Perhaps it would be better if I begin this story by telling you how we got here, for the journey was not only long, but tiresome, and made at the cost of much labor. But yet it seems best to set down all within my knowledge concerning those men who first came out, meaning the party which left Danvers in Massachusetts, and that which started from Hartford in Connecticut.
All that I know about Major White's company during the march is that they came over what is called the old Military Road, across Pennsylvania, until they arrived at the Youghiogheny River, which they crossed, and then went into winter quarters at Sumrill's Ferry.
There they set about building a flatboat, which they called the Mayflower, making her forty-six feet long and twelve feet wide, with a roof deck and a sharp bow, to be propelled by either sails or oars; they built also a smaller flatboat and several canoes.
THE ARRIVAL OF GENERAL PUTNAM
It was while they were building this fleet that General Putnam's party joined them, and on the first day of April the new Mayflower, together with the smaller craft, began the voyage down the Ohio, arriving opposite Fort Harmar on the seventh day of April. There were forty-eight men on board the vessels: four surveyors with twenty-two others to attend them, six boat builders, four carpenters, one blacksmith, and eleven so-called common hands.
I myself have heard General Putnam say that when his company arrived at Swatara Creek it was frozen over, but not sufficiently hard to bear the weight of the wagon, and they spent one entire day cutting a passage through the ice. Then, later, he says so great was the quantity of snow as to block up the roads, and when they got as far as Cooper's, at the foot of the Tuscarora mountains, they found old snow twelve inches deep. Nothing save pack horses had passed over it, therefore it was necessary to build sleds and harness the animals one before the other, with the men marching in front to break out the roads, and thus they continued until arriving at the Youghiogheny, as I have already said.