bou- 
quet, a Swiss, commanding the regiment 
of Royal Americans, is convincing proof of 
the democratic plainness and whole-hearted 
earnestness of Braddock's successor. 

The condition of the frontiers of Virginia 
and Pennsylvania during the years succeed- 
ing Braddock's defeat has been previously 
reviewed, and the greatness of the task 
now thrown upon General Forbes' s shoul- 
ders can be readily conceived. Yet there 
was much in his favor ; the colonies were 
quite aroused to the danger. Pennsylvania 
and Virginia were at last ready to put 
^Montcalm and Wolfe ^ vol. ii, p. 132. 



THE CAMPAIGNS OP 1768 76 

shoulder to shotilder in an attempt to drive 
the French from the Ohio. Pennsylvania 
promised Forbes twenty-seven hundred 
men; sixteen hundred were to come 
from Virginia and other of the southern 
provinces. Twelve hundred Highlanders 
from Montgomery's regiment were given 
Forbes, also the Royal American regiment, 
made up largely of Pennsylvania Germans 
and officered by men brought for the pur- 
pose from Europe. The force, when at 
last gathered together, amounted to 
between six and seven thousand men. 
The very proportions of this army were its 
princi|)al menace. No one believed that 
Fort Duquesne, far away in the forests 
beyond the mountains, could hold out 
against this formidable array. That the 
French, now being attacked simultaneously 
in the east and in the north, could send 
reSnforcements to the Ohio was no more 
likely. But there still lay the AUeghe- 
nies, their crags and gorges. Could this 
large body of troops cross them and take 
provisions sufficient to support men and 
horses? As with Braddock, so now with 
Forbes, it was the mere physical feat of 



76 THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

throwing an army three hundred miles 
into the forests that was the crucial prob- 
lem. Port Duquesne could have been 
captured with half of Forbes's army ; Wolfe 
had hardly more than that at Quebec in 
the year succeeding. If Forbes could 
move this army, or any considerable frac- 
tion of it, across the mountains, there was 
no reasonable doubt of his success. 

Forbes was much more delayed in get- 
ting his expedition off than was either of 
his two colleagues, Abercrombie and 
Amherst. Little dreaming that it would 
not be until the middle of June that his 
stores would arrive from England, Forbes 
had in March settled upon Conococheague 
(Williamsport, Maryland) as a convenient 
point of rendezvous for his army.^ In this 
he acted upon the advice of his quarter- 
master-general, Sir John St. Clair, who was 
sent forward to examine routes and provide 
forage, but for whom, however, Forbes had 
little respect. Some time later St. Clair 
urged Forbes to alter this plan and make 
the new outpost on Burd's Road toward the 
Youghiogheny, Raystown, the point of 
" See note 60. 



THE CAMPAIGNS OF 1768 77 

rendezvous. The difficulty of the route 
from Conococheague to Fort Cumberland 
undoubtedly induced St. Clair to advise this 
change of base ; later Governor Sharpe had 
a road cut from Fort Frederick to Fort 
Cumberland, but that was not until late in 
June. Following St. Clair's advice, Forbes 
changed his original plan and Raystown 
(Bedford, Pennsylvania) became the base of 
supplies and point of rendezvous. On the 
twenty-third of April Colonel Bouquet, 
commanding the Royal Americans, wrote 
Forbes of his arrival at New York and in 
less than a month this exceedingly efficient 
officer was on his way over the old road 
westward through Shippensburg and Car- 
lisle. He was at Lancaster May 20, and 
wrote Forbes: ** I arrived here this morn- 
ing, and found Mr Young waiting for 
money to clear Armstrong's Path the 
Commissioners having disappointed him. ' '^ 
On the twenty-second he wrote again out- 
lining the route and stages on the road to 
Raystown : 

**This, as with all succeeding quotations from the 
correspondence of Bouquet, Forbes, and St Clair, was 
copied by the writer from the originals in the Bouquet 
Papers in the British Museum. 



78 THE OLD GLADB ROAD 

** The first Stage (from Lan- 
caster) Shippensburg 

2* Port Loudon 

3 Fort Littleton 

4 1 8 miles >i way to Rays Town, where 

I shall have a stockade Erect'd 

5 17 miles at Rays Town where we 

shall Build a Fort."*' 

General Forbes reached Philadelphia by 
the middle of April but found himself as 
yet without an army. The raising of the 
provincials progressed slowly; his High- 
landers were not yet arrived from South 
Carolina; his stores and ammunition had 
not come from England. However, on 
May 20, he wrote Bouquet giving orders 
concerning the formation of magazines and 
ordered him to contract for one hundred 
and twenty wagons to transport provisions 
'' backwards to Rays town," and to select 
at that point a site for a fort. He added : 
*' By all means have the road reconnoitred 
from Rays town to the Yohageny" — the 
road Burd had completed to the summit of 

»' The main route westward was, the year before, in 
poor condition between Philadelphia and Bedford. Lou- 
don to Denny ^ Pennsylvania Archives, iii, pp. 278-979. 



THE CAMPAIGNS OF 1758 79 

Allegheny Mountain in 1755. It is plain 
that Forbes intended, at this time, to 
march to Port Cumberland by way of 
Carlisle and Bedford, and go on to Fort 
Duquesne over Braddock*s Road. In this 
case he much needed Burd's road to the 
Youghiogheny — for the same reasons that 
Braddock did. There is no evidence that 
Forbes conceived the plan of using a new 
road westward from Raystown until he and 
Bouquet came to realize that, with that 
point as a rendezvous, the Fort Cumberland 
route would necessitate a long detour from 
a direct line toward Fort Duquesne. 

Bouquet pushed on westward. He left 
Fort Lowther, at Carlisle, June 8, and was 
writing Forbes from Fort Loudoun on the 
eleventh. On the twenty-second he reached 
the Juniata and wrote Forbes on the twen- 
ty-eighth from his ** Camp near Raes 
Town," which now became the rendezvous 
of the summer's campaign. Here Fort 
Bedford was built, making the most west- 
emly fort in the chain of fortresses built 
through central Pennsylvania. It was one 
of the leading features of General Forbes's 
plan to extend this chain of forts all the 



80 THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

way to the Ohio. '' It was absolutely 
necessary," he wrote to Pitt, explaining 
this feature of his campaign, '' that I should 
take precautions by having posts along my 
route, which I have done from a project 
that I took from Turpin's Essay, Sur la 
Guerre. Last chapter 4^ Book, Intitled 
Principe sur lequel an peut ^tablir un projet de 
Campagney if you take the trouble of Look- 
ing into this Book, you will see the General 
principles upon which I have proceeded." ^ 
The Highlanders did not arrive from 
South Carolina until the seventh of June, 
and the army stores and artillery did not 
arrive from England until the fourteenth. 
The work of raising the provincial troops 
was not forwarded with any greater 
despatch. In general terms Forbes did not 
get fairly started from the seaboard until 
three weeks later than Braddock had left 
Fort Cumberland. Thus, though person- 
ally blameless, Forbes began his campaign 
under an almost fatal handicap. And, with 
this army converging from many points 
upon Fort Bedford, arose the vital question 
of routes to be pursued. 
*8 Forbes to Pitt, October 20, 1758. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE OLD OR A NEW ROAD? 

SO many are the versions of the story of 
the building of Forbes's Road through 
Pennsylvania that it was with utmost 
interest that the present writer took up the 
task of examining the only sources of 
reliable information: the correspondence 
of General Forbes, Colonel Bouquet, and 
Sir John St. Clair, as preserved in the Bou- 
quet Papers at the British Museum, and at 
the British Public Records Office. While 
these letters were supplemented by frequent 
personal interviews which have never been 
recorded, yet the testimony given by them 
is overwhelming that, until the very last, 
both men, Forbes and Bouquet, were quite 
undecided what route to Fort Duquesne 
was most practicable; both were open to 
conviction, and were equally disinterested 
parties, thinking only of the good of the 
cause to which both soon gave their lives. 



82 THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

No one can read this voluminous corre- 
spondence and believe for one moment that 
Greneral Forbes was prejudiced in favor 
of a Pennsylvania route by Pennsyl- 
vania intriguers, as has been frequently 
asserted ; ^ nor that the brave Swiss Bouquet 
was at any time determined to guide the 
army whose van he bravely led by any 
but the most expeditious and practicable 
thoroughfare. That both men knew of the 
bitter factional fight which was waging, this 
correspondence makes very clear ; that both 
were made doubly proof against factional 
arguments, because of this knowledge, is 
equally plain. 

Before entering upon a consideration of 
the Forbes - Bouquet - St. Clair correspon- 
dence, it must be always remembered that 
General Forbes had originally planned to 
make the campaign by the old Braddock 
Road from Virginia and had issued orders 
for the assembling of both provincial and 
regular troops at ** Conegochieque '* (Cono- 
cocheague), on the road built by Grovernor 
Sharpe from Alexandria to Fort Frederick 
in 1754, over which Dunbar's column 

»• By Hildreth and others. 



OLD OR NEW ROAD 88 

marched.** It was undoubtedly his purpose 
to inarch south from Philadelphia over the 
old Monoccasy road to the Potomac and 
then westward over the Braddock routes 
which converged upon Fort Cumberland. 
From there the main track of Braddock's 
army offered an open way toward Fort 
Duquesne. As previously suggested it was 
the advice of Sir John St. Clair, his quar- 
termaster-general, that influenced Forbes 
to alter his plan and march straight west- 
ward from Philadelphia toward Lancaster 
and the Pennsylvania frontier. Whatever 
may have induced St. Clair to give this 
advice, it is sure he had learned some les- 
sons from the disastrous campaign of 1755 
when he led Braddock through a country 
quite devoid of carriages, horses, and 
produce; Pennsylvania, on the other hand, 
was the granary of America;** and, if a 
road was lacking, horses and wagons were 
not, and it was better to lack what could be 
provided than to lack that which could not 
possibly be obtained. 

^Forbes to Governor Denny (of Pennsylvania), March 
ao, 1758: Pennsylvania Records, N, p. 206. 
•' Note 43, first reference. 



84 THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

On May 20, Forbes wrote Bouquet from 
Philadelphia that it was time the magazines 
were being formed. One week later (May 
2 1), Sir John St. Clair wrote Bouquet from 
Winchester: ** Governor Sharpe has been 
here with me and is returned to Frederick 
Town in Maryland." It would seem that 
Sir John's change of mind concerning the 
advisability of Forbes opening a new route 
westward dated from Governor Sharpens 
visit; for, on the day following (May 28), 
he writes Bouquet: ** I am not anxious 
about the cutting the Road to Rays Town 
from Fort Cumberland, it may be done in 
4 days, or in 2, if the two Ends are gone 
upon at the same time ; but I am afraid you 
will have a deal of work from Fort Loudon 
to Rays Town, which I am afraid will be 
Troublesome. ' ' On the cover of this letter 
Bouquet made the following memorandum : 
** The Officer Commanding the Virginia 
Troops, soon to March into Pennsylvania, 
is to take Directions from Henry PoUan 
living upon the Temporary line, or in his 
absence, from any Sensible person about 
his House, for the nearest and best Waggon 
Road From said Pollans or the Widow 



OLD OR NEW ROAD 85 

McGaws to Fort Loudon, to which place 
the Troops are to March, Shippensburg 
being much out of the Way." ® 

Bouquet reached Carlisle on the twenty- 
fourth of May, and wrote Forbes as follows 
on the day after: *' I shall order Washing, 
ton's Regiment to Fort Cumberland and as 
soon as we take post at Reas Town 300 of 
them must cut the Road along the Path 
from Fort Cumberland to Reas Town and 
join us." 

The evident plan of Sir John St. Clair to 
divert Bouquet from the route he had 
originally outlined is disclosed further in a 
letter written from Winchester on May 31, 
in which he says: '* I cannot send CoP 
Byrd to you as all the Cherokees have 
resolved never more to go to Pennsylvania, 
on account of the Soldiers of fort Loudon, 
taking up arms against them, by Cap^ 
Trent's Instigation." Under the same 
date, however. Bouquet wrote St. Clair and 
in the letter gave the order which he had 
preserved in form of a memorandum on the 
back of St. Clair's letter of May 28. Sir 
John, however, became more and more 

••Cf. Historic Highways of Anurica^ vol. iv, p. 192. 



86 THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

insistent that the Virginia and Maryland 
routes should be employed; on June 6 he 
wrote Bouquet that " the Pattomack has as 
much water in it as the Po at Cremona," 
intending to show how useful the stream 
would be for transporting army stores to 
Fort Cumberland. On June 9 — when 
Washington arrived at Winchester — St. 
Clair wrote Bouquet: " I send you this by 
John Walker who is the best Woodsman I 
ever knew, he will be usefull in reconnoi- 
tering the road to be cut on the other Side 
of the Mountain, but do not attempt it too 
far to the Right." In this letter St. Clair 
again reiterates the threat that the Chero- 
kees will not go into Pennsylvania. And 
in a postscript, written in French, he adds 
a parting shot: ** I think you will have 
some trouble to find a road from the moun- 
tain to the great falls of the Yougheogany . ' ' 
On June 11 St. Clair again wrote: ** I had 
great dependence on John Walker the 
Guide for finding the Road from the Alle- 
gheny Ridge to the great Crossing, I 
detained him the other day, on purpose, to 
know if he wou'd attempt to find it. The 
answer that he made me, was, that he knew 



OLD OR NEW ROAD 87 

that Country very well, having hunted 
there many years, that the Hills run across 
the line the Road ought to go and are very 
steep : That he was sent by Col® Dunbar, 
from the great Crossing, to acquaint CoP 
Burd, of the defeat of the Army, and that 
the year after he was taken prisoner by the 
Shanese, and carried [over] that Road, to 
the f rench fort ; and that the Shanese (who 
he was acquainted with and speaks their 
Language) told him, that was the best 
way to get out of these Mountains and 
Laurell Thicketts. On the whole he says 
that the Road may be made, with a great 
deal of labor, & time, but that it must be 
reconoiter'd, when the leaves are oflE the 
Trees; being impossible to do it at this 
season. Considering all these Circum- 
stances and the Season of the Year advanc- 
ing so fast, and the Small Number of 
Indians we have left, I must send you my 
opinion (which always was that if I was to 
carry a Convoy from Lancaster to fort 
Cumberland I would pass by, or near Reas 
Town). That we have not time to rec- 
onoitre the Road in question, and open it, 
without taking up more time than we have 



88 THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

to Spare, and which wou'd give the french 
and Indians too favorable an opportunity 
of attacking on that laborious Work. I 
think it will be more eligible to fall down on 
fort Cumberland, and get on from thence 
to the great Crossing, after making a Block 
house, at the little meadows. This will 
advance us 40 miles from fort Cumberland, 
and a deposite may be made at that place." 
No one can read this strange letter with- 
out realizing Bouquet's unhappy situation: 
a, vacillating know-nothing for quarter- 
master-general, and a commander-in-chief 
detained from coming to the front. Bou- 
quet wrote to Forbes, who answered that 
the course of the proposed new road should 
be examined before that route was aban- 
doned. ** I have yours of the 14"*," wrote 
Forbes on June 19, "from Fort Loudon 
and I am sorry that you are obliged to 
change our Route, and shall be glad to find 
the road proposed by Gov*^ Sharp practi- 
cable, in which case I should think it ought 
to be sett about immediately.^ . . I 
suppose you will reconnoitre the road across 
the Allegany mountains from Reas town 
•• Port Frederick — Fort Cumberland route. 



OLD OR NEW ROAD 89 

and if found unpracticable, that the Fort 
Cumberland Garrison should open the old 
road ®* forward towards the Crossing of the 
Yohagani . . I find we must take noth- 
ing by report in this country, for there are 
many who have their own designs in repre- 
senting things, so I am glad you have 
proceeded to Reas town, where you will 
be able to judge of the roads and act 
accordingly . . Let there be no stops 
put to the roads as that is our principall 
care at present." No one can believe that 
the author of this letter was the blindly 
prejudiced man some have painted him. 
Bouquet was, however, not to be con- 
tented with an examination of one route 
westward; his scouts were out in three 
directions: on Braddock's Road, on the 
Old Trading Path running westward from 
Raystown (now Bedford), and also on the 
upper path toward the Allegheny by way 
of the Indian Frank's Town. In all this 
Forbes seconded him as shown by his letter 
of June 27: '* I approve much of your try- 
ing to pass the Laurel Hill leaving the 
Yohageny to the left, as also of knowing 
<« Braddock's Road. 



90 THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

what can be done by the path from Franks 
town or even from the head of the Susque- 
hannah, For I have all along had in view 
to have partys, to fall upon their Settle- 
ments about Venango and there abouts 
while we are pushing forward our principale 
Design." In the meantime old Sir John 
kept up his current of objections, so wretch- 
edly ill-timed ; he wrote thus from Carlisle 
June 30: "I shall be glad you may find a 
Waggon Road leaving the Yougheagany 
on the left, it is what I never cou'd find, I 
think the Experiment is dangerous at pres- 
ent and going on an uncertainty when by 
falling down upon fort Cumberland, we 
have our Road opened ; should [the wagon 
road] be made use of, then the CoUums of 
our army would be too far assunder." St. 
Clair had been pushing the opening of the 
road from Fort Frederick to Fort Cumber- 
land in the expectation that the army would 
consequently *' fall down " to the more 
southemly westward road even before 
reaching Fort Cumberland. Three days 
previous to the last letter quoted he wrote 
Bouquet: '* I have this morning [June 27] 
received the report that the road from fort 



OLD OR NEW ROAD 91 

Frederick to Fort Cumberland is practi- 
cable." 

Bouquet evidently laid the sum and sub- 
stance of St. Clair's letters before General 
Forbes who, on July 6, delivered himself in 
reply as follows: '* Sir John St. Clair was 
the person who first advised me to go by 
Raes town, why he has altered his senti- 
ments I do not know, or to what purpose 
make the road from Fort Frederick to Cum- 
berland, as most certainly we shall now all 
go by Raes town, but I am afraid that Sir 
John is led by passions, he says he knows 
very well that we shall not find a road from 
Raes town across the Allegany, and that to 
go by Raes town to F. Cumberland is a 
great way about, but this he ought to have 
said two months ago or hold his peace now. 
Pray examine the Country tother side of 
the Allegany particularly the Laurell Ridge 
that he says its impossible we can pass 
without going into Braddock's old road. 
What his views are in those suggestions I 
know not, but I should be sorry to be 
obliged to alter ones schemes so late in the 
day, particularly as it was S*' Johns proper 
business to have f orseen and to have fore- 



92 THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

told all this. Who to the Contrary was 
the first adviser. Let the road to Port 
Cumberland from Raes town be finished 
with all Diligence because if we must go 
by Fort Cumberland it must be through 
Raes town as it is now too late to make 
use of the road by Fort Frederick and I 
fancy you will agree that . . there is 
no time to be lost." General Forbes wrote 
an interesting letter to Ktt under the date 
of July 10. Speaking of Raystown he 
writes: " The place having its name from 
one Rae, who designed to have made 
a plantation there several years ago." 
Speaking of the country he observes: 
" Being an immense Forest of 240 miles in 
Extent, intersected by several ranges of 
mountains, impenetrable almost to any 
thing human save the Indians (if they be 
allowed the appelation) who have foot 
paths or tracks through those desarts, by the 
help of which, we make our roads. . . 
I am in hopes of finding a better way over 
the AUeganey Mountain, than that from 
fort Cumberland which General Braddock 
took. If so I shall shorten both my march, 
and my labor of the road about 40 miles, 



OLD OR NEW ROAD 98 

which is a great consideration. For were 
I to pursue M*^ Braddock's route, I should 
save but little labour, as that road is now 
a brush wood, by the sprouts from the old 
stumps, which must be cut down and made 
proper for Carriages as well as any other 
passage that we must attempt." Yet his 
letter to Bouquet on the day after, July 1 1 , 
says that Forbes was not stickling for the 
new road: ** I shall hurry up the troops, 
directly," he wrote, *' so pray see for a road 
across the AUigeny or by Fort Cumber- 
land, which Garrison may if necessary be 
clearing Braddocks old road." However, 
lest he be put under the necessity of taking 
the longer route, he wrote again to Bouquet 
by James Grant : * * that the Road over the 
Allegany may be reconnoitred, for he 
(Forbes) is unwilling to be put under the 
necessity of making any Detour." 

On July 14 General Forbes wrote Bou- 
quet from Carlisle: '* I . . have all 
along thought the road from F. Frederick 
to Cumberland superfluous, if we could have 
done without it, which I am glad to under- 
stand we can do by Raes town. It would 
have been double pleasure if from thence 



H THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

we could have got a good road across the 
Laurell hill, But by Cap' Wards journal 
I beg^n to fear it will be difl&cult, altho I 
would have you continue to make further 
tryalls, for I should be very sorry to pass 
by Port Cumberland. I am sensible that 
some foolish people have made partys to 
drive us into that road, as well as into the 
road by Fort Frederick, but as I utterly 
detest all partys and views in military 
operations, so you may very well guess, 
how and what arguments I have had with 
S*' John St Clair upon that subject. But I 
expect Grovemor Sharp here this night 
when I shall know more of this same road. 
I hope your second detachment across the 
AUegeny have been able to ascertain what 
route we must take, and that consequently 
you are sett about clearing of it. . . I 
have sent up Major Armstrong with one 
Demming an old Indian trader who has 
been many a time upon the road from Raes 
town to Fort duquesne, he says there is no 
Difficulty in the road across the Laurell 
Hill and that He leaves the Yohageny all 
the way upon his left hand about 8 miles, 
and that it is only 40 miles from the Lau- 



OLD OR NEW ROAD 96 

rell Hill to Port duquesne, along the top of 
the Chestnut ridge. . . As I presume 
you may want Forage, and as S*' John has 
confessed that he had provided none but 
at Port Cumberland (I suppose on purpose 
to drive me into that road, for what pur- 
pose I know not) If you therefore think it 
necessary, send Waggons to Fort Cumber- 
land for part of it. . . Let me hear 
immediately your resolution about the 
road." 

To this Bouquet replied that he had sent 
orders to have Braddock's Road recon- 
noitred and cleared; '* at all events it may 
serve to deceive the Enemy." He was 
daily in expectation of news from his 
exploring parties on Laurel Hill and prom- 
ised Forbes to forward their report as soon 
as he received it. 

Washington had now reached Fort Cum- 
berland and was soon in correspondence 
with Bouquet at Raystown thirty-four miles 
to the northward. July i6 he wrote: " I 
shall direct the officer, that marches out, to 
take particular pains in reconnoitring Gen- 
eral Braddock's road, though I have had 
repeated information, that it only wants 



96 THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

such small repairs, as could with ease be 
made as fast as the army would march." •* 
On the twenty-first he wrote : " The bridge 
is finished at this place, and tomorrow 
Major Peachey, with three hundred men, 
will proceed to open General Braddock's 
road. I shall direct them to go to Greorge's 
Creek, ten miles in advance. By that time 
I may possibly hear from you . . for it 
will be needless to open a road, of which no 
use will be made afterwards."^ Thus it 
is clear that, as late as July 20, Washing- 
ton at Fort Cumberland, Bouquet at Rays- 
town, and Forbes at Carlisle were all in 
doubt as to the army's route. 

On July 21 Bouquet wrote Greneral 
Forbes: " I waited for the return of 
Captain Ward before replying [to Forbes's 
letters of the 14th and 17th inst]. He 
arrived yesterday evening, his journal 
being so vague and confused that I could 
not understand anything from it. Captain 
Gordon is making an extract from it which 
I send with this. They are convinced that 
a waggon road could be made across Lau- 

•» Sparks: Writings of Washington, vol. ii, p. 295. 
••A/., p. 298. 



OLD OR NEW ROAD 97 

rell Hill, not so bad as that from Fort 
Littleton to this place, & that there is 
water and grass all the way, but little 
forage between the two mountains. The 
slope of the Alleghany is the worst, the 
country between that and Laurell Hill is 
passable, and this last mountain, (of which 
they have made a sample — ) is very easy 
to cross: all the guides & officers who were 
on the Ohio agree that from Lawrell Hill 
onwards there are no further difficulties; 
it is a chain of hills easy to cross. They 
have thought it impracticable to continue 
the road cut by Colonel Burd to join the 
Braddock road, except by following the 
whole length of Lawrell Hill, which would 
make the road longer than if taken through 
Cumberland; the rest of the country is 
rendered impassable by marshes, &c. The 
pack horses have just arrived. We must 
give them a day's rest, & on the day after 
tomorrow Major Armstrong will set out 
with a party of lOO volunteers to mark out 
the road, and will send me a man every 
day (or every two days) to inform me of his 
progress & observations. There is no spot 
suitable for the making of a depdt until 



96 THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

one comes to the foot of the other slope of 
Lawrell Hill, which may be about 45 miles 
from here ; there is sufficient water there, 
and forage, but as it would entail too great 
a risk to leave his party on the other side 
of Lawrell Hill, I shall give him instruc- 
tions to reconnoitre, & to mark out the site 
of the depot, & then return to Edmund's 
Swamp, where I will in the first place send 
him a reinforcement with provisions, so 
that he may make an entrenched camp 
there, which will serve as flying base ; and 
if the report he makes of his route is 
favourable, I shall send 600 men (in all) to 
take a post at Loyal Hanny, which I con- 
ceive to be the proper place for the chief 
depot; from there it will be more easy to 
push his parties forward than from this 
place. I hope you will be here before the 
main detachment marches, and in that case 
I shall go myself, if you approve. I wish 
the new levies may be able to join before 
that time, so as to be able to form the 
three Pennsylvania battalions, and get 
them into order. I shall have here the 
two companies of workmen from Virginia, 
to be employed in cutting the road as soon 



OLD OR t^EW ROAD 99 

as you shall have decided upon your route. 
I shall await your arrival before beginning, 
because the pack horses cross without diffi- 
culty, and will suffice to carry their provi- 
sions. As regards your route the Virginia 
party continues in full force, and although 
the secret motive of their policy seems to 
me not above suspicion of partiality, it 
nevertheless appears to me an additional 
reason for acting with double caution in a 
matter of this consequence, so as to have 
ample answers for all their clamors, if any 
accident happens, which they would not 
fail to attribute to the choice of a fresh 
route. Captain Patterson, who set out two 
days after Captain Ward with a party of 13 
men to reconnoitre the fort, has returned 
with them without accomplishing anything. 
He tried to cross the two mountains in a 
direct line with the fort, but he found 
Lawrell Hill impassible, and the diflEerent 
reports agree in the fact that there is no 
other pass to be found except the Indian 
Path reconnoitred by Captain Ward. The 
guide Dunning speaks of a gap he crossed 
J 6 years ago, but no one knows this gap, 
which he declares he found in ' Hunting 



100 THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

Horses.' He is marching with the Major 
and two or three other guides. . . The 
communication with Cumberland is cut, 
and it is an excellent road." ^ 

On July 20 Forbes wrote, by the hand of 
St. Clair, to Bouquet asking that all the 
guides then with him be sent to Carlisle 
for a conference with the general. Three 
days later Bouquet answered as follows: 
** Major Armstrong has three guides (and 
three Indians) with him : McConnell, Brown 
and Starrat. I am sending you all that are 
left there, — Frazer, Walker, Garret, and 
the two that are at Littleton, — Ohins and 
Lowry. If those from Cumberland arrive 
in time, I will send them on afterwards." 

On July 25 Washington wrote Bouquet 
from Fort Cumberland: " I do not incline 
to propose any thing that may seem offi- 
cious, but would it not facilitate the 
operation of the campaign, if the Virginian 
troops were ordered to proceed as far as 
the Great Crossing, and construct forts at 
the most advantageous situations as they 

•'Bouquet never exaggerates the difficulties that 
would attend Forbes if he chose to march by Fort Cum- 
berland. 



OLD OR NEW ROAD 101 

advance, opening the road at the same 
time? In such a case, I should be glad to 
be joined by that part of my regfiment at 
Raystown. Major Peachey, who commands 
the working party on Braddock's road, 
writes to me, that he finds few repairs 
wanting. Tonight I shall order him to 
proceed as far as Savage River, and then 
return, as his party is too weak to adven- 
ture further. . . I shall most cheerfully 
work on any road, pursue any route or enter 
upon any service, that the General or your- 
self may think me usefully imployed in, or 
qualified for, and shall never have a will 
of my own, when a duty is required of me. 
But since you desire me to speak my senti- 
ments freely, permit me to observe, that 
after having conversed with all the guides, 
and having been informed by others, who 
have a knowledge of the country, I am con- 
vinced that a road, to be compared with 
Greneral Braddock's, or indeed, that will be 
fit for transportation even by packhorses, 
cannot be made. I have no predilection 
for the route you have in mind, not because 
difficulties appear therein, but because I 
doubt whether satisfaction can be given in 



102 THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

the execution of the plan. I know not 
what reports you may have received from 
your reconnoitring parties; but I have been 
uniformly told, that, if you expect a toler- 
able road by Raystown, you will be disap- 
pointed, for no movement can be made that 
way without destroying our horses. I 
should be extremely glad of one hour's 
conference with you, when the General 
arrives. I could then explain myself more 
fully, and, I think, demonstrate the advan- 
tages of pushing out a body of light troops 
in this quarter. I would make a trip to 
Raystown with great pleasure, if my pres- 
ence here could be dispensed with for a 
day or two, of which you can best judge." 
With Washington's letter came also one 
from General Forbes, written July 23. 
From it these extracts are to the point: 
** As I disclaim all parties (factions) myself, 
I should be sorry that they were to Creep 
in amongst us. I therefore conceive what 
the Virginia folks would be att, for to me 
it appears to be them, and them only, that 
want to drive us into the road by Fort 
Cumberland, no doubt in opposition to the 
Pennsylvanians who by Raes town would 





i%K,i 









OLD OR NEW ROAD 105 

have a nigher Communication (than them) 
to the Ohio. S^ John St. Clair was the 
first person that proposed and enforced me 
in to take the road by Raes town, I having 
previous to this ordered our Army to 
assemble at Conegocheg^ie which I was 
obliged afterwards to alter to Raestown at 
his Instance, altho he then declared that he 
nor nobody else knew any thing of the road 
leading from the Laurell hill, but as he has 
represented it of late impracticable to me, 
I was therefore pressing to have the Com- 
munication opened from Raes town to Fort 
Cumberland. S**" John I am afraid had got 
a new light at Winchester, and I believe 
from thence proceeded to the opening the 
road from Fort Frederick to Fort Cumber- 
land. I put the Question fairly to him 
yesterday morning by asking him if he 
knew of any Intention of making me change 
measures and forcing me into the Fort 
Cumberland road, when he knew that it 
was at his Instance solely, that I had 
changed it to Raes town; I showed him 
Cap* Ward's Journal & description of the 
road from Raestown to the top of the Lau- 
rell Hill, telling him at the same time, 



106 THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

that if an easy road could be found there, 
or made there, that I was amazed he should 
know nothing off it, which was evident by 
his telling me of late that the Laurel hill 
was impracticable, he appeared nonplused, 
but rather than appear ignorant, he said 
that there were many Indian Traders that 
knew those roads very well; I stopt him 
short by saying if that was the case, that I 
was very sorry he had never found them 
out, or never thought it worth his while to 
examine them. In short he knows nothing 
of the matter. Col^ Byrd in a paragraph 
of his letter from Fort Cumberland, 
amongst other things writes, that he has 
upwards of sixty Indians waiting my 
arrival, and ready to accompany me, but 
they will not follow me unless I go by Fort 
Cumberland. This is a new system of 
military Discipline truly; and shows that 
my Good friend Byrd is either made the 
Cats Foot of himself, or he little knows me, 
if he imagines that Sixty scoundrels are to 
direct me in my measures. As we are now 
so far advanced as Raestown I should look 
fickle in my measures, in changing, to go 
by Fort Cumberland, without being made 



OLD OR NEW ROAD IW 

thoroughly sensible of the impracticability 
of passing by the shortest way over the 
Laurell Hill to the Ohio. The difference 
at present in the length of road the one 
way and the other stands thus — 

'' From Raestown to Fort Cumberland, 
34 miles or upwards 

" From Fort Cumberland to Fort Du- 
quesne by Ge**^ Braddocks, 125 miles in all 
160 to which add the passage of rivers &c 
and the last 8 miles not cut. 

''The other road — 

" From Raestown to the top of the Lau- 
rell Hill 46 miles 

" From then to Fort Duquesne suppose 
40 or 50 miles in all 90 with no rivers to 
obstruct you and nothing to stop you that 
I can see, except the Bugbear, a tremen- 
dous pass of the Laurel Hill. 

" If what I say is true and those two 
roads are compared, I don't see that I am 
to Hesitate one moment which to take 
unless I take a party [join a faction] like- 
wise, which I hope never to do in Army 
matters. 

" I have now told you my Opinion, and 
what I think of the affairs of the road, but 



106 THE OLD GLADB ROAD 

to judge at such Distance, and of a Country 
I never saw, nor heard spoke off but in 
Cap* Ward's account, I therefore can say 
nothing decisive, so have sent up S^ John 
St Clair in order that he may explore that 
new road and determine the most EUegible 
to be pursued, but this I think need not 
hinder you from proceeding upon the new 
road as soon as you can Conveniently. . . 
I have spoke very roundly upon this subject 
[roads and forage] to S*'^ John, who was 
sent up the Country from Philadelphia for 
no other purpose than to fix the roads and 
provide forage, both of which I am sorry 
to say it, are yet to begin — but all this 
entre nous until I see you." 

Under the same date (July 25) General 
Forbes wrote as follows to Major-general 
Abercrombie : ** Scouting Parties have been 
sent out, with the best Guides we could 
find, and according to the Reports which 
some of them have made, the Road over 
the AUegeny Mountain and the Lawrel 
Ridge will be found practicable for Car- 
riages, which will be of infinate Conse- 
quence, will facilitate Our Matters much 
by shortening the March at least 70 miles. 



OLD OR NEW ROAD 109 

besides the Advantage of having no Rivers 
to pass, as We shall keep the Yeogheny 
upon our Left. . . The Troops are all 
in Motion . . but I have Retarded the 
March of some of them upon the Route 
from this Place, as I am unwilling to bring 
them together till the Route is finally 
determined." 

On the twenty-sixth Bouquet wrote 
Forbes as follows : 

*' I am sending you a letter I have 
received from Major Armstrong. By the 
report of the two g^iides he sent out it 
seems the thing is very practicable ; in an 
affair of so much consequence as this I 
thought I ought to act with greatest cau- 
tion. While the waggoner returned today 
with an escort to reconnoitre how the road 
could be laid so as to avoid all the detours 
and windings of the path ; and I have asked 
Colonel Burd to go with Rhor tomorrow to 
the top of the mountain (Allegheny) to 
determine the straightest line from here to 
the foot of the ascent, and to mark the 
turnings of the road to reach the top. I 
hope you will be here on their return, and 
could then judge if it would be well to risk 



110 THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

this route. In 3 days the Major will return 
to Edmund's Swamp, where there is abun- 
dant forage, and he will let me know what 
we must expect from Lawrell Hill. A man 
who has been 50 times by this path to the 
Ohio says that the remainder of the route 
after Loyal Hanny is a long series of hills, 
with swamps and bogs, but not of great 
ascent. He is a man named Fergusson, 
very limited, from whom one can elicit 
nothing precise; I have sent him with the 
Major and Dunnings. Upon the Major's 
report, we shall be sure of the route as far 
as Loyal Hanny; and, as regards the 
remainder, I am sending out Captain Pat- 
terson tomorrow with 4 men, to follow this 
same path to the end, and return forthwith 
to report, observing the bad places, and the 
facilities afforded by the country for obviat- 
ing them, such as trees, stones, &c., the 
quantity of grass and water, the defiles, 
distances, &c. He ought to be back in 12 
days at latest. Colonel Washington has 
had the beginning of the road cut from 
Braddock, [along Braddock's Road?] which 
I have fixed at 10 miles from Fort Cumber- 
land. You will have been informed by the 



OLD OR NEW ROAD 111 

guides I sent you of the advantages of this 
route which is open, and needs very little 
in the way of repair ; its drawbacks consist 
in the want of forage, its length, its defiles, 
and the crossing of rivers. Colonel Wash- 
ington, who is animated with sincere zeal 
to contribute to the success of this expedi- 
tion, and is ready to march wheresoever 
you may decide, writes me that, from all 
he has heard and from all the information 
he has been able to collect, our route is 
impracticable even for packhorses, so bad 
are the mountains, and that the Braddock 
road is the only one to take &c. 

** There, my dear General, you have in 
brief the reports and opinions which have 
reached me ; I will add no reflection of my 
own, hoping to see you every day. Do 
you not think it would be well to see Col- 
onel Washington here, before making your 
decision? and if our parties continue to 
send favourable news, to convert him to 
give way to the evidence? " 

In reply to Washington's letter of the 
twenty-fifth Bouquet wrote: *' Nothing can 
exceed your generous dispositions for the 
service. I see with the utmost satisfac- 



112 THE OLD GLADB ROAD 

tion, that you are above the influences of 
prejudice, and ready to go heartily where 
reason and judgement shall direct. I wish, 
sincerely, that we may all entertain one 
and the same opinion; therefore I desire 
to have an interview with you at the houses 
built half way between our camps. I will 
communicate all the intelligence, which it 
has been in my power to collect ; and, by 
weighing impartially the advantages and 
disadvantages of each route, I hope we 
shall be able to determine what is most 
eligable, and save the General trouble and 
loss of time."^ 

Concerning this meeting Washington 
wrote as follows to his friend Major Francis 
Halket, then in Forbes's camp at Carlisle : 
" I am just returned (August 2***^)^* from 
a conference with Colonel Bouquet. I find 
him fixed, I think I may say unalterably 
fixed, to lead you a new way to the Ohio, 
through a road, every inch of which is to 
be cut at this advanced season, when we 

•^Sparks: Writings of Washington, (1834) vol. ii, p. 
300, note. 

•• Quotations from Washington's correspondence can 
be identified by dates in Sparks's Writings of Wash- 
ington, 



OLD OR NEW ROAD US 

have scarce time left to tread the beaten 
track, universally confessed to be the best 
passage through the mountains. If Colonel 
Bouquet succeeds in this point with the 
General, all is lost, — all is lost indeed, — 
our enterprise will be ruined, and we shall 
be stopped at the Laurel Hill this winter; 
but not to gather laurels^ except of the kind 
that covers the mountains. The Southern 
Indians will turn against us, and these 
colonies will be desolated by such an acces- 
sion to the enemy's strength. These must 
be the consequences of a miscarriage ; and a 
miscarriage is the almost necessary conse- 
quence of our attempt to march the army by 
this new route. I have given my reasons at 
large to Colonel Bouquet. He desired that 
I would do so, that he might forward them 
to the General. Should this happen, you 
will be able to judge of their weight. I 
am uninfluenced by prejudice, having no 
hopes or fears but for the general good. 
Of this you may be assured, and that my 
sincere sentiments are spoken on this 
occasion." 

Concerning the same interview Bouquet 
wrote Forbes (July 31): " I have had an 



114 THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

interview with Colonel Washington, to 
ascertain how he conceives the diflficulties 
could be overcome; I got no satisfaction 
from it; the majority of these gentlemen do 
not know the difference between a party and an 
army, and, overlooking all diflficulties, they 
believe everjrthing to be easy which flatters 
their ideas. What I shall have to tell you 
on this point cannot be discussed in a 
letter. . ." 

In this same letter Bouquet wrote, con- 
cerning the general situation: " You will 
see from the extract appended from Major 
Armstrong's letters the report he makes 
thereupon. All seems practicable and even 
easy, but I put too little confidence in the 
observations of a young man without 
experience to act upon his judgement. I 
have therefore sent Colonel Burd, Rhor 
and Captain Ward to reconnoitre the Alle- 
gheny, to make an examination of all the 
diflficulties, and thus put me into a position 
to decide what reliance is to be placed on 
the rest of the discoveries. Unfortunately 
they have found things very diflferent, 
and this mountain which these gentlemen 
crossed so easily is worse than Seydeling 



OLD OR NEW ROAD 116 

Hill, and the ascent much longer. Con- 
sidering that it was impossible to cut a 
waggon road on this slope without immense 
labour, they searched along the mountain 
for another pass, and found about two miles 
to the North a gap of which no one was 
aware . . It seems that, with much 
labour, one might make a much easier road 
there than the other ; it remains to be seen 
what obstacles are still to be encountered 
before Loyal Hanning. Sir John has 
arrived, and I have communicated to him 
all I know on the subject; and he starts 
today or tomorrow morning with Colonel 
Burd, Rhor and 200 men to reconnoitre 
this gap, and the whole route as far as 
Loyal Hanning. He will spend 6 or 7 days 
on this survey, and I hope on his return 
you will be able to form a decision. And, 
in order that no time may be lost, I will 
make a commencement of the work if the 
thing is practicable without awaiting your 
orders. I have thought it best not to do 
so up to the present, in order not to lay 
ourselves open to public reflections if we 
commenced and abandoned different routes. 
I agree with you that you cannot take the 



U« THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

Cumberland route untill you are in a posi- 
tion to demonstrate the impossibility of 
finding another road, or at any rate the 
impossibility of opening one without risk- 
ing the expedition by too great an expendi- 
ture of time. We are in a cruel position, 
if you are reduced to a single line of 
communication. It is 64 miles from Cum- 
berland to Gist, and there are only three 
places capable of furnishing forage suffi- 
cient for the army; the rest would not 
suffice for a single night. The frost, which 
commences at the end of October, destroys 
all the grass, and the rivers overflowing in 
the spring cut off all communication. . . 
If we open a new route, we have not enough 
axes." On the same day Forbes wrote 
Bouquet by the hand of Halket a decisive 
letter in which he said: "he [Forbes] 
thinks that no time should be lost in mak- 
ing the new Road, he has directed me to 
inform you that you are immediately to 
begin the opening of it agreeable to the 
manner he wrote to you in his last letter, 
as he sees all the advantages he can pro- 
pose by going that Route, and will avoid 
innumerable Inconveniencys he would 



OLD OR NEW ROAD 117 

encounter was he to go the other, he is at 
the same time extremely surprised at the 
partial disposition that appears in those 
Virginia Gentlemans sentiments, as there 
can be no sort of comparison between the 
two Routes when you consider the situation 
of the Troops now at Reastown, & that 
their is not the least reason to expect that 
we shall meet with any difficulties but 
what may be easily surmounted." On the 
next day but one Forbes wrote: " he [Hal- 
ket] told you my opinion of the Laurell 
Hill road, and that I thought it ought to be 
sett about directly, as it is good to have two 
Strings to one Bow." 

On this day Washington wrote a last 
letter to Bouquet in behalf of the Braddock 
route : 

*' The matters, of which we spoke rela- 
tive to the roads, have since our parting, 
been the subject of my closest reflection; 
and, so far am I from altering my opinion, 
that, the more time and attention I bestow, 
the more I am confirmed in it; and the 
reasons for taking Braddock's road appear 
in a stronger point of view. To enumer- 
ate the whole of these reasons would be 



118 THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

tedious, and to you, who are become so 
much master of the subject, unnecesary. I 
shall therefore, briefly mention a few only, 
which I think so obvious in themselves, 
that they must eflEectually remove objec- 
tions. Several years ago the Virginians 
and Pennsylvanians commenced a trade 
with the Indians settled on the Ohio, and, 
to obviate the many inconveniencies of a 
bad road, they, after reiterated and ineflEec- 
tual eflEorts to discover where a good one 
might be made, employed for the purpose 
several of the most intelligent Indians, 
who, in the course of many years' hunting, 
had acquired a perfect knowledge of these 
mountains. The Indians, having taken the 
greatest pains to gain the rewards oflfered 
for this discovery, declared, that the path 
leading from Will's Creek was infinitely 
preferable to any, that could be made at any 
other place. Time and experience so clearly 
demonstrated this truth, that the Pennsyl- 
vania traders commonly carried out their 
goods by Will's Creek. Therefore, the 
Ohio Company, in 1753, at a considerable 
expense, opened the road. In 1754 the 
troops, whom I had the honor to command, 



OLD OR NEW ROAD 119 

greatly repaired it, as far as Gist's planta- 
tion; and, in 1755, it was widened and 
completed by General Braddock to within 
six miles of Fort Duquesne. A road, that 
has so long been opened, and so well and 
so often repaired, must be much firmer and 
better than a new one, allowing the ground 
to be equally good. 

*' But, supposing it were practicable to 
make a road from Raystown quite as good 
as General Braddock's, — I ask, have we 
time to do it? Certainly not. To sur- 
mount the difficulties to be encountered in 
making it over such mountains, covered 
with woods and rocks, would require so 
much time, as to blast our otherwise well- 
grounded hopes of striking the important 
stroke this season. 

** The favorable accounts, that some give 
of the forage on the Raystown road, as 
being so much better than that on the 
other, are certainly exaggerated. It is 
well known, that, on both routes, the rich 
valleys between the mountains abound with 
good forage, and that those, which are 
stony and bushy, are destitute of it. 
Colonel Byrd and the engineer, who accom- 



ISO THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

panied him, confirm this fact. Surely the 
meadows on Braddock's road would greatly 
overbalance the advantage of having grass 
to the foot of the ridge, on the Raystown 
road; and all agree, that a more barren 
road is nowhere to be found, than that from 
Raystown to the inhabitants, which is like- 
wise to be considered. 

" Another principal objection made to 
General Braddock's road is in regard to the 
waters. But these seldom swell so much, 
as to obstruct the passage. The Youghi- 
ogany River, which is the most rapid and 
soonest filled, I have crossed with a body 
of troops, after more than thirty days' 
almost continued rain. In fine, any diffi- 
culties on this score are so trivial, that they 
really are not worth mentioning. The 
Monongahela, the largest of all these rivers, 
may, if necessary, easily be avoided, as Mr. 
Frazer the principal guide informs me, by 
passing a defile, and even that, he says, 
may be shunned. 

** Again, it is said, there are many defiles 
on this road. I grant that there are some, 
but I know of none that may not be tra- 
versed ; and I should be glad to be informed 



OLD OR NEW ROAD 121 

where a road can be had, over these moun- 
tains, not subject to the same inconvenience. 
The shortness of the distance between 
Raystown and Loyal Hanna is used as an 
argument against this road, which bears in 
it something unaccountable to me; for I 
must beg leave to ask, whether it requires 
more time, or is more difficult and expen- 
sive, to go one hundred and forty-five miles 
in a good road already made to our hands, 
than to cut one hundred miles anew, and a 
great part of the way over impassable 
mountains. 

" That the old road is many miles nearer 
Winchester in Virginia, and Fort Frederic 
in Maryland, than the contemplated one, is 
incontestable; and I will here show the 
distances from Carlisle by the two routes, 
fixing the diflferent stages, some of which 
I have from information only, but others I 
believe to be exact. 

From Carlisle to Fort Duquesne by way of 
Raystown. 

MILES. 

From Carlisle to Shippensburg . .21 
'* Shippensburg to Fort Loudoun 24 
' ' Fort Loudoun to Fort Littleton 20 



188 THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

' ' Fort Littleton to Juniatta Cross- 

ing 14 

*' Juniatta Crossing to Raystown. 14 

93 
** Raystown to Fort Duquesne . 100 

193 

From Carlisle to Fort Duquesne^ by way of 
Forts Frederic and Cumberland. 

MILES. 
From Carlisle to Shippensburg . .21 
'* Shippensburg to Chambers's . 12 
" Chambers's to Pacelin's .12 
" Pacelin's to Fort Frederic . .12 
Fort Frederic to Fort Cumber- 
land 40 



a 



a 



97 
Fort Cumberland to Fort Du- 
quesne 115 

212 

'* From this computation there appears to 
be a difference of nineteen miles only. 
Were all the supplies necessarily to come 
from Carlisle, it is well known, that the 



OLD OR NEW ROAD 128 

goodness of the old road is a suflBcient com- 
pensation for the shortness of the other, as 
the wrecked and broken wagons there 
clearly demonstrate. . . 

*'. . From what has been said relative 
to the two roads, it appears to me very 
clear, that the old one is infinitely better, 
than the other can be made, and that there 
is no room to hesitate in deciding which 
to take, when we consider the advanced 
season, and the little time left to execute 
our plan." 

But Forbes 's letter of the thirty-first was 
decisive, and, following his orders. Colonel 
Bouquet began cutting a new road westward 
from Raystown August i. 



CHAPTER V 

THE NEW ROAD 

THE correspondence included in the 
chapter preceding affords probably 
the utmost light that can be thrown 
today upon the reason of the making of the 
great Pennsylvanian thoroughfare to the 
Ohio. It cannot be afl&rmed, as has often 
been said, that Forbes was early prejudiced 
in favor of a Pennsylvania route ; he never 
could have been such a hypocrite as to pen 
the words to be found on page 94. That 
his first plans were completely altered at 
the advice of Sir John St. Clair is very 
plain from his letters to Governor Denny 
(March 20) and to Colonel Bouquet (July 
6) ; but up to the very last he leaves the 
question open, to be decided wholly accord- 
ing to the reports of the guides and 
explorers. It is difl&cult, however, to 
reconcile the words in Forbes's letter to 
Bouquet of July 23, in which he states 



THE NEW ROAD 126 

that St. Clair, when advising the Raystown 
route, afl&rmed ** that he nor nobody else 
knew anything of the road leading from 
Lanrell hill." It is evident from this that 
Forbes originally expected to fall down to 
the Braddock road from Raystown, but that 
when once on the ground, with the distances 
clear in his mind, he was compelled to find 
a shorter road westward if there was one 
to be found. This is the only explanation 
of his immediate change of plan at St. 
Clair's advice, knowing that St. Clair had 
found no route westward by Laurel Hill ; 
it seems that St. Clair thought only of pro- 
ceeding via Raystown to Fort Cumberland, 
as he afl&rmed in his letter of June 9 to 
Bouquet. St. Clair was undoubtedly right 
in deciding that the best course to Fort 
Cumberland from Philadelphia for the 
army was through populous Pennsylvania, 
and his understanding that the Braddock 
Road would be followed from that point 
would easily explain why he had provided 
forage at Fort Cumberland, which occa- 
sioned Forbes* s criticism in his letter of 
July 14. Indeed from Forbes's letters of 
June 16, 19, and 27, it does not seem that he 



126 THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

had any definite plan for the construction 
of a new road. 

On the other hand Forbes very correctly 
doubted the advisability of using Braddock's 
long route when his army was once gath- 
ered together along the road from Carlisle 
to Raystown. Bouquet stated his (Forbes's) 
position very soundly when he said: '* You 
cannot take the Cumberland until you are 
in a position to demonstrate the impossi- 
bility of finding another road, or at any rate 
the impossibility of opening one without 
risking the expedition by too great an 
expenditure of time." Moreover, Forbes 
had a comprehensive view of the situation 
such as probably no one else had. 

So far as Bouquet's position was con- 
cerned, his correspondence shows that he 
was assiduous in carrying out Forbes's 
directions ; as to any conspiracy on his part 
to win Forbes over to the Pennsylvania 
route, as Washington insinuated, who can 
believe one existed after reading his letters? 
Bouquet very properly threw the burden 
of ultimate decision upon Forbes, as it was 
his duty to do ; he sent him all the informa- 
tion which he could obtain, pro and con, 



THE NEW ROAD 127 

concerning all routes ; he sent Colonel Burd 
out, with his guides, in order to have testi- 
mony upon which he was sure he could 
rely; he urged Forbes to defer his decision 
of route until he (Forbes) could have a 
personal interview with Washington; he 
had Braddock's Road partly cleared and 
plainly described it as needing *' very little 
in the way of repair; " he never seems to 
have attempted to minimize the difficulties 
of making a new route or maximize those 
of the old ; he continually urges the neces- 
sity of great caution in the selection of a 
route. 

The motives which directed the move- 
ments of Sir John St. Clair during these 
months of controversy are quite beyond 
fathoming. It is easy to believe that the 
** new light," which Forbes said Sir John 
had received '* at Winchester," made it 
clear that if he did not send the army over 
the southern route (Fort Frederick -Fort 
Cumberland) to Cumberland, it was possible 
that Forbes would never traverse Brad- 
dock's Road at all. It is certain that upon 
Governor Sharpens and Washington's 
arrival upon the scene, Sir John began to 



118 THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

shower upon Bouquet letters advising the 
opening of the Fort Frederick -Fort Cum- 
berland road ; ' ' and I believe from thence, ' ' 
Forbes wrote of St. Clair's meeting with 
Governor Sharpe, '* proceeded to the open- 
ing the road from Fort Frederick to Fort 
Cumberland." Indeed, it would be inter- 
esting to know whether it was not St. 
Clair's suddenly raised clamor over the 
length of the Raystown route to Fort Cum- 
berland (hoping to ''drive" Forbes over 
the Fort Frederick route) that determined 
Forbes to ignore Fort Cumberland and push 
out on a new, shorter route to the Ohio. 

Whatever were St. Clair's reasons for 
such vacillating plans, it is sure he fell 
into disgrace in Forbes's eyes. In addition 
to the upbraiding he received from the 
general's own lips, Forbes wrote in his 
letter of July 14 that the wagons were the 
plague of his life and denied that St. Clair 
had taken '* the smallest pains" or made 
the '* least inquiry " concerning the matters 
he had been detailed to care for. Again, 
in Forbes's letter to Bouquet of July 17 
he says: ** Sir John acknowledges taking 
some (kettles &c from Pennsylvania troops) 



THE NEW ROAD 189 

and applying them to the use of the 
Virginians &c which is terrible." In a 
letter previously quoted Forbes aflBrms that 
St. Clair — who was sent in advance of the 
army to settle the matter of route — * * knows 
nothing of the matter. ' ' Porbes's wrath at 
St. Clair reached a climax before the end of 
August when he savagely declared that he 
suspected his ' ' heart as well as the head. ' * "^ 
And now as to Washington. His letters 
are typical of the young man to whom these 
western forests were not unfamiliar; they 
are patriotic and loyal. Though he was 
standing for election to the House of Bur- 
gesses in his home county, he had refused 
to accept a leave of absence to do his elec- 
tioneering — which in no wise prevented 
his election. I cannot find any ill-boding 
prophecy in his letters, concerning the 
making of a new road westward from Rays- 
town, which after events did not justify. 
He affirmed that Forbes could not reach 
Fort Duquesne by a new road before the 
winter set in ; and no prophecy ever seemed 
more accurately fulfilled. For before Fort 
Duquesne was reached it was decided not 
'^^ Forbes to Bouquet, August 28, 1756. 



ISO THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

to attempt to continue the campaign 
further. An unexpected occurrence sud- 
denly turned the tide and Forbes went 
on — to a splendid conquest. But, never- 
theless, Washington's prophecy was, not 
long after it was made, found to have been 
that of a wise man. Had Forbes been one 
iota less fortunate than Braddock was unfor- 
tunate, Washington's words would have 
come true to the letter. So much for his 
judgment, which Forbes ignored. 

But Washington's knowledge was lim- 
ited, so far as the general situation of the 
army was concerned. Forbes's expedition 
was one of three simultaneous campaigns; 
and the three commanders were somewhat 
dependent upon each other. At any time 
Forbes might be called upon to give assist- 
ance to Abercrombie or Johnson. Forbes 
was in constant correspondence with both 
of his colleagues; after Abercrombie's 
repulse the prosecution of the Fort Du- 
quesne campaign, it may almost be said, 
was in question. At any rate it was impor- 
tant to have open the shortest possible 
route of communication to the northern 
colonies where the other campaigns were 



THE NEW ROAD ISl 

being pushed ; in case Fort Duquesne was 
captured a straight road through populous, 
grain-growing Pennsylvania would be of 
utmost importance ; especially as Pennsyl- 
vania abounded in vehicles, while in 
Virginia they were scarce. 

Washington thought only of a quick 
campaign completed in the same season as 
begun. Forbes, however, was not in eager 
haste and had good reason for moving 
slowly. As early as August 9 he wrote 
Bouquet: " Between you and I be it said, 
as we are now so late, we are yet too soon. 
This is a parable that I shall soon explain." 
Three reasons appealed to Forbes for mov- 
ing slowly, though it is doubtful if he 
intended moving as slowly as he actually 
did move : Frederick Post, the missionary, 
had been sent to the Indians on the Beaver 
asking them to withdraw from the French ; 
the Indian chiefs were invited to the treaty 
at Easton, where their alliance with the 
French would, it was hoped, be under- 
mined; winter was drawing on apace, when 
the Indians who were with the French 
would withdraw to their villages and begin 
to prepare for the inclement season. 



in THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

One of the direct serious charges brought 
against Washington was that he did '* not 
know the difference between a party and an 
army." This is brought by Colonel Bou- 
quet and I do not believe that he was in 
error or that the accusation can be proved 
unjust. Washington had had much experi- 
ence, such as it was, in the Fort Necessity 
campaign, with Braddock, and on the Vir- 
ginia frontier. But the Fort Necessity 
campaign was conspicuous as a political, 
not a military event. The force he led 
west did not number two hundred men. 
This was, surely, a party^ not an army. 
Now, be it remembered, the great difi&culty 
of leading any body of men, small or great, 
lay in provisioning them and feeding the 
horses. The larger the army the greater 
the difficulty — indeed the difficulty trebled 
as the number of men and horses was 
doubled. On those mountain roads the 
second wagon was drawn with much greater 
difficulty than the first. Again, a small 
body of men could, in part, be supplied 
with food from the forests ; in the case of an 
army this source of supply must be ignored. 
In the case of Washington's Fort Necessity 



THE NEW ROAD 1S8 

campaign, how did his handful of men fare? 
They nearly starved — and capitulated 
because they did not have the food to give 
them the necessary strength to retreat. 
This was not Washington's fault, for he, 
properly, left this matter with those whose 
business it was ; but the experience certainly 
did not teach him how to handle an army. 
J* I cannot see that he had the opportunity 
l» ' to learn much more in Braddock's campaign 
in 1755. He was that general's aide, a car- 
rier of messages and orders, and a member 
of the military family. He had ever before 
his eyes a thousand examples of careless- 
ness, chicanery, and mismanagement, but 
those could not teach him how an army was 
to be cared for properly. His advice was 
often asked and minded, but he gave it in 
the capacity of a frontiersman, not as a 
tactician or ofi&cer. The one exception was 
when he urged that Braddock divide the 
army into two parties by sending a small 
flying column rapidly against Fort Du- 
quesne. 

It is clear from preceding pages that, on 
the Virginia frontier, he learned no lessons 
on the control of large bodies of men. 



184 THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

But now, in 1758, as colonel of an impor- 
tant branch of the army General Forbes was 
throwing across the AUeghenies, Washing- 
ton came forward conspicuously as a cham- 
pion of a certain route to be pursued by an 
army of five thousand men. Frankly, what 
did he know of the needs of five thousand 
men on a march of two hundred miles from 
their base of supplies ? His correspondence 
on this point is not satisfactory. He had 
never passed over the Pennsylvania Road, 
and, though he understood better than any- 
one what it meant to cut a new road, he 
does not answer the argument that the 
Braddock Road failed to offer as much 
pasturage for horses and cattle as the Penn- 
sylvania route. He confines himself largely 
to the matter of celerity: and the situation, 
as we have explained, did not demand 
haste. Forbes had the best of reasons for 
moving slowly. From a commissary's 
standpoint Washington's argument could 
have had no weight whatever. 

Washington was strongly prejudiced in 
favor of the Virginia route ; and no man 
could have had better reasons for prejudice, 
as will be shown. He argued conspicuously 



THE NEW ROAD 186 

and vehemently on a subject with which 
he had no experience. Great and good as 
he became, and brave and faithful as he 
was, it is all the easier to confess to a weak- 
ness which was due to a lack of experience 
and to loyal, old-time Virginia pride. It 
is an exceedingly pleasant duty to emphas- 
ize the fact that, after his repeated argfu- 
ments were cast aside by his superiors and a 
route was chosen in the face of the strongest 
opposition he could bring to bear on the 
subject, the young man swallowed his 
chagrin and the slights under which his 
fine spirit must have writhed, and worked 
manfully and heroically for measures which 
he had heartily opposed. In all that he had 
done in the past five years he never played 
the man better than here and now. 

It is very difficult to unravel what Gen- 
eral Forbes continually calls the plot of 
certain Virginians to force him into Brad- 
dock's Road. The matter is of additional 
interest because, in his letter to Bouquet 
of Augfust 9, Forbes utters a very sharp 
criticism of Washington: ** By a very 
unguarded letter of Col. Washington's that 
accidentally fell into my hands, I am now 



136 THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

at the bottom of their scheme against this 
new road, a scheme that I think was a 
shame for any ofl&cer to be concerned in, 
but more of this at [our] meeting." Again 
on September 4 he wrote: ** Therefore [I] 
would consult C. Washington, altho perhaps 
not follow his advice, as his Behaviour 
about the roads, was in no ways like a 
soldier." What letter this was of Wash- 
ington's I do not know. It could not have 
been the letter written to Halket (page 113); 
it hardly seems possible that it could have 
been the following letter which Washington 
wrote to Governor Fouquier: ** The Penn- 
sylvanians, whose present as well as future 
interest it was to have the expedition con- 
ducted through their government, and 
along that way, because it secures their 
frontiers at present, and their trade here- 
after, a chain of forts being erected, had 
prejudiced the General absolutely against 
the old road, and made him believe that we 
were the partial people, and determined 
him at all events to pursue that route. "''^ 
The doubt is not whether Forbes -would 

'* Sparks: Writings of Washington (1834), vol. ii, 
p. 308, note. 



THE NEW ROAD 137 

have spoken sharply if he had seen this 
letter, but whether it could have fallen into 
his hands. It was undoubtedly sent from 
Fort Cumberland straight to Winchester 
and Williamsburg. From one point the 
letter does Washington no credit, though 
it shows plainly that there was a bitter 
factional fight and that he felt strongly the 
righteousness of the Virginian side of the 
question, for which he is not to be blamed. 
As to his accusation against his general, it 
seems to me unreasonably bitter. Forbes 's 
correspondence with Bouquet is convincing 
proof of the falseness of Washington's 
theory that the Pennsylvanians ** had prej- 
udiced the General absolutely against the 
old road . . and determined him at all 
events to pursue that (new) route." After 
wrestling with the route question two 
months Forbes wrote General Abercrombie 
as late as July 25 that he was unwilling to 
bring the divisions of his army together 
"till the Route is finally determined." 
Forbes had no predilection for Pennsyl- 
vanians; when, in September, a spirit of 
jealousy appeared concerning the province 
from which the army provisions should be 



188 THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

obtained, Forbes wrote Bouquet (September 
17): ** I believe neither you nor I values 
one farthing where we get provisions from, 
provided we are supplyed, or Interest our- 
selves either with Virginia or Pennsylvania, 
which last I hope will be damn'd for their 
treatment of us with the Waggons, and 
every other thing where they could profit 
by us from their impositions, altho at the 
risque of our perdition." 

The controversy as to whether Forbes* s 
route should be through Pennsylvania or 
Virginia serves to bring into clear perspec- 
tive one of the most interesting and one of 
the most important phases of our study — 
the meaning of the building of a road at 
that time to either one of those colonies. 
Nothing could emphasize this more than 
the sharpness of the quarrel and the position 
of those concerned in it. It meant very 
much to Pennsylvania to have Forbes cut a 
road to the Ohio in both of the two ways 
suggested by Washington to Governor 
Fouquier — it fortified her frontier and 
opened a future avenue of trade. The Old 
Trading Path had been her best course 
westward and her trade with the Indians 



THE NEW ROAD 18» 

had been nothing to what it would now 
become. But such as it had been, it was 
most distasteful to the Virginians to the 
south who called the West their own. 
This rivalry was intense for more than a 
quarter of a century and came near ending 
in bloodshed ; the quarrel was only forgot- 
ten in the tumultuous days of 1775. Gren- 
eral Forbes seems to have understood very 
well that his new road would be of utmost 
importance to Pennsylvania as that province 
would then have a ** nigher Communication 
[than Virginia] to the Ohio; " and that was 
the very reason he cut it : because it was 
shorter — not to please Pennsylvania. If 
Fort Duquesne was to be captured and for- 
tified and manned and supplied, the shortest 
route thither would be, as the dark days of 
1764 and 1775 and 1791 proved, a desper- 
ately long road to travel. 

On the other hand the building of 
Forbes's road in Pennsylvania was a boon 
which that province far less deserved than 
Virginia. Virginia men and capital were 
foremost in the field for securing the Indian 
trade of the Ohio; they had, nearly ten 
years before, secured a grant of land 



140 THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

between the Monongahela and Kanawha, 
and sent explorers and a number of pioneers 
to occupy the land; their private means 
had been given to clear the first white 
man's road thither and erect storehouses at 
Wills Creek and Redstone ; the activity of 
these ambitious, worthy men had brought 
on the war now existing. When open strife 
became the colonies* only hope of holding 
the West, Virginia was first and foremost 
in the field ; the same spirit that showed 
itself in commercial energy was very 
evident when war broke out, and for four 
years Virginia had given of her treasure 
and of her citizens for the cause. During 
this time Pennsylvania had hardly lifted a 
finger, steadily pursuing a course which 
brought down upon her legislators most 
bitter invectives from every portion of the 
colonies. And now, in the last year of the 
war, the conquering army was to pass 
through Pennsylvania to the Ohio, building 
a road thither which should for all time 
give this province an advantage very much 
greater than that ever enjoyed by any of 
the others. True, Braddock's Road curled 
along over the mountains, but after the 



THE NEW ROAD 141 

defeat by the Monongahela it had never 
been used except by small parties on foot 
and had become well-nigh impassable other- 
wise. We do not know what Washington 
wrote in the letter which Forbes so roundly 
criticised, but it can easily be conceived, 
without detriment to his character, that he 
might have spoken in a way Forbes could 
not understand concerning lethargic Penn- 
sylvania's undeserved good fortune.*^ But 
Forbes had the present to deal with, not 
the past, and the shortest route to the Ohio 
was all too long. 

This became alarmingly plain in a very 
short time after the day, August i, on 

"Washington's jealousy of Virginia's welfare ap- 
peared in 1755 when the question of Braddock's route 
from Alexandria to Fort Cumberland arose. It would 
seem to us today that conditions in Virginia must have 
been pitiable if the marching of an army through the 
colony could have been considered in any way a boon. 
Yet such was Washington's attitude in 1755 toward the 
Governor of Maryland's new road. In a letter to Lord 
Fairfax dated May 5, 1755, Washington objected to 
Dunbar's regiment marching to Cumberland by way of 
Frederick, Maryland; in a letter to Major Carlisle writ- 
ten from Fort Cumberland May 14, 1755, he ridicules 
the route: ** Dunbar had to recross [the Potomac] at 
Connogagee [Williamsport, Maryland] and come down 
[into Virginia] — laughable enough. ' ' 



1412 THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

which Bouquet began to cut it. The story 
of the hewing of this road cannot be told 
better than by quoting the fragments apper- 
taining to it contained in the letters of those 
closely concerned in its building. Old 
St. Clair, who, as we have seen, was sent 
on by Forbes to Bouquet, was the advance 
supervisor. As early as August 12 he was 
writing Bouquet from ** Camp on y* Side 
of AUeganys" that not as much progress 
had been made as he had hoped, and that 
the " Work to be done on this Road is im- 
mense. Send as many men as you can with 
digging tools, this is a most diabolical 
work, and whiskey must be had. I told 
you that the road wou'd take 500 Men 5 
Days in cutting to the Top of the Moun- 
tain." On the sixteenth he wrote: ** A 
small retrench* is picked out at Kikeny 
Pawlings." 

". . The Stages will be 
from Rays Town to the Shanoe 

Cabins 11 Miles, 

to S' Allan McLeans camp . 9 or 10 Miles 
to Edmunds Swamp . . 9 or 10 Miles." 

" . . The Pack Horses returning 
from Kikoney Paulins have taken the other 



THE NEW ROAD 148 

Road, so you may send them back loaded." 
Forbes, writing to Bouquet, refers as 
follows to the new road August 7: " Ex- 
tremely well satisfied with your accounts 
of the Road, and very glad to find that you 
have entered upon the making of it;" 
(August 9) : " I hope your new road advances 
briskly, and that from the Alleghany Hill 
to Laurell Hill may be carrying forward by 
different partys, at the same time, that you 
are making the pass of the Allegany prac- 
ticable;" (August 15): *' I hope the new 
road goes on fast and that soon we shall be 
able to take post at Loyal Haning. I see 
nothing that can facilitate this more than 
by still amusing the Enemy by pushing 
Considerable parties along M"" Braddock's 
route, which parties might endeavour to 
try to find communications betwixt the two 
roads where they approach the nearest, or 
where most likely such passages can be 
found. As it will be necessary very soon 
to make a disposition of our small Army I 
beg you will give your thoughts a little 
that way. at present I think the greatest 
part ought to be assembled at Raestown to 
make our main push by that road, while 



144 THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

Col* Washington, or some other officer 
might push along the other road and might 
join us if a Communication can be found 
when called upon. But this is o^ly an Idea 
in Embryo. . .*' (August i8): "In car- 
rjdng forward the new road I think there 
might easily be a small road carried on at 
the same time, at about loo yards to the 
right and left of it, and paralel with it, by 
which our flanking partys might advance 
easier along with the line. I dont mean 
here to cut down any large trees, only to 
clear away the Brushwood and saplins, so 
as the men either on foot or on horseback 
may pass the easier along. . .*' 

Bouquet forwarded this order to St. Clair 
on August 23, also writing: ** Colonel Burd 
is to command on the West of Lawrell Hill, 
and to march without delay and before the 
Road is cut to Loyal H — [Hannan]." On 
the same date St. Clair wrote Bouquet 
from Stoney Creek as follows: *' I wrote 
you yesterday . . that three waggons 
have got to this place, the Road not so 
good as I shall make it . . I hope to get 
to Kikoney Pawlins to morrow night, if 
not shall do it next day. Tell Mr Sinclair 



THE NEW ROAD 146 

to send me my Down Quilt the weather is 
cold.** That evening he wrote again, in 
reply to Bouquet's letter, from '* Kikoney 
Paulins: " ** It is impossible for me to tell 
you any more than I have done about 
the Road to L — H — [Loyal Hannan]. I 
required 600 Men to make the Road over 
the Lai Ri — ge in three days on condition 
I was to see it done my Self, and perhaps 
I might reach L — H the 3^ Day. I ex- 
pect to get the Road cleared as far as the 
clear fields a Mile from the foot of L — R 
on this Side, by the time the A — y [army] 
comes up, and work afterwards with as 
many men as the Other Corps will give 
me." From Edmonds Swamp St. Clair 
wrote next (no date): ** I got the Waggons 
safe as far as this post yesterday the road 
is so far good, and if it had not rain*d so 
hard I was in hopes to report the Road 
good this Night to Kikoney Pawlings. . . 
If you think the Road from Rays town to 
the Shanoe Cabins will be wet in the au- 
tumn, it wou'd be well to open the Road 
over the two Risings, and it wou*d be 
shorter for our Returned Waggons. I shall 
send out a Reconoitering party 25 Miles 



146 THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

northward that we may know the Paths 
that lead to sidling Hill." 

By the last of August all parties con- 
cerned were beginning to realize that the 
young Washington had been telling some 
plain truth when he urged Forbes not to 
try this new route. On the twenty-seventh 
Bouquet wrote St. Clair: *' I am extremely 
disappointed in my Expectation of the 
Road being open before this time to the 
foot of Lawrell Hill . . push that Road 
with all possible dispatch . . the Chief 
thing we want is the Communication open 
for Waggons to Loyal Hannon. Employ 
all your Strength there, and Colonel Burd 
has order to cut backwards to you from L. 
Han. . . Capt Dudgeon and M^ Dapt 
will oversee some Part of the Road, and 
every body is to stir and make amend for 
their unaccountable slowness/* Bouquet 
blamed St. Clair for the delay and Forbes 
wrote him from Shippensburg August 28: 
'' The slow advance of the new road and 
the cause of it touch me to the quick, it 
was a thing I early foresaw and guarded 
again[st] such an assistant with all the force 
and Energy of words that I was master off, 



THE NEW ROAD 147 

but being over ruled was resolved to make 
the most I could of a wrong head . . the 
Virginians who are able to march . . 
might advance as far forward upon Brad- 
dock's road as to that part of it which is 
most contiguous to our second deposite, 
which I think might be about Saltlick 
Creek . . The using of Braddock's road 
I have always had in mind was it only a 
blind — pray lose no time as that does not 
oblidge us to march, before we see proper." 
Forbes alone realized that despatch was 
not to be, necessarily, the secret of the suc- 
cess of his campaign, though he had urged 
Bouquet to hasten the roadmaking as fast 
as possible. He had his eyes fixed else- 
where than on the Allegheny ranges; he 
knew the Indians at Fort Duquesne were 
weary of the listless campaign ; that Brad- 
street had been sent against Fort Frontenac 
(which, if captured, would shut Fort Du- 
quesne completely oflf from Quebec) ; that 
by the first of September a hundred Indians 
were already gathered at Easton ready for 
a treaty; that the brave Post was now 
among the Delawares bringing the final 
opportunity for them to abandon the 



148 THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

French cause. On September 2 he wrote 
Bouquet hinting of all these circumstances 
and urging delay in ever3rthing but mere 
road-building. On the sixth of September 
Forbes wrote Pitt : 

" In my last I had the honour to acquaint 
you, of my proceedings in the new road 
across the Alleganey mountains, and over 
Laurell Hill, (leaving the Rivers Yohie- 
ganey and Monongahela to my left hand) 
strait to the Ohio, by which I have saved a 
great deal of way, and prevented the mis- 
fortunes that the overflowing of those rivers 
might occasion. 

'* I acquainted you likewise of the suspi- 
cions I had, of the small trust I could 
repose in the Pennsylvanians in assisting 
of me with anyone necessary, or any help 
in furthering the service that they did not 
think themselves compelled to do by the 
words of your letter to them. . . My 
advanced post consisting of 1 500 men, are 
now in possession of a strong post 9 miles 
on the other side of Laurell Hill, and about 
40 from Fort Du Quesne, nor had the 
Enemy even suspected my attempting such 
a road till very lately, they having been all 



THE NEW ROAD 149 

along securing the strong passes, and fords 
of the rivers upon Gen^ Braddock's route. ' ' "^ 

Forbes had been in Philadelphia while 
Bouquet was struggling away at Raystown 
with his thousand perplexities. Early in 
July he had proceeded to Carlisle where he 
remained stricken down **with a cursed 
flux " until the eleventh of August. Two 
days later he reached Shippensburg, where 
he was again prostrated and unable to 
advance until the middle of September. 
It is difl&cult to realize that the campaign 
had been directed so largely by this pros- 
trate man whose "excruciating pains" 
often left him * * as weak as a new-born 
infant '* and who, when able to be about 
camp, retired '* at eight at night, if able to 
sit up so late.** All of this might well have 
been stated long ago but it is of particular 
significance now that Forbes's correspon- 
dence of the whole summer has been 
systematically reviewed. The very trials 

^'As to the correctness of Forbes' s statement see 
Bougainville au Cremille, Pennsylvania Archives (ad 
series), vol. vi, p. 425; also Daine au Marichal de 
Belleisle, id,, pp. 420, 423, 



160 THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

and perplexities, the crying need for his 
bravery and resolution, seemed in a meas- 
ure to keep him alive. 

No one can study this campaign without 
yearning to know more of the impetuous 
soul which threw its last grain of strength 
into making it a triumphant success. The 
Indians called Forbes *' The Head of Iron " 
— and no words can better describe the 
man. Giving all praise possible to Bouquet 
for his sturdy and active service through- 
out the summer, it is still plain that the 
dying Forbes was the magnetic influence 
that made others strong. Those were dark 
days at Raystown when at last the pale 
general arrived upon the ground; "had 
not the General come up,** wrote an ofl&cer 
on the spot, ** the Consequence wou*d have 
been dangerous.'* ^^ Bouquet was an in- 
valuable man but the ** Head of Iron** in 
command was needed. 

The remainder of the campaign has been 
often told and in detail. Washington and 
his Virginians came northward over the 
newly-cut road to Fort Bedford at Rays- 

'^^ Armstrong to Richard Peters, Pennsylvania 
Archives, vol. iii, p. 552. 



THE NEW ROAD 161 

town and plunged westward to the Loyal- 
hannan, to which point Armstrong and St. 
Clair pushed the road-building. Washing- 
ton himself supervised the cutting of 
Forbes's road westward from Fort Ligonier 
toward Fort Duquesne. Much as he had 
wrangled with Bouquet as to the propriety 
of making a new road he was as good as 
his word and worked heroically for its 
success. Never, even in Braddock's death- 
trap on the Monongahela, did he come 
nearer giving his life to his country. 
Forbes's first check came when Grant's 
command, sent forward from Fort Ligonier 
to reconnoitre Fort Duquesne, was cut to 
pieces on Grant's Hill within sight of the 
French fort. Eight hundred men went on 
the expedition ; two hundred and seventy- 
three were killed, wounded, or captured. 
Bouquet reported the disaster to Forbes on 
the seventeenth of September, upon which 
the sad man " deeply touched by this 
reverse," writes Parkman, *' yet expressed 
himself with a moderation that does him 
honor." '* Your letter of the seventeenth 
I read with no less surprise than concern, 
as I could not believe that such an attempt 



162 THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

would have been made without my know- 
ledge and concurrence. The breaking in 
upon our fair and flattering hopes of suc- 
cess touches me most sensibly. There are 
two wounded highland officers just now 
arrived, who give so lame an account of 
the matter that one can draw nothing from 
them, only that my friend Grant most cer- 
tainly lost his wits, and by his thirst of 
fame brought on his own perdition, and 
ran great risk of ours." The brave gen- 
erosity of these words is not so significant 
as the fact that this pain-racked man, far 
behind on the road, had such a grasp of the 
minutest detail of the whole campaign that 
Bouquet, he believed, would not even send 
out a scouting party in force without his 
" knowledge and concurrence.*' 

A letter from Forbes to Bouquet dated 
Reastown, September 23rd, contains some 
interesting paragraphs: ** The description 
of the roads is so various and disagreeable 
that I do not know what to think or say. 
Lieutenant Evans came down here the 
other day, and described Laurell Hill as, 
at present, impracticable, but he said he 
could mend it with the assistance of 500 



THE NEW ROAD 168 

men, fascines and fagots, in one day's time. 
Col. Stephens writes Col. Washington that 
he is told by everybody that the road from 
Loyal Hannon to the Ohio and the French 
fort is now impracticable. For what rea- 
son, or why, he writes thus I do not know ; 
but I see Col. Washington and my friend. 
Col. Byrd, would rather be glad this was 
true than otherways, seeing the other road 
(their favourite scheme) was not followed 
out. I told them plainly that, whatever 
they thought, yet I did aver that, in our 
prosecuting the present road, we had pro- 
ceeded from the best intelligence that could 
be got for the good and convenience of the 
army, without any views to oblige any one 
province or another; and added that those 
two gentlemen were the only people that 
I had met with who had shewed their weak- 
ness in their attachment to the province they 
belong to, by declaring so publickly in 
favour of one road without their, knowing 
anything of the other, having never heard 
from any Pennsylvania person one word 
about the road ; and that, as for myself, I 
could safely say — and believed I might 
answer for you — that the good of the 



164 THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

service was the only view we had at heart, 
not valuing the provincial interest, jealou- 
sys, or suspicions, one single two-pence; 
and that, therefore, I could not believe Col. 
Stephen's descriptions untill I had heard 
from you, which I hope you will very soon 
be able to disprove. I fancy what I have 
said more on this subject will cure them 
from coming upon this topic again." 

Forbes's next check was more ominous 
than Grant's scrimmage. It was not admin- 
istered by the French — though they 
followed up the decisive victory on Grant's 
Hill with various attacks in force upon Fort 
Ligonier — but by the clouded heavens. 
A wet autumn set in early as if to make 
St. Clair's road doubly "diabolical." 
Forbes wrote Bouquet on October 1 5 : 
** Your Description of the roads peirces me 
to the very soul yet still my hopes are that 
a few Dry days would make things wear a 
more favourable aspect as all Clay Coun- 
tries are either good or bad for Carriages 
according to the wet or dry season. It is 
true we cannot surmount impossibilities 
nor prevent unf orseen accidents but it must 
be a comfort both to you and I still that we 



THE NEW ROAD 166 

proceeded w* Caution in the choice of this 
road and in the opinion of every Disinter- 
ested man, it had every advantage over the 
other. And I am not sure but it has so still 
considering the Yachiogeny & Monongehela 
rivers — so I beg y* you will without taking 
notice to any body make yourself master of 
the arguments for and objections against 
the two roads so that upon comparison one 
may Judge how far we have been in the 
right in our Choice. N. B. If any party 
goes out after the Enemy they ought to 
have instructions always with regard to the 
roads forward as likewise ye Communica- 
tion twixt Loyalhana and the nearest part 
of M' Braddocks road which want of all 
things to be reconnoitred in order to stop 
foolish mouths if it chances to prove any- 
ways as good or practicable. May not such 
a communication be found without crossing 
Laurel hill?" 

These are exceedingly interesting words 
when we know that failure stared Forbes 
in the face. This might mean official 
inquiry or court martial; in such a case 
there would have been, no doubt, question 
raised as to the ** right" of Forbes's and 



166 THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

Bouquet's *' choice." But the fact that 
Forbes desired to know the exact condition 
of Braddock's Road, to get into it if it 
seemed best, and to prove the soundness of 
his judgment if it was found to be useless, 
is especially significant because it shows so 
plainly that the weary man already scented 
failure. In a few days he wrote again: 
*• These four days of constant rain have 
completely ruined the road. The wagons 
would cut it up more in an hour than we 
could repair in a week. I have written to 
General Abercrombie, but have not had one 
scrap of a pen from him since the begin- 
ning of September; so it looks as if we 
were either forgot or left to our fate." 

Early in November the poor man was 
carried on over the mountains to Fort Ligo- 
nier where the whole army, approximately 
six thousand strong, lay. Hope of con- 
tinuing the campaign had fled and the 
desperate prospect of wintering amid the 
mountains, with no certainty of receiving 
sufficient stores to keep man and beast alive, 
stared the whole army in the face. Never- 
theless, at a council of officers it was decided 
to attempt nothing further that season. 



THE NEW ROAD 167 

In a few hours three prisoners were 
brought into camp who reported the true 
condition of aflFairs at Fort Duquesne. 
Bradstreet had destroyed the stores destined 
for the Ohio by the destruction of Fort 
Frontenac. Ligneris, the commandant, 
had consequently been compelled to send 
home his Illinois and Louisiana militia. 
The brave Post had succeeded in alienating 
the Ohio Indians. The remainder at Fort 
Duquesne were glad now to hurry away 
into their winter quarters in their distant 
homelands. The gods had favored the 
brave. 

Immediately Forbes determined upon a 
hurried advance with a picked body of 
twenty-five hundred men, unencumbered. 
Washington and Armstrong hastened 
ahead to cut the pathway. A strong van- 
guard led the way. Behind them came 
the hero of the hour and of the campaign, 
Forbes, borne on his litter. The High- 
landers occupied the center of the rear, 
with the Royal Americans and provincials 
on their right and left under Bouquet and 
Washington. On the night of the twenty- 
fourth the little army lay on its arms in the 



158 THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

hills of Turkey Creek, near Braddock's 
fatal field. At midnight a booming report 
startled them. Were the French welcom- 
ing the long-expected reinforcements from 
Presque Isle and Niagara — or had a maga- 
zine exploded? In the morning some 
advised a delay to reconnoitre. Forbes 
scorned the suggestion; '* I will sleep," he 
is said to have exclaimed, "in Fort Du- 
quesne or in hell tonight." 

At dusk that November evening the 
army marched breathlessly down the wide, 
hard trace over which Beaujeu had led his 
rabble toward Braddock's army and, with- 
out opposition, came at last within sight of 
the goal upon which the eyes of the world 
had been directed so long. The barracks 
and store-house of Fort Duquesne were 
burned, the fortifications blown up and the 
French — gone forever. 

Two days later a weary man sat within 
an improvised house and with a feeble hand 
indited a letter to the British Secretary of 
State. And all it contained was summed 
up in its first words: ** Pittsbourgh 27"* 
Novem' i7S8.'* It was Pitt's bourgh now. 
The region about the junction of the Alle- 



THE NEW ROAD 169 

gheny and Monongahela was known in 
Kentucky as ** the Pitt country." 

The generous Bouquet expressed the 
sentiment of the army when he afl&rmed: 
** After God, the success of this expedition 
is entirely due to the General." When 
Forbes's physical condition is understood, 
his last campaign must be considered one 
of the most heroic in the annals of America. 
* * Its solid value was above price. It opened 
the Great West to English enterprise, took 
from France half her savage allies, and re- 
lieved the western borders from the scourge 
of Indian war. From southern New York 
to North Carolina, the frontier populations 
had cause to bless the memory of the stead- 
fast and all-enduring soldier." ''^ 

Forbes soon became unable to write or 
dictate a letter. On the terrible return 
journey over his freshly-hewn road he 
suffered intensely, sometimes losing con- 
sciousness. He was carried the entire 
distance to Philadelphia on his litter, and 
in March he died. His body, at last free 
from pain, was laid with befitting honors 
in the chancel of Christ Church. 

"Parkman: Montcalm and Wolfe y vol. ii, p. 162. 



160 THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

The following death notice and apprecia- 
tion of General Forbes appeared in the 
Pennsylvania Gazette March 15, 1759: 

" On Sunday last, died, of a tedious 
illness, John Forbes, Esq., in the 49th year 

of his age, son to Forbes, Esq., of 

Petmerief, in the Shire of Fife, in Scot- 
land, Brigadier Greneral, Colonel of the 
17th Regiment of North America; a gentle- 
man generally known and esteemed, and 
most sincerely and universally regretted. 
In his younger days he was bred to the 
profession of physic, but, early ambitious 
of the military character, he purchased into 
the Regiment of Scotfs Grey Dragoons, 
where, by repeated purchases and faithful 
services, he arrived to the rank of Lieu- 
tenant Colonel. His superior abilities soon 
recommended him to the protection of Gen- 
eral Campbell, the Earl of Stair, Duke of 
Bedford, Lord Ligonier, and other distin- 
guished characters in the army ; with some 
of them as an aid ; with the rest in the 
familiarity of a family man. During the 
last war he had the honor to be employed 
in the post of Quarter- Master General, in 
the army under his Royal Highness, the 



THE NEW ROAD 161 

Duke, which duty he discharged with 
accuracy, dignity and dispatch. His serv- 
ices in America are well known. By a 
steady pursuit of well-concerted measures, 
in defiance of disease and numberless 
obstructions, he brought to a happy issue 
a most extraordinary campaign, and made 
a willing sacrifice of his own life to what 
he valued more — the interests of his king 
and country. As a man he was just and 
without prejudices; brave, without ostenta- 
tion ; uncommonly warm in his friendships, 
and incapable of flattery; acquainted with 
the world and mankind, he was well-bred, 
but absolutely impatient of formality and 
affectation. As an officer, he was quick to 
discern useful men and useful measures, 
generally seeing both at first view, accord- 
ing to their real qualities; steady in his 
measures, and open to information and 
council; in command he had dignity with- 
out superciliousness ; and though perfectly 
master of the forms, never hesitated to drop 
them, when the spirit and more essential 
parts of the service required it. 

'* Yesterday, (14th,) he was interred in 
the Chancel of Christ's Church, in this city.' 



10S THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

A fellow-countryman of Forbes has built 
beside Forbes's Road (now Forbes Street), 
in the city of Pittsburg, a magnificent 
library. What could be more fitting or 
beautiful than that this brave Scotchman's 
memory should be honored with a monu- 
mental pillar here on his road which 
•* opened the Great West to English enter- 
prise? ** And let it bear the sweet human 
testimony of a British historian: '* No 
general was ever more beloved by the men 
under his command."^ 

'•Entick: History of the Late War (1763), vol. iii, 
p. 263, note. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE MILITARY ROAD TO THE WEST 

THERE is another hero of Forbes's 
Road. The rough days of that 
summer of 1758 were only sugges- 
tions of what was to come. Other armies 
than that of Forbes were to pass this way, 
for, be it understood at once, Forbes's 
Road became the great military highway 
into the West. No single road in America 
witnessed so many campaigns; no road in 
America was fortified by such a chain of 
forts. For a generation this route from 
Lancaster by Carlisle, Bedford, Ligonier to 
Pittsburg was the most important thor- 
oughfare to the West. 

The French retired from Fort Duquesne, 
down the Ohio and up the Allegheny. 
The remainder of the war was fought far 
away on the St. Lawrence. Hardly a shot 
was fired in the West after the skirmishes 
at Fort Ligonier succeeding Grant's defeat. 



164 THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

The French at Venango and Detroit made 
light of Forbes' s occupation of Fort Du- 
quesne. They had retired voluntarily and 
swore to return in the spring. In a dozen 
western posts the French bragged still of 
their possession of the West and of their 
future conquests. The Indians believed 
each boast. 

In the next year's campaign Quebec fell. 
New France passed away, and all French 
territory east of the Mississippi, save only 
a fishing station on the island of New- 
foundland came into the hands of the 
English. But this campaign was fought in 
the far northeast. Of it the West and its 
redskinned inhabitants knew nothing. Fort 
Niagara was the most westerly fort which 
had succumbed; Fort Duquesne, techni- 
cally, was evacuated. The real story of the 
successive French defeats was, perhaps, 
little heard of in the West; or, if communi- 
cated to the Indian allies there, the logfical 
conclusion was not plain to them. How 
could a land be conquered where not a single 
battle had been fought ? So far as the Indians 
were concerned, France was never more in 
possession of their western lakes and forests 



MILITARY ROAD TO THE WEST 166 

than then. Was not the blundering Brad- 
dock killed and his fine army utteriy put to 
rout? Were not the French forts in the 
West — Presque Isle, Venango, Le Boeuf, 
Miami, and Detroit, secure? Fort Du- 
quesne could be reoccupied whenever the 
French would give the signal. The leaden 
plates of France still reposed at the mouths 
of the rivers of the West and the Arms of 
the King of France still rattled in the wind 
which swept the land. 

Fancy the surprise of the Indians, then, 
when little parties of redcoat soldiers came 
into the West, and, with quiet insolence, 
took possession of the French forts and of 
the Indian's land! And the French moved 
neither hand nor foot to oppose them, 
though through so many years they had 
boasted their prowess, and though ten 
Wyandots could have done so successfully. 
Detroit was surrendered to a mere cor- 
poral's guard, and the lesser forts to a 
sentry's watch each. It remained for the 
newcomers to inform the Indians of the 
events which led to the changfing of the 
flags on these inland fortresses — to tell 
them that the French armies had been 



166 THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

Utterly overwhelmed, and the French capi- 
tal captured, and French rule in America 
at an end. 

But these explanations, given glibly, no 
doubt, by arrogant English officers, were 
repeated over and over by the Indians, and 
slowly, before a hundred, yea, a thousand 
dim fires in the forests. We can believe 
it was not all plain to them, this sudden 
conquest of a country where hardly a battle 
had been fought for eight years, and that 
battle the greatest victory ever achieved 
by the red man. Perhaps messengers were 
sent back to the forts to gain, casually, 
additional information concerning this 
marvelous conquest by proxy. French 
traders, as ignorant, or feigning to be, as 
the Indians, were implored to explain 
the sudden forgetfulness of the French 
*' Father '' of the Indians. 

It was inexplicable. The news spread 
rapidly : * * The French have surrendered 
our land to the English." Fierce Sha- 
wanese around their fires at Chillicothe on 
the Scioto heard the news, and sullenly 
passed it on westward to the Miamis, and 
eastward to the angered Delawares on the 



MILITARY ROAD TO THE WEST 167 

Muskingum, who had now forgotten Fred- 
erick Post. The Senecas on the upper 
Allegheny heard the news. The Ottawas 
and Wyandots on both sides of the Detroit 
River heard it — and before the fires of each 
of these fierce French-loving Indian nations 
there was much silence while chieftains 
pondered, and the few words uttered were 
stern and cruel. 

Cruel words grew to angry threats. By 
what right, the chieftains asked, could the 
French surrender the Black Forest to the 
English? When did the French come to 
own the land, after all? They were the 
guests, the friends of the Indian — not his 
conquerors. The French built forts, it is 
true, but they were for the Indian as well 
as for the French, and were forts in name 
only, and the more of them the merrier ! 
But now a conqueror had come, telling the 
Indian the land was no longer his, but 
belonged to the British king. 

Threats soon grew into visible form. 
Where it started is not surely known — 
some say from the Senecas on the upper 
Allegheny — but soon a fearful Bloody Belt 
went on a journey with its terrible sum* 



168 THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

mons to war. It passed to the Delawares 
and to the Shawanese and Miamis and 
Wyandots, and where it went the death 
halloo sounded through the forests. The 
call was to the Indians of the Black Forest 
to rise and cast out the English from the 
land. If the French could not have it, cer- 
tainly no one else should. The dogs of 
war were loosened. The young warriors 
of the Allegheny and Muskingum and 
Scioto and Miami and Detroit danced wildly 
before the fires, and the old men sang their 
half-forgotten war chants. 

The terrible war which in 1763 burst 
over the West has never been paralleled by 
savages the world over in point of swift 
success. This may be attributed to the 
fact that a leader was found in Pontiac, a 
chieftain in the Ottawa nation, who for 
daring and intelligence was never matched 
by a man of his race. He had the courage 
of sweeping and patriotic convictions. He 
saw in the English occupation of the land 
the doom of the red man. Indeed he must 
have seen it before, but if so he had not had 
an opportunity to put his convictions to a 
public test. The Indian was becoming a 



MILITARY ROAD TO THE WEST 169 

changed man. The implements and uten- 
sils of the white man were adopted by the 
red. The independent forest arts of their 
fathers were beginning to be forgotten. 
Kettles and blankets and powder and lead 
were taking the place of the wooden bowls 
and fur robes and swift flint heads. In 
another generation the art of making a 
living for himself in the forest would be 
forgotten by the Indian, and he would 
henceforth be absolutely dependent upon 
the foreigner. All this Pontiac saw. He 
felt commissioned to lead a return to 
nature. The arts of the white man must 
be discarded and the Indians must come 
back to their primitive mode of living in 
dependence upon their own skill and 
ingenuity. 

And so Pontiac waged a religious war. 
At a great convention of the savages he 
told them that a Delaware Indian had, 
while lost in the forests, been gruided into 
a path which led to the home of the Great 
Spirit, and, on coming there, had been 
upbraided by the Master of Life himself 
for the degenerate state to which his 
race was falling. The forest arts of their 



170 THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

fathers must be encouraged and relied 
upon. The utensils of the white man must 
be banished from the wigwams. Bows and 
arrows and tomahawks and stone hatchets 
should not be discarded. Otherwise the 
Great Spirit would take away their land 
from them and g^ve it to others. And so, 
much of the fury which accompanied the 
war was a sort of religious frenzy. ** The 
Master of Life himself has stirred us up/* 
said the warriors. 

Pontiac's plot — undoubtedly the most 
comprehensive military campaign ever con- 
ceived in redman's brain — was discovered 
by the British at Fort Miami, on the Mau- 
mee River, in March 1763, four years after 
the fall of Quebec. There the Bloody Belt 
was found and secured before it could be 
forwarded to the Wabash with its murder- 
ous message. By threats and warnings the 
untutored English officers thought to quell 
the disturbance. Amherst, his Majesty's 
commanding general in America, haughtily 
condemned the signs of revolution as ** un- 
warranted. * ' Moreover he gave his officers 
in the West authority to declare to the 
Indian chieftains that if they should con- 



MILITARY ROAD TO THE WEST 171 

Spire they would in his eyes, make " a 
contemptible figure ! * ' Time passed and 
the garrisons breathed easily as quiet 
reigned. 

It was but the lull before the storm. 
On the seventh of May, Pontiac, who led 
his Ottawas at Braddock's defeat, appeared 
before Detroit, the metropolis of the north- 
west, with three hundred warriors. The 
watchfulness of the brave Major Gladwin, 
a well-trained pupil in that school on Brad- 
dock's Road, and the failure of Pontiac to 
capture the fort by strategy, though his 
warriors were admitted within its walls and 
had shortened guns concealed beneath their 
blankets, was the dramatic beginning of a 
reign of terror and a war of devastation all 
the way from Sault St. Marie to even 
beyond the crest of the AUeghenies. Pon- 
tiac immediately invested Detroit and 
throughout the Black Forest his faithful 
allies did their Ottawa chieftain's will. 
On the sixteenth of May, Fort Sandusky 
was surrounded by Indians seemingly 
friendly. The British commander per- 
mitted seven to enter. As they sat smok- 
ing, by the turn of a head the signal was 



173 THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

given and the commander was a prisoner. 
As he was hurried out of the fort he saw, 
here one dead soldier, there another — 
victims of the massacre. Nine days later 
a band of Indians appeared before the fort 
at the mouth of the St, Joseph. '* We are 
come to see our relatives," they said, ** and 
wish the garrison good morning. " Within 
two minutes after their entrance the com- 
manding ofl&cer and three men were prison- 
ers and eleven others were murdered. Two 
days later the commander of Fort Miami, 
on the Maumee River, came, at an Indian 
girl's pitiful plea, to the Indian village to 
bleed a sick child. He was shot in his 
tracks. Four days later the commander of 
Fort Ouatianon, on the Wabash, was 
inveigled into an Indian cabin and captured, 
the fort surrendering forthwith. Two days 
later Indians gathered at Fort Michilimack- 
inac to engage in a game of lacrosse. At 
the height of the contest the ball was 
thrown near a gate of the fort. In the 
twinkling of an eye the commanding ofl&cer 
who stood watching the game was seized, 
and the Indians, snatching tomahawks from 
under the blankets of squaws who were 



MILITARY ROAD TO THE WEST 178 

Standing in proper position, entered the 
fort and killed fifteen soldiers outright 
and took the remainder of the garrison 
prisoners. 

Sixteen days later Fort Le Boeuf, on 
French Creek, where Washington delivered 
his message to the haughty St. Pierre a 
decade before, was attacked by an over- 
whelming army of savages. Keeping the 
enemy oflf until midnight, the garrison 
made good its escape, unknown to the 
exultant besiegers who had already fired 
one corner bastion, and fled down the river 
to Fort Pitt. On their way they passed the 
smouldering ruins of Fort Venango. Two 
days later Fort Presque Isle was attacked. 
In two days the commander, senseless with 
terror, struck his flag. The same day Fort 
Ligonier on Forbes's Road was invested 
by a besieging army. 

Thus the campaign of Pontiac, prosecuted 
with such swiftness and such success, bade 
fair to end in triumph. ** We hate the 
English," the Indians sent word to the 
French on the Mississippi, *' and wish to 
kill them. We are all united: the war is 
our war, and we will continue it for seven 



174 THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

years. The English shall never come into 
the West!" 

But Fort Detroit and Fort Pitt stood firm. 
For months Pontiac beleaguered the north- 
em fortress, gaining advantages whenever 
the garrison attacked him, but unable to 
reduce the fort. All summer long the eyes 
of the world were upon Detroit; and the 
gallant defense of Fort Pitt, was, compara- 
tively, forgotten. But the maintenance of 
this strategic point was of incalculable 
importance to the West. The garrison felt 
this. And here, if anywhere, was courage 
shown in battle. Here, if ever, brave men 
faced fearful odds with unshaken courage 
worthy of their Saxon blood. 

In planning his campaign Pontiac dele- 
gated the Shawanese and Delawares to 
carry Fort Pitt. If they could not do it he 
might be assured that the position was 
impregnable. They were his most reliable 
warriors, and, once given the task of carry- 
ing out the second most important coup of 
their great leader's plan, could be trusted 
to use any alternative savage lust could 
suggest, or trick savage cunning could 
invent in order to accomplish their portion 



MILITARY ROAD TO THE WEST 176 

of the terrible conquest of the West. The 
defense of Detroit was brave ; but Detroit 
was on the great water highway east and 
west. Succor was possible, in fact prob- 
able, in time ; if not, there was a way of 
escape. At Fort Pitt could either be 
expected? The only approach to it was 
this indifferent roadway hewn westward 
from Bedford in 1758. Moreover the fort 
had never been completed. On three sides 
the flood tides of the rivers had injured it. 
Ecuyer, its valiant defender, threw up a 
rough rampart of logs and palisaded the 
interior. And in this fragile fortress, 
hardly worthy of the name, behind which 
lay the darkling AUeghenies and about 
which loomed the Black Forest, were gath- 
ered some six hundred souls, a larger 
community, probably, than the total popu- 
lation of Detroit. And around on every 
side were gathered the lines of ochred 
warriors preparing for another charge even 
to the very blood-bespattered walls. The 
garrison might well have believed itself 
beyond the reach of succor, if indeed 
succor could avail before need of it had 
vanished. The bones of Braddock's seven 



176 THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

hundred slain lay scattered about the for- 
ests only seven miles away. Could another 
army come again? Little wonder that the 
Shawanese and Delawares were already 
flushed with victory as they renewed their 
unavailing attacks. 

The task of relieving Fort Pitt was 
placed upon the tried shoulders of Colonel 
Henry Bouquet, whose brilliant services in 
Forbes's campaign have been fully de- 
scribed. Amherst, then commanding in 
America, sent him the remains of the 
Forty-second and Seventy-seventh regi- 
ments, which amounted to the pitiful total 
of three hundred and forty-seven men and 
ofl&cers ; concerning additional troops Am- 
herst was painfully plain: ''Should the 
whole race of Indians take arms against us 
I can do no more." Recruits joined the 
army as it moved along through Lancaster 
and Carlisle, which augmented the force 
slightly. 

But the brave Bouquet, with an army 
not exceeding five hundred men, set out 
westward from Bedford on the rough road 
he himself had made with the vanguard of 
the ** Head of Iron" five years before. 



MILITARY ROAD TO THE WEST 177 

The appalling condition in which he found 
the country along the border would have 
daunted a less bold man. Every fort from 
Lake Erie to the Ohio had been razed to 
the ground. The whole country was panic- 
stricken. Houses were left vacant or 
burned, together with crops, and the moun- 
tain roads were blocked with fugitives, half 
famished, who threw themselves upon the 
intrepid Bouquet at his camps. It was 
indeed a trying time, a time for such a 
man as Bouquet to show himself. 

Never did the success of a campaign in 
the history of war depend more on the 
sagacity, bravery, and personal knowledge 
of a single commanding oflScer. This dar- 
ing Swiss was everywhere and everything. 
He knew that the enemy, though they 
retired before him even as he approached 
Fort Ligonier, were watching every move- 
ment of the coming army. He knew they 
were cognizant of his weakness, the debility 
of his men, the lack of provision, the 
paucity of scouts and spies. He knew, and 
so did the silent, lurking spies of the 
enemy, that Braddock's slain outnumbered 
his whole force. 



178 THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

But Ligonier — named by Bouquet him- 
self from a warrior whose bravery was now 
his inspiration — was not a place to pause, 
though just beyond lay the death-trap 
where Aubrey had defeated the ill-fated 
Grant five years before. On he went. 
As the inevitable battle-ground was neared 
Bouquet redoubled his watchfulness. 
When a darker defile than usual was 
reached, with a rifle across his lap, the 
commander went forward and himself led 
the army's van into it. 

On the morning of the fifth of August 
tents were struck early and another day's 
march commenced. Over broken country 
enveloped in forests the army went its 
way. By one o'clock they had made seven- 
teen miles and were not less than half a 
mile from Bushy Run, their proposed 
camping place. Suddenly was heard the 
report of rifle fire in front. As the main 
army listened the noise quickened to a 
sharp rattle — and the decisive battle of 
Bushy Run was commenced. 

The two foremost companies were 
ordered forward to support the vanguard 
now hotly engaged. This causing no 



MILITARY ROAD TO THE WEST 179 

abatement, the convoy was halted and a 
general charge formed. By an onward 
rush, with fixed bayonets, Bouquet and his 
eager men cleared the field. But firing on 
the right and left and in the rear announced 
that both flanks and the convoy were simul- 
taneously attacked. An order was given 
to fall back. This having been executed, 
an unbroken circle was formed about the 
terrified horses. 

Though in number the combatants were 
nearly equal, the savages had all the 
advantage of a superior force fighting 
under cover. Bouquet's army, like Brad- 
dock's, was in the open. With furious 
cries accompanied by a heavy fire, the 
Indians attempted to break the iron circle. 
And they fought with sly cunning. Not 
waiting to receive the answering attacks, 
they leaped behind the nearest trees, only 
to come back to the attack with increased 
ferocity from another quarter. The Eng- 
lish suffered severely while the active 
Indians, under cover, were almost un- 
touched. Nothing but implicit confidence 
in Bouquet could have inspired this little 
army with the steadiness it displayed. No 



180 THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

one lost composure. Each man knew they 
could not retreat or advance — fight they 
must and fight they surely did. 

Night came, and under cover of the dark- 
ness the wearied soldiers cared for the 
wounded. Placed in the cleared center of 
the circle, a rude wall of sacks of flour 
was built around them. Here, enduring 
agonies of thirst, for not a drop of water 
could be obtained, they lay listening to the 
fiendish yells of the enemy — a poor cure 
for wounds and burning thirst. 

When the necessary arrangements for 
the night had been completed and provision 
made against a night attack, Bouquet, 
doubtful of surviving the morrow's battle, 
wrote to Sir Jeffrey Amherst a brief and 
concise account of the day's fight. His 
report ends with these words : 

* * . . As, in case of another engage- 
ment, I fear insurmountable diflficulties in 
protecting and transporting our provisions, 
being already so much weakened by the 
losses of this day, in men and horses, 
besides the additional necessity of carrying 
the wounded, whose situation is truly 
deplorable." 



MILITARY ROAD TO THE WEST 181 

Even before morning light, the beastly, 
impatient cries of the Indians began to be 
heard on every side, soon accompanied by 
a deadly fire. As on the preceding day 
the return fire had little effect, for the sav- 
ages silently vanished at the gleam of 
leveled bayonets. But at ten o'clock the 
ring remained unbroken though the troops 
were already fatigued and were now crazed 
by torments of thirst, ** more intolerable 
than the enemy's fire." The horses, often 
struck and completely terrified, now broke 
away by scores and madly galloped up and 
down the neighboring hills. The ranks 
were constantly thinning. It was plain to 
all that a decisive and immediate bold 
stroke must be made. 

The commander was equal to the emer- 
gency! The confidence of the foe had 
grown so overbearing that Bouquet deter- 
mined to stake everything upon the very 
recklessness of his enemies. The portion 
of the circle which immediately fronted the 
Indians, and which was composed of light 
infantry, was ordered to feign retreat. As 
this movement was accomplished, a thin 
line of men was thrown across the deserted 



182 THB OLD GLADE ROAD 

position from the sides, drawing in close 
to the convoy. Thinking this to be a 
retreat, which the new line had been sum- 
moned to cover, the Indians, with cutting 
screams, jumped out from every side and 
rushed headlong toward the centre of the 
circle. Then, suddenly upon their rear 
poured the light infantry, which had made 
a marvelous detour through the woods. 
With a frightful bayonet charge and with 
highland yells as piercing as those of the 
Indians, the grenadiers, flushed with vic- 
tory, drove the terrified savages through 
the forests. In the twinkling of an eye the 
outcries of the savages ceased altogether 
and not a living foe remained. Sixty 
Indian corpses lay scattered about the 
camp. Only one captive was taken and he 
was riddled with English bullets. The 
loss of the English amounted to eight 
oflficers and one hundred and fifteen men. 
This was the first English victory over the 
Indians of the central West. Fort Neces- 
sity, Braddock's Field, and Grant's Hill 
were now avenged. It was a late victory 
but was far better late than never. Fort 
Pitt was relieved. 







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MILITARY ROAD TO THE WEST 186 

What Forbes's Road was to Pittsburg 
and the West in the Old French War and 
in Pontiac's Rebellion it was in the Revo- 
lutionary days, 1775-83. For thirty years 
after it was built it was the main highway 
across the mountains. It is impossible to 
estimate the worth of this straight roadway 
to the Ohio; had Forbes followed Brad- 
dock's Road to Fort Pitt, western travel 
ever after would have been at the mercy 
of the two rivers, the Youghiogheny and 
Monongahela, which that road crosses. In 
the winter months it would have been diflS- 
cult, if not impossible, to have kept open 
communication between a line of forts and 
blockhouses on Braddock's Road. This 
was done on Forbes*s Road throughout the 
half century of conflict. 

At the opening of the Revolutionary 
War, the continental war office being at 
Philadelphia, Forbes's Road became more 
strategic than ever in its history. It was 
now known as the " Pennsylvania Road," 
and was the direct route to the military 
center of the West, Fort Pitt. Braddock's 
Road — now known as the ** Virginia 
Road" — was the main route from Vir- 



186 THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

ginia and Maryland. In the dispute 
between Virginia and Pennsylvania for 
the region of which Fort Pitt was the 
center, the two routes thither were the 
avenues of the two contending factions. 
With the drowning of this quarrel in the 
momentous struggle precipitated in 1775, 
Forbes's Road at once became preemi- 
nently important. Cattle and goods were 
frequently sent over Braddock's Road as 
far as Brownsville and forwarded by 
water to Fort Pitt and the American forts 
on the Ohio. But far greater was the 
activity on Forbes's Road. Forts Bedford 
and Ligonier, and a score of fortified 
cabins at such points as Turtle Creek, 
Sewickly, Bullock Pens, Widow Myers, 
Proctors, Brush Run, Reybum's, and Han- 
nastOwn served to guard the main thor- 
oughfare to the Ohio. Between these 
points scouts were continually hurrying, 
and over the narrow roadway passed the 
wagons and pack-horses laden with ammu- 
nition and stores. Hannastown and Ligo- 
nier became the important entrepdts between 
Carlisle and Fort Pitt in the Revolution. 
Carlisle was the important eastern depot 



MILITARY ROAD TO THE WEST 187 

of troops and ammunition from which both 
eastern and western commanders received 
supplies.'"' Garrisons along the Pennsyl- 
vania Road were ordered at the close of the 
war to report at Carlisle for their pay.*® 
Hannastown, thirty miles east of Fort Pitt 
and three miles northeast of the present 
Greensburg, was the first collection of huts 
on the Pennsylvania Road between Bed- 
ford and Pittsburg dignified by the name 
of a town. At the breaking out of the 
Revolution it was the most important set- 
tlement in all Westmoreland County save 
only those about Forts Pitt and Ligonier. 
'* These huts scattered along the narrow 
pack-horse track among the monster trees 
of the ancient forest, was that Hannas- 
town, which occupied such a prominent 
place in the early history of Western 
Pennsylvania where was held the first 
court west of the Alleghany where the 
resolves of May i6, 1775, were passed."^ 
From this rude little cluster of huts on 
Forbes's Road, deep in the Allegheny 

^^ Lincoln to Irvine, July 25, 1782. 

'•/</., Jtine 23. 1783. 

'•Egle's History of Pennsylvania, pp. 11 53, 11 54. 



188 THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

mountains, came one of the first and most 
spirited protests against Britisli tyranny. 
From such sparks the flames of revolution 
were soon fanned. Hannastown '* was 
burned last Saturday afternoon," wrote 
General Irvine to Secretary of War Lin- 
coln, July 1 6, 1782; ** . . that place is 
about thirty-five miles in the rear of Fort 
Pitt, on the main road leading to Phila- 
delphia, generally called the Pennsylvania 
[Forbes's] road. The Virginia [Braddock ' s] 
road is yet open, but how long it will 
continue so is uncertain, as this stroke has 
alarmed the whole country beyond con- 
ception." 

In winter the road was almost impassable ; 
Brodhead wrote Richard Peters: *' The 
great Depth of Snow upon the Alleghany 
and Laurel Hills have prevented our Get- 
ting every kind of Stores, nor do I expect 
to get any now until the latter End of 
April." ^ General Irvine wrote his wife 
January 8, 1782: '* If the road was fit for 
sleighing I could now go down (to Carlisle) 
snugly, but it is quite impracticable ; it is 
barely passable on horseback." Fort Pitt 

^Pennsylvania Archives, vol. viii, p. 120. 



MILITARY ROAD TO THE WEST 189 

was invariably supplied with regular troops 
from Lancaster or Carlisle, which marched 
over the Pennsylvania Road.^ 
^^Brig, Gen, Hazen to Irvine^ September 21, 1782. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE PENNSYLVANIA ROAD 

SUCH had become the importance of the 
Pennsylvania Road that, soon after 
the Revolutionary struggle, Pennsyl- 
vania took active steps to improve it. On 
the twenty-first day of September an act of 
the Assembly of Pennsylvania gave birth 
to the great thoroughfare at first called 
'* The Western Road to Pittsburg," and 
familiarly known since as the Pittsburg or 
the Chambersburg-Pittsburg Pike.®* This 
state road was, as heretofore recorded, one 
hundred and ninety-seven miles in length 
from Carlisle to Pittsburg. The road built 
in 1785-87 follows practically the course of 
the present highway between the same 
points. Here and there the traveler may 

" Colonial Records, vol. xv, pp. 13, 121, 273, 274, 322, 
326-327, 330, 331-337. 346, 359» 431. 5I9» 594, 599. 635; 
vol. xvi, pp. 466-477. 



THE PENNSYLVANIA ROAD 1»1 

see the olden track a few rods distant on 
his right or left; at points it lies several 
miles to the south. The present Pittsburg 
Pike passes through Greensburg, while old 
Hannastown on Forbes's Road lies three 
miles to the northwest. The old route was 
a little less careful as to hills than the 
new, and made a straighter line across the 
country; the telephone companies have 
taken advantage of this and send their 
wires along the easily discerned track of 
the old road at many points. There is no 
point perhaps where the old road of 1785 is 
so plainly to be remarked as on the side of 
the upper end of Long Hollow Run, Napier 
township, Bedford County, a few miles 
west of historic little Bedford.®® 

The Pennsylvania Road and its impor- 
tant branch, the '' Turkey Foot" Road to 
the Youghiogheny, became one of the im- 
portant highways to the Ohio basin in the 
pioneer era. With the digging of the 
Pennsylvania canal up the valley of the 
Juniata, the Pennsylvania Road became 

••Several items of interest to students of Forbes's 
Road will be found in History of the County of West- 
morland^ Pennsylvania^ pp. 28-31, 



192 THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

less important until it became what it is 
today, a merely local thoroughfare. For 
the last two decades in the eighteenth 
century, the Pennsylvania Road held a 
preeminent position — days when a good 
road westward meant everjrthing to the 
West. But the road could never be again 
what it was in the savage days of '58, '63 
and '75-' 82, when it was the one fortified 
route to the Ohio. The need for Forbes's 
Road passed when Forts Loudoun, Bedford, 
Ligonier, and Pitt were demolished. While 
they were standing, the open pathway 
between them meant everjrthing to their 
defenders and to the farmers and woodsmen 
about them. But it meant almost as much 
to the fortresses far beyond in the wilder- 
ness of the Ohio Valley — Forts Mcintosh, 
Patrick Henry, Harmar, Finney, and Wash- 
ington. The vast proportion of stores and 
ammunition for the defenders of the Black 
Forest of the West passed over Forbes's 
Road, and its story is linked more closely 
than we can now realize with the occupation 
and the winning of the West. 

Mr. McMaster has an interesting para- 
graph on Forbes's Road in pioneer days: 



THE PENNSYLVANIA ROAD 193 

* * From Philadelphia ran out a road to what 
was then the far West. Its course after 
leaving the city lay through the counties 
of Chester and Lancaster, then sparsely 
settled, now thick with towns and cities 
and penetrated with innumerable railways, 
and went over the Blue Ridge mountains to 
Shippensburg and the little town of Bed- 
ford. Thence it wound through the beau- 
tiful hills of western Pennsylvania, and 
crossed the Alleghany mountains to the 
head- waters of the Ohio. It was known to 
travelers as the northern route, and was 
declared to be execrable. In reality it was 
merely a passable road, broad and level in 
the lowlands, narrow and dangerous in the 
passes of the mountains, and beset with 
steep declivities. Yet it was the chief 
highway between the Mississippi valley 
and the East, and was constantly travelled 
in the summer months by thousands of 
emigrants to the western country, and by 
long trains of wagons bringing the produce 
of the little farms on the banks of the Ohio 
to the markets of Philadelphia and Balti- 
more. In any other section of the country 
a road so frequented would have been con- 



194 THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

sidered as eminently pleasant and safe. 
But some years later the traveler who was 
forced to make the journey from Philadel- 
phia to Pittsburg in his carriage and four, 
beheld with dread the cloud of dust which 
marked the slow approach of a train of 
wagons. For nothing excited the anger of 
the sturdy teamsters more than thq sight 
of a carriage. To them it was the unmis- 
takable mark of aristocracy, and they were 
indeed in a particularly good humor when 
they suffered the despised vehicle to draw 
up by the road-side without breaking the 
shaft, or taking oflf the wheels, or tumbling 
it over into the ditch. His troubles over, 
the traveler found himself at a small ham- 
let, then known as Pittsburg."^ 

Forbes's Road, strictly speaking, began 
at Bedford, as Braddock's Road began at 
Cumberland. In these pages the main 
route from Philadelphia — the Pennsyl- 
vania Road — has been considered under 
the head of Forbes's Road. The eastern 
extremity of this thoroughfare, or the por- 
tion, sixty -six miles in length, between 

"McMaster*s History of the People of the United 
States, vol. i, pp. 67, 68. 



THE PENNSYLVANIA ROAD 1»6 

Philadelphia and Lancaster, became the 
first macadamized road in the United States 
and demands particular attention in another 
volume of this series.®^ 

Nothing could have been more surprising 
to the writer than to find how remarkably 
this road held its own in competition with 
the Braddock or the Cumberland Road 
south of it. Explain it as you will, nine- 
tenths of the published accounts left by 
travelers of the old journey from Philadel- 
phia, Baltimore, or Washingfton into the 
Ohio Valley describe this Pennsylvania 
route. The Cumberland Road was built 
from Cumberland, Maryland to Wheeling, 
West Virginia, on the Ohio (i 806-181 8) at 
a cost of nearly two million dollars, yet 
during the entire first half of that century 
you will find that almost every important 
writer who passed over the mountains went 
over the Pennsylvania Road. It is exceed- 
ingly difficult to find a graphic picture of a 
journey over Braddock's Road before 1800; 
contemporaneous descriptions of a journey 
over the Cumberland or National Road are 
not numerous. On the other hand a vol- 
^ Historic Highways of America, vol. xi. 



196 THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

ume could be filled with descriptions of the 
old Pennsylvania Road through Bedford 
and Ligonier. I believe the fame of the 
Cumberland Road was due rather to the 
fact of its being a national enterprise — 
and the first of its kind on the continent 
— than to any superiority it achieved over 
competing routes. The idea of the road 
was grand and it played a mighty part in 
the advancement of the West; but, such 
was the nature of its course, that it does 
not seem to have been the * ' popular route ' ' 
from Washingfton to Pittsburg, the principal 
port on the Ohio River. 

The Pennsylvania Road was the most 
important link between New England and 
the Ohio Valley in the days when New 
England was sending the bravest of its sons 
to become the pioneers of the rising empire 
in the West. True, Venable has written: 

** The footsteps of a hundred years 

Have echoed, since o'er Braddock*s Road, 
Bold Putnam and the Pioneers 
Led History the way they strode. 

*• On wild Monongahela's stream 

They launched the Mayflower of the West, 
A perfect state their civic dream, 
A new New World their pilgrim quest. * * 



THE PENNSYLVANIA ROAD IVI 

It is due to the Pennsylvania Road, how- 
ever, to correct the history of these lofty 
strains. Putnam and his pioneers did not 
travel one step on Braddock's Road, nor 
did they launch their boats on wild Monon- 
gahela's stream. They came over the worn 
track of Forbes's Road through Carlisle 
and Bedford, proceeding southwest through 
the *' Glades " to the Youghiogheny River 
at West Newton, Pennsylvania.* 

Braddock's Road would have been ex- 
ceedingly roundabout for New England 
travelers, as Forbes long before clearly 
established. Pennsylvania's new road, 
begun in 1785, was not a tempting route 
of travel for these New Englanders in this 
year, 1788. '* The roads, at that day," 
wrote Dr. Hildreth, ** across the mountains 
were the worst we can imagine — cut into 
deep gullies on one side by mountain rains, 
while the other was filled with blocks of 
sand stone. . . As few of the emigrant 
wagons were provided with lock-chains for 
the wheels, the downward impetus was 

*• Darlington's note in Edes* s /ourna/ and Letters of 
Col. John May, of Boston, p. 31; Dr. S. P. Hildreth: 
Early Immigraiion, p. 124. 



108 THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

checked by a large log, or broken tree top, 
tied with a rope to the back of the wagon 
and dragged along on the ground. In other 
places, the road was so sideling that all the 
men who could be spared were required to 
pull at the side stays, or short ropes attached 
to the upper side of the wagons, to prevent 
their upsetting. . . All this part of the 
country, and as far east as Carlisle, had 
been, about twenty-five years before, 
depopulated by the depredations of the 
Indians. Many of the present inhabitants 
well remembered those days of trial, and 
could not see these helpless women and 
children moving so far away into the wilder- 
ness as Ohio, without expressing their 
fears. . . Three days after . . they 
reached the little village of Bedford. 
During this period they had crossed ** Side- 
ling Hill,*' forded some of the main 
branches of the Juniata, and threaded the 
narrow valleys along its borders. Every 
few miles long strings of pack-horses met 
them on the road, bearing heavy burthens 
of peltry and ginseng, the two main articles 
of export from the regions west of the 
mountains. Others overtook them loaded 



THE PENNSYLVANIA ROAD IW 

with kegs of spirits, salt, and bales of dry 
goods, on their way to the traders in Pitts- 
burg. . . Four miles beyond Bedford, 
the road to the right was called the '* Pitts- 
burg Road," while that to the left was 
called the " Glade Road,'* and led to Sim- 
rel's ferry, on the Yohiogany river. This 
was the route of the emigrants. . ." 

This imperfect glimpse of these *' found- 
ers of Ohio" toiling over the Pennsylvania 
Road in 1788 on their way to Marietta — 
the vanguard of that Ohio Company which 
made possible the *' sublime " Ordinance of 
1787 — is striking proof that this pathway 
was the link between the old and the new 
New England. 

The Pennsylvania Road was also a com- 
mon route from Baltimore and Washingfton ; 
it was Arthur Lee's route to Pittsburg in 
1784,®^ and Col. John May's route from 
Baltimore to Pittsburg in 1788.®® Francis 
Baily, F. R. S., President of the Royal 
Astronomical Society of England, was one 
of the well-known Englishmen who left a 
record of experiences on this pioneer high- 

^'^TAe Olden Time, vol. ii., p. 335. 

^Journal and Letters of Col. John May, p. 30. 



900 THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

way. In 1796 this gentleman started upon 
a tour from Washington to Pittsburg. He 
mentions no other route than the one he 
traversed, and it is altogether probable that 
he pursued the most popular. On October 
7 he left Washington, and, passing through 
Fredericktown, Hagerstown, and Cham- 
bersburg, met the Pennsylvania Road at 
McConnellstown, and traveled westward on 
it to Pittsburg.* That Mr. Baily pursued 
the main route westward there can be no 
doubt. An entry in his Journal for October 
1 1 reads : ' * Chambersburg is . . a large 
and flourishing place, not inferior to Fred- 
erick's- town or Hagar*s-town ; being, like 
them, on the high road to the western 
country, it enjoys all the advantages which 
arise from such a continual body of people 
as are perpetually emigrating thither.** 

The celebrated Morris Birkbeck, founder 
of the English settlement in Illinois, jour- 
neyed from Washington, D. C, to Pittsburg, 
in 18 17, by way of Frederickstown and 
Hagerstown and the Pennsylvania Road. 
At ** McConnell's Town," under the date of 

^^/ournal of a Tour in Unsettled Parts of North 
America^ London 1856, pp. 129-143. 



THE PENNSYLVANIA ROAD 201 

May 23, he wrote in his journal : " The road 
we have been travelling [from Washington, 
D. C] terminates at this place, where it 
strikes the gfreat turnpike from Philadelphia 
to Pittsburg. " ^^ Of the scenes about him 
Mr. Birkbeck writes:®* *' Old America seems 
to be breaking up, and moving westward. 
We are seldom out of sight, as we travel 
on this grand track, towards the Ohio, of 
family groups. . . To give an idea of 
the internal movements of this vast hive, 
about 12,000 wagons passed between Balti- 
more and Philadelphia, in the last year, 
with from four to six, carrying from thirty- 
five to forty cwt. The cost of carriage is 
about seven dollars per cwt., from Phila- 
delphia to Pittsburg, and the money paid 
for the conveyance of goods on this road, 
exceeds jf 300,000 sterling. Add to these 
the numerous stages loaded to the utmost, 
and the innumerable travellers, on horse- 
back, on foot, and in light waggons, and 
you have before you a scene of bustle and 
business, extending over a space of three 

^Notes on a Journey in America^ 3d edition, 1818, 
p. 30. 
M/flf., pp. 31, 36. 



90S THE OLD 6LADB ROAD 

hundred miles, which is truly wonderful." 
Birkbeck does not mention the Cumberland 
Road, though it is drawn on the map 
accompanying his book. His advice to 
prospective immigrants is, in every in- 
stance, to come westward by the Pennsyl- 
vania Road." 

W. Faux, the English farmer who came 
to America to examine Birkbeck's scheme 
went westward by Braddock*s (Cumberland) 
Road."* He returned to the East, however, 
by the Pennsylvania Road. In examining 
the works of a score of English travelers 
this was the only one I happened to find 
who had gone westward over the Cumber- 
land Road. Later travelers, as Charles 
Augustus Murray, Martineau, and Dickens 
passed westward over the Pennsylvania 
Canal and incline railway. 

No sooner did this northern canal route 
and railway rob the Pennsylvania and 
Cumberland roads of much business, than 
the Baltimore and Ohio Railway, in turn, 
took it away from the canal. The building 

^Letters from Illinois (London 1818), pp. 52, 77; 
Additional Extracts, p. iii. 

^Memorable Days in America (London 1823), p. 164. 



THE PENNSYLVANIA ROAD 908 

of the railway was one of the epoch-making 
events in our national history; *' I consider 
this among the most important acts of my 
life," afl&rmed the venerable Charles Car- 
roll, the Maryland commissioner for the 
railway, " second only to my signing the 
Declaration of Independence, if even it be 
second to that."** 

For a number of years the Baltimore and 
Ohio Railway — the heir and assign of 
Braddock's Road and the famed Cumber- 
land Road — was the great avenue of west- 
em movement and progress. But brain 
and muscle, even genius, cannot make two 
miles one mile. The shortest route across 
the continent was, inevitably, to become 
the important highway. It must be 
remembered that in the early days Phila- 
delphia was the metropolis of America, and 
Baltimore its chief rival. As long as these 
cities held the balance of power and trade, 
a southerly route to Pittsburg, such as that 
of Braddock's Road, then the Cumberland 
Road and, finally, the Baltimore and Ohio 
Railway would be successful. But with 

^History and Description of the Baltimore and Ohio 
Railroad, 1853, p. so. 



SOI THE OLD GLADE ROAD 

the vast strides made by New York, the 
center of power stole northward until no 
route to the Ohio could compete with the 
most direct westward line from New York 
and Philadelphia. 

The question then became the same old- 
time problem which Forbes met and 
decided. The straightest possible line of 
communication between Philadelphia and 
Pittsburg was equally necessary in i860 
and in 1760. The only difference was that 
made necessary by the doing away with 
the heavy grades of pioneer roads and 
following the water courses. 

The result was the Pennsylvania Rail- 
road — and its motto is full of significance, 
* * Look at the Map. ' * There is to be found 
the secret of its splendid success. The 
distance from Philadelphia to Pittsburg on 
the Baltimore and Ohio Railway (Connells- 
ville route) is four hundred and thirty-eight 
miles. The distance between Philadelphia 
and Pittsburg on the Pennsylvania Railroad 
is three hundred and fifty- four miles — a 
saving of eighty-four miles. These rail- 
ways do not follow the old highway routes 
closely but they mark their general align- 



THE PENNSYLVANIA ROAD 206 

ment and are frequently close beside them. 
"Look at the map" was practically 
Forbes's challenge to those who disputed 
his judgment a century and a half ago 
when he determined to build a straight 
road from the heart of the colonies to 
the strategic key of the Ohio Valley. His 
wisdom has been triumphantly confirmed 
in the present generation. 



JUl- 



STANFORD UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
Stanford, California 



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