In Col. Preston’s MS. Register of Indian Depredations, in the Wisconsin Historical Society’s library, it is stated that Robert Foyle, wife and five children, were killed on the Monongahela in 1754. Gov. Dinwiddie, in his speech to the Virginia house of burgesses in February, 1754, refers to this barbarous affair, giving the same number of the family destroyed; and the gazettes of that period state that Robert Foyle, together with his wife and five children, the youngest about ten years of age, were killed at the head of the Monongahela; their bodies, scalped, were discovered February 4th, and were supposed to have been killed about two months before.––L. C. D.
In 1750, the Ohio Company, as a base of operations and supplies, built a fortified warehouse at Will’s Creek (now Cumberland, Md.), on the upper waters of the Potomac. Col. Thomas Cresap, an energetic frontiersman, and one of the principal agents of the Company, was directed to blaze a pack-horse trail over the Laurel Hills to the Monongahela. He employed as his guide an Indian named Nemacolin, whose camp was at the mouth of Dunlap Creek (site of the present Brownsville, Pa.), an affluent of the Monongahela. Nemacolin pointed out an old Indian trace which had its origin, doubtless, in an over-mountain buffalo trail; and this, widened a little by Cresap, was at first known as Nemacolin’s Path. It led through Little Meadows and Great Meadows––open marshes grown to grass, and useful for feeding traders’ and explorers’ horses. Washington traveled this path in 1753, when he went to warn the French at Fort Le Bœuf. Again, but widened somewhat, it was his highway in 1754, as far north as Gist’s plantation; and at Great Meadows he built Fort Necessity, where he was defeated. Braddock followed it in great part, in 1755, and henceforth it became known as “Braddock’s Road.” The present National Road from Cumberland to Brownsville, via Uniontown, differs in direction but little from Nemacolin’s Path. For a map of Braddock’s Road, see Lowdermilk’s History of Cumberland, Md., p. 140, with description on pages 51, 52, 140-148. Ellis’s History of Fayette Co., Pa., also has valuable data.
The terminus of Nemacolin’s Path was Dunlap’s Creek (Brownsville). A mile-and-a-quarter below Dunlap’s, enters Redstone Creek, and the name “Redstone” became affixed to the entire region hereabout, although “Monongahela” was sometimes used to indicate the panhandle between the Monongahela and the Youghiogheny. In 1752, the Ohio Company built a temporary warehouse at the mouth of Dunlap’s Creek, at the end of the over-mountain trail. In 1754, Washington’s advance party (Capt. Trent) built a log fort, called “The Hangard,” at the mouth of the Redstone, but this was, later in the year, destroyed by the French officer De Villiers. In 1759, Colonel Burd, as one of the features of Forbes’s campaign against Fort Duquesne, erected Fort Burd at the mouth of Dunlap’s, which was a better site. This fort was garrisoned as late as the Dunmore War (1774), but was probably abandoned soon after the Revolutionary War. The name “Redstone Old Fort” became attached to the place, because within the present limits of Brownsville were found by the earliest comers, and can still be traced, extensive earthworks of the mound-building era.––R. G. T.
Cross Creek empties into the Ohio through Mingo Bottom (site of Mingo Junction, O.). On this bottom was, for many years, a considerable Mingo village.––R. G. T.
This statement, that Capt. Audley Paul commanded at Redstone, and of his attempting to intercept a foraging Indian party, can not possibly be true. There was no fort, and consequently no garrison, at Redstone in 1758. It was not built ’till 1759, and then by Col. James Burd, of the Pennsylvania forces. James L. Bowman, a native of Brownsville, the locality of Redstone Old Fort, wrote a sketch of the history of that place, which appeared in the American Pioneer in February, 1843, in which he says: “We have seen it stated in a creditable work, that the fort was built by Capt. Paul––doubtless an error, as the Journal of Col. Burd is ample evidence to settle that matter.” Col. Burd records in his Journal: “Ordered, in Aug. 1759, to march with two hundred of my battalion to the mouth of Redstone Creek, to cut a road to that place, and to erect a fort.” He adds: “When I had cut the road, and finished the fort,” etc.
The other part of the story, about Capt. John Gibson commanding at Fort Pitt in “the fall of 1758,” is equally erroneous, as Gen. Forbes did not possess himself of Fort Duquesne till Nov. 25th, 1758, within five days of the conclusion of “fall” in that year; and Gen. Forbes commanded there in person until he left for Philadelphia, Dec. 3d following. There is, moreover, no evidence that Gibson was then in service. The story of his decapitating Kis-ke-pi-la, or the Little Eagle, if there was such a person, or of his beheading any other Indian, is not at all probable. He was an Indian trader for many years, and was made prisoner by the Indians in 1763, and detained a long time in captivity.