[ See page 105, note 19 ]...

The first chapter of this volume presents an introduction to the two volumes of this series devoted to Pioneer Roads and Experiences of Travelers. The evolution of American highways from Indian trail to macadamized road is described; the Lancaster Turnpike, the first macadamized road in the United States, being taken as typical of roads of the latter sort. An experience of a noted traveler, Francis Baily, the eminent British astronomer, is presented in chapter two. The third chapter is devoted t

We have considered in this series of monographs the opening of a number of Historic Roads and the part they played in the development of the most important phases of early American history. But our attitude has been that of one asking, Why?—we have not at proper length considered all that would be contained in the question, How? It will be greatly to our purpose now to inquire into the methods of road-making, and outline, briefly, the evolution of the first trodden paths to the great highways of

The following chapter is from Francis Baily’s volume, A Journal of a Tour in Unsettled Parts of North America . It is an account of a journey in 1796 from Philadelphia to Pittsburg over the Pennsylvania road treated of in Volume V of this series. Francis Baily was an English scientist of very great reputation. It is to be doubted whether there is another account of a journey as far west as Mr. Baily’s record takes us (Cincinnati, Ohio) written at so early a date by an equally famous foreign scho

In the study of the Ohio River as a highway of immigration and commerce it was emphasized that in earliest pioneer days the ascent of the river was a serious and difficult problem. This was true, indeed, not on the Ohio alone, but on almost every river of importance in the United States. Of course brawny arms could force a canoe through flood-tides and rapids; but, as a general proposition, the floods of winter, with ice floating fast amid-stream and clinging in ragged blocks and floes along the

The following interesting and vivid picture of early travel in Kentucky is taken from Judge James Hall’s Legends of the West (Philadelphia, 1832); though largely a work of fiction, such descriptions as these are as lifelike as the original picture.   The place at which the party landed was a small village on the bank of the [Ohio] river, distant about fifty miles from a settlement in the interior to which they were destined. “Here we are on dry land once more,” said the Englishman as he jumped a

THE ARTHUR H. CLARK COMPANY CLEVELAND, OHIO 1904 COPYRIGHT, 1904 BY The Arthur H. Clark Company ALL RIGHTS RESERVED...

This volume is devoted to two great lines of pioneer movement, one through northern Virginia and the other through central New York. In the former case the Old Northwestern Turnpike is the key to the situation, and in the latter the famous Genesee Road, running westward from Utica, was of momentous importance. A chapter is given to the Northwestern Turnpike, showing the movement which demanded a highway, and the legislative history which created it. Then follow two chapters of travelers’ experie

We have treated of three historic highways in this series of monographs which found a way through the Appalachian uplift into the Mississippi Basin—Braddock’s, Forbes’s, and Boone’s roads and their successors. There were other means of access into that region. One, of which particular mention is to be made in this volume, dodged the mountains and ran around to the lakes by way of the Mohawk River and the Genesee country. Various minor routes passed westward from the heads of the Susquehanna—one

Thomas Wallcutt of Massachusetts served through the Revolutionary War as hospital steward and received in payment therefor one share in the Ohio Company. [21] He went out to Marietta in 1790, and returned eastward by the half-known Virginia route. His Journal [22] forms an interesting chapter of travel on American pioneer roads: “Monday, 8 March, 1790. [23]   Pleasant, clear, cold, and high winds. We were up before sunrise, and got some hot breakfast, coffee and toast; and Captain Prince, Mr. Mo

A yellow letter, almost in tatters, lies before me written by one Samuel Allen to his father, Mr. Jason Allen of Montville, New London County, Connecticut, from Bellville, Virginia, [28] November 15, 1796. Bellville is in Wood County, West Virginia, eighteen miles by the Ohio River from Parkersburg. This letter, describing a journey from Alexandria and Cumberland to the Ohio by way of “broadaggs [Braddock’s] old road,” gives a picture of certain of the more pathetic phases of the typical emigran

The military importance of the Mohawk Valley and strategic portage at Rome, New York, was emphasized in our study of Portage Paths. [31] Throughout the French and Indian War and the Revolutionary struggle the water route to the Hudson from Lake Ontario, by way of the Onondaga, Lake Oneida, Wood Creek, and the Mohawk, was of great moment. But only because it was a route—a thoroughfare; not because the territory through which it coursed was largely occupied or of tremendous value. The French held

Among the many records of travelers on the famous Genesee Road, that of Timothy Bigelow, as given in his Journal of a Tour to Niagara Falls in the Year 1805 , [40] approaches perhaps most nearly to the character of a description of the old highway which should be presented here: “July 14th. We proceeded [from Albany] to Schenectady to breakfast, fifteen miles, Beale’s tavern; a good house. A new turnpike is making from Albany to this place; it is constructed in a very durable manner, with a pave

So few writers have paid any attention to the influence of roads in the development of our country that it is a great pleasure to find in Francis Whiting Halsey’s The Old New York Frontier , [41] a chapter on the old Catskill Turnpike; through the kindness of the author it is possible to present here this story of that strategic highway of old New York: “Before the Revolutionary War something of a road had been cut through the woods from Otsego Lake southward along the Susquehanna, and other pri

Some of the most interesting descriptions of pioneer traveling are from the racy pages of Charles Dickens’s American Notes , a volume well known to every reader. No description of early traveling in America would be complete, however, without including a number of these extremely witty, and, in some instances, extremely pathetic descriptions of conditions that obtained in Virginia and Ohio in Dickens’s day. The following description of a negro driver’s manipulation of reins, horses, and passenge