Watch Yourself Go By

by Al. G. Field

Market Street, Brownsville

Strange as it may seem, though many excellent histories have been written, there is none extant that has given any full and adequate description of Brownsville's early days and people—quaint, curious, serious, humorous, wise and otherwise—good people all.

Brownsville was the most important town on that "Modern Appian Way," the National Road, or pike, extending from Baltimore, Maryland, to the Ohio River, and lengthened beyond, in after years, to Cincinnati and Richmond, Indiana.

Brownsville was founded soon after this country gained its independence, although it had been an established frontier post long before known as Red Stone Old Fort. It was the center of the Whiskey Insurrection, during which George Washington gained his first military experience in the West, experience that would have saved Braddock's defeat and death, had he taken Washington's advice, and might have changed the entire history of this nation. But that England should control the American colonies is but repeating history.

England is the only country in the world that has successfully colonized her foreign possessions. Therefore, Brownsville was founded, and mostly settled, by the English, and to this day her foremost citizens are Englishmen. This statement of facts does not detract from the estimable qualities of the Low Dutch who have drifted in from Bedford and Somerset Counties.

Brownsville outputs—"Monongahela Rye Whiskey" and Chattland's crackers are world-famous food essentials.

Brownsville was at the head of navigation on the Monongahela River in the palmy days of the old "pike."

Unlike the Appian Way, of which there is no connected history but only glimpses of it in the Bible, the old "pike" is embalmed in history, in poem and prose. It commemorates an epoch in history as fascinating as any recorded. A highway so important, so largely instrumental in the country's early greatness and development that it strengthened the ties between the states and their peoples. Its legends so numerous, its incidents so exciting that their chronicles read like fiction.

Brownsville grew and prospered while the old "pike" was at the height of its greatness. It was here the travellers from the East or the West either embarked or disembarked from the river steamers or the overland stage coach.