[79] On file in the Department of Interior Affairs is a “Map and Profile for a slackwater navigation along the Monongahela River from the Virginia Line to Pittsburg as examined in 1828 by Edward F. Gay, Engineer,” which shows Braddock’s Upper Riffle at the mouth of Crooked Run, and Braddock’s Lower Riffle at the mouth of Turtle Creek.
[80] G. E. F. Gray, chief clerk of the Edgar Thomson Steel Works at Braddock, Pa., wrote to me under date of December 9, 1908, that their chief engineer, Sydney Dillon, had already done some preliminary work toward locating the original banks of Turtle Creek and of the Monongahela River, and toward fixing the place of Frazer’s Cabin and of the road through Braddock. The steel works are located on a part of the battlefield, along the river.
On February 11, 1909, Mr. Dillon communicated to me the results of his labors based on a study of the ground in connection with the two maps made by Patrick Mackellar, Braddock’s chief engineer (Parkman, Montcalm and Wolfe, 1905, I. op. 214-215), supplemented by the plan in Winsor’s Narrative and Critical History of America, V. 449, and by the Carnegie McCandless Company’s property map of 1873. This is by far the most able and careful study of the battlefield that has been made in modern times. Mr. Dillon’s plans enable one to follow the course of the road through the battlefield, and to form an idea of the action with a distinctness that has not been possible heretofore. In order to comprehend the nature of the fight, however, and to understand the conditions that made Braddock’s defeat almost inevitable, one must see the field for himself.
[81] On the two plans of the battlefield drawn by Patrick Mackellar, see Parkman, Montcalm and Wolfe (1905), I. 229, n. 1.
[82] See maps, ibid., op. 214-215, and in Sargent’s Expedition against Fort Du Quesne, op. 219.
[83] Hyacinth Mary Liénard de Beaujeu.
[84] If the course of the road as thus indicated be correct, then the thickest of the fight would have been east of the Pennsylvania Railroad between Thirteenth and Sixth Streets, the location of the Hollow Way and of Frazer’s Run respectively. The writer was told that when the Pennsylvania Railroad built its roadbed through the battlefield it unearthed a great number of human skeletons, a circumstance which, if true, would seem to confirm his conclusion as to the ground on which the principal fighting took place. Mr. Dillon seems to think that the Hollow Way was between Ann and Verona Streets, and that the farthest point reached by Braddock’s party was across the ravine near Corey Avenue. Another view is that the course of the road never extended above or east of the Pennsylvania Railroad, but stopped a few rods short of it in the Robinson burying-ground.
| Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber: |
|---|
| Gwynn’s Six Mile Houe=> Gwynn’s Six Mile House {pg 8 n.} |
| National turnpke=> National turnpike {pg 18 n.} |
| Crooked run=> Crooked Run {pg 35 n.} |