[ The depression on the right is the ancient track of Braddock’s Road; near the single cluster of gnarled apple trees in the meadow beyond, Braddock died and was first buried ]...

The French were invariably defeated by the British on this continent because the latter overcame natural obstacles which the former blindly trusted as insurmountable. The French made a league with the Alleghenies—and Washington and Braddock and Forbes conquered the Alleghenies; the French, later, blindly trusted the crags at Louisbourg and Quebec—and the dauntless Wolfe, in both instances, accomplished the seemingly impossible. The building of Braddock’s Road in 1755 across the Alleghenies was t

If Providence had reversed the decree which allowed Frenchmen to settle the St. Lawrence and Englishmen the middle Atlantic seaboard, and, instead, had brought Englishmen to Quebec and Frenchmen to Jamestown, it is sure that the English conquest of the American continent would not have cost the time and blood it did. The Appalachian mountain system proved a tremendous handicap to Saxon conquest. True, there were waterways inland, the Connecticut, Hudson, Delaware, James, and Potomac rivers, but

Governor Dinwiddie’s zeal had increased in inverse ratio to the success of Virginian arms. After Washington’s repulse at Fort Necessity he redoubled his energies, incited by a letter received from one of Washington’s hostages at Fort Duquesne. Colonel Innes was appointed to command the Virginia troops and superintend the erection of Fort Cumberland, while Washington was ordered to fill up his depleted companies by enlistments and to move out again to Fort Cumberland. Indeed it was only by object

What it was that proved to be “extraordinary in the way of the Service” General Braddock soon discovered, and it is a fair question whether, despite all that has been written concerning his unfitness for his position, another man with one iota less “spirit” than Braddock could have done half that Braddock did. The Colonies were still quite asleep to their danger; the year before, Governor Dinwiddie had been at his wits’ end to raise in Virginia a few score men for Fry and Washington, and had at

One of the most interesting documents relative to Braddock’s expedition is a Journal kept by one of the thirty seamen sent with Braddock by Commodore Keppel. The original manuscript was presented by Colonel Macbean to the Royal Artillery Library, Woolwich, and is first published here. An expanded version of this document was published in Winthrop Sargent’s History of Braddock’s Expedition , entitled “The Morris Journal”—so called because it was in the possession of the Rev. Francis-Orpen Morris,

Sir Peter Halket moved out from Fort Cumberland on June 7 with a brigade comprising the 44th Regiment, two Independent Companies of New York, two companies of Virginia Rangers, one of Maryland Rangers, a total of nine hundred and eighty-four men, six hundred woodchoppers under Sir John St. Clair having been sent forward to widen and improve Washington’s road. The next day but one Colonel Thomas Dunbar marched away with another brigade comprising the 48th Regiment, a company of carpenters, three

The clearest insight into the days when Braddock’s Road was built, and the most vivid pictures of the country through which it wound its course, are given in certain letters of a British officer who accompanied Braddock. No treatise on Braddock’s expedition could be in any measure complete without reproducing this amusing, interesting, yet pitiful testimony to the difficulties experienced by these first English officers to enter the backwoods of America. This is given in a volume entitled Extrac

Several months ago we received from that indefatigable delver in the early annals of our country, Jared Sparks, Esq., of Salem, Massachusetts, a letter containing some valuable information as to the route of General Braddock after leaving Gist’s farm, not far from where Connelsville now stands. That letter we, for reasons which it is unnecessary to mention, have withheld from publication; but those reasons no longer existing, we now publish it—premising only a few introductory remarks. Mr. Spark

The narrow swath of a road cut through the darkling Alleghenies by General Braddock has been worth all it cost in time and treasure. Throughout the latter half of the eighteenth century it was one of the main thoroughfares into the Ohio valley, and when, at the dawning of the nineteenth, the United States built our first and greatest public highway, the general alignment of Braddock’s Road between Cumberland and the last range of the Alleghenies—Laurel Hill—was the course pursued. In certain loc