“The extra expense incident to the service from the necessity (and propriety, as it relates to public economy,) of employing men not provided for by law will, it is hoped, be recognized and provision made for the payment of that and similar expenses, when in future it may be indispensably incurred.
“The commissioners having engaged in a service in which their zeal did not permit them to calculate the difference between their pay and the expense to which the service subjected them, cannot suppose it the wish or intention of the government to accept of their services for a mere indemnification of their expense of subsistence, which will be very much the case under the present allowance; they, therefore, allow themselves to hope and expect that measures will be taken to provide such further compensation as may, under all circumstances, be thought neither profuse nor parsimonious.
“The painful anxiety manifested by the inhabitants of the district explored, and their general desire to know the route determined on, suggested the measure of promulgation, which, after some deliberation, was agreed on by way of circular letter, which has been forwarded to those persons to whom precaution was useful, and afterward sent to one of the presses in that quarter for publication, in the form of the document No. 3, which accompanies this report.
“All which is, with due deference, submitted.
Eli Williams,
Thomas Moore,
Joseph Kerr.
December 30, 1806.”
Starting from Cumberland the general alignment of Braddock’s Road was pursued, until the point was reached where the old thoroughfare left the old portage trail, on the summit of Laurel Hill. The course was then laid straight toward Brownsville (Redstone Old Fort) probably along the general alignment of the old Indian portage path, and an earlier road. From Brownsville to Washington was an old road, possibly the course of the Indian trail.
As has already been suggested, there was a dispute concerning the point where the road would touch the Ohio River. The rivalry was most intense between Wheeling and Steubenville. Wheeling won through the influence of Henry Clay, to whom a monument was erected at a later date near the town on the old road. The commissioners rendered a second report on the fifteenth of January, 1808 as follows:
“The undersigned, commissioners appointed under the law of the United States, entitled ‘An act to regulate the laying out and making a road from Cumberland, in the State of Maryland, to the State of Ohio,’ in addition to the communications heretofore made, beg leave further to report to the President of the United States, that, by the delay of the answer of the Legislature of Pennsylvania to the application for permission to pass the road through that state, the commissioners could not proceed to the business of the road in the spring before vegetation had so far advanced as to render the work of exploring and surveying difficult and tedious, from which circumstance it was postponed till the last autumn, when the business was again resumed. That, in obedience to the special instructions given them, the route heretofore reported has been so changed as to pass through Uniontown, and that they have completed the location, gradation, and marking of the route from Cumberland to Brownsville, Bridgeport, and the Monongahela river, agreeably to a plat of the courses, distances and grades in which is described the marks and monuments by which the route is designated, and which is herewith exhibited; that by this plat and measurement it will appear (when compared with the road now traveled) there is a saving of four miles of distance between Cumberland and Brownsville on the new route.