The news of Braddock’s defeat came slowly to the cutters of this historic roadway from central Pennsylvania to the Youghiogheny. On Tuesday night, July 15, a messenger was sent to them from Fort Cumberland, who arrived the night of the day the above letter was written.[38] Dunbar wrote Morris from “near ye great Crossings” on the sixteenth: “I have sent an Express to Captain Hogg, who is covering the People cutting Your New Road, as I can’t think his advancing that Way safe, to retire immediately.”[39] Burd reported to Morris from Shippensburg July 25, that his party had retreated to Fort Cumberland from the top of Allegheny Mountain July 17; “St Clair told Me,” he added, tentatively, “that I had done my Duty.” He had left before Dunbar’s messenger had arrived.[40]
Such is the first chapter of the story of the white man’s occupation of the Old Trading Path and the Old Glade Road—the name commonly applied to the portion which Burd opened from the main path from where it diverged four miles west of Bedford to the summit of Allegheny Mountain. This branch was also known as the “Turkey Foot Road.”[41] The Old Trading Path was now a white man’s road from Carlisle to Bedford and four miles beyond. But the tide of war now set over the mountains after Braddock’s defeat, putting an end to any improvement of the new rough road that was opened. Yet not all the ground gained was to be lost. Governor Shirley, now in command, wildly ordered Dunbar to move westward again to retrieve Braddock’s mistakes, but sanely added, that, in the case of defeat “You are to make the most proper Disposition of his Majesties’ Forces to cover the Frontiers of the Provinces, particularly at the Towns of Shippensburg and Carlisle, and at or near a place called McDowell’s Mill, where the New Road to the Allegheny Mountains begins in Pennsylvania, from the Incursions of the Enemy until you shall receive further orders.”[42]
Was this a hint that Braddock had been sent by a wrong route and that his successor would march to Fort Duquesne over the Old Trading Path?
CHAPTER II
A BLOOD-RED FRONTIER
There is no truer picture of the dark days of 1755-56 along the frontiers of Pennsylvania and Virginia than that presented in the correspondence of Washington at this time. A great burden fell upon his young shoulders with the failure of the campaigns of 1755. Though far from being at fault, he suffered greatly through the faults and failures of others. The British army had come and had been routed. Now, after such a victory as the Indians had never dreamed possible, the Virginia and Pennsylvania frontiers, five hundred miles in length, lay helpless before the bands of bold marauders drunk with the blood of Braddock’s slain.
The young colonel of the remnant of the Virginia Regiment took up the difficult task of defending the southern frontier as readily as though a quiet, happy life on his rich farms was an alternative as impossible as alluring. But perhaps a bleeding border-land never in the world needed a twenty-three year old lad more than Virginia now needed her young son. A flood-tide of murder and pillage swept over the Alleghenies. The raids of the savages brought the people to their senses, as the most terrible of tales came in from the frontier. But soon the question arose, “Where is the frontier?” The great track Braddock had opened for the conquest of the Ohio valley became the pathway of his conquerors, and soon Fort Cumberland, the frontier post, was far in the enemies’ country. The Indians soon found Burd’s road on the summit of the Alleghenies and poured over it by Raystown toward Carlisle and Shippensburg. Each day brought the line of settlements nearer and nearer the populous portions of Virginia and Pennsylvania, until Winchester became an endangered outpost and fears were entertained for Lancaster and York. Hundreds now who had refused the despairing Braddock horses and wagons saw their wives and children murdered and their homesteads burned to the ground.
Whether Dunbar did right or wrong in hurrying back to Virginia, it was a bitter day for Virginia and Pennsylvania. When his army hastened from the frontier, it became the prey of the foes whose appetite that army had whetted. Yet Shirley, reconsidering his former scheme, ordered Dunbar to New York. After drawing the full fire of the French and Indians upon Virginia and Pennsylvania, this army was sent to New York.