It may be due to a lack of antiquarian enthusiasm on the part of the present writer, but he is strongly of the opinion that our historical societies are losing an invaluable amount of information and data by not seizing the advantage of the advice of pioneers’ sons who are now living concerning the location of historic sites; not a little money is being expended here and there on archæological research which would produce exactly as fruitful returns a generation from now as it does today. The stone pipes and hammers will be found in as good condition in 1925 as 1903 but there are a hundred important sites that can never be marked correctly after a score of men now over seventy years of age have passed away. At a recent centennial celebration on the site of one of the most important forts in the entire West the old fortress was reconstructed with life-like accuracy under scholarly direction. It was necessary, however, because of inundations of the neighboring river, to draw in one of the bastions. It will not be many years before the entire topography of that site will be altered by the same destructive force, unless it is stayed, and when the second centennial of the day when Mad Anthony Wayne unfurled his flag in the face of the British from the walls of Fort Defiance is celebrated, there is a question whether the site of that fort will be above or below the river’s tide.
A pig-sty at Fort Recovery, Ohio, marks the Fort Recovery angle of the famous Greenville Treaty line. Underneath the pen lies the stone which marks the angle and the site of that historic fort and, consequently, St. Clair’s battle-ground. The line runs twenty-one miles westward to the pillar raised on Loramie Creek, the historic site of the old French trading post in 40° 16´ north latitude 7° 15´´ west longitude; at the other angle on the Muskingum River the site of Fort Laurens is also a matter of record. In this way, it is true, many points of interest have a definite location but this is true in only a few cases. The writer, recently returning from a tour through Illinois on George Rogers Clark’s old route to the conquest of Vincennes took his notes at once to Madison, Wisconsin to revise them from the correspondence carried on by Lyman C. Draper, a generation ago, with the oldest residents of Illinois concerning Clark’s route. The remarkable contrast between testimony obtainable now and that secured a generation ago could not have been more strikingly impressive. Indecision, indefiniteness, inaccuracy grow more and more pronounced as the days draw by and an actual experience such as this compels one interested in our country’s development to cry out against permitting more time to be lost.
Pennsylvania has set a good example in forwarding a minute study of her frontier forts, two large volumes having been published by that state on the subject. There are signs that there is an awakening interest in definitely locating and marking historic sites. It need not be an expensive work. It is certainly an important one. And the courses of the important carrying places should be early considered.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] For an account of the portages in the dry season on the Scioto see Historic Highways of America, vol. ii, pp. 55-60.
[2] The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents, vol. xxxvii, pp. 211-213.
[3] Id., pp. 65-67.
[4] Id., vol. xlix, pp. 47-49.
[5] Id., pp. 261-263.