[8] Orme Journal, 315; see also Thomas Balch, Letters and Papers relating to the Provincial History of Pennsylvania, 34-35.
[9] See Burd Papers (Mss.) in the library of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. At the time of Braddock’s defeat this Pennsylvania road was completed to the summit of the Alleghany mountain, some 20 miles beyond Raystown, now Bedford, Pa. (see Pennsylvania Colonial Records, VI. 484-485). In 1758 General Forbes constructed a road (now commonly known as the Forbes Road) from Bedford to Fort Duquesne. This route runs about parallel to the Braddock Road, though many miles north of it.
[10] Hulbert, Historic Highways, II. 89-91. In 1753 the Ohio Company had opened up this path or trail at great expense; and in 1754 Washington had repaired the road as far west as Gist’s Plantation (Mt. Washington). See Washington, Writings (Sparks ed.), II. 51.
[11] Orme Journal, 323-324.
[12] The construction of the Cumberland Road was authorized by an act of Congress, approved March 29, 1806, and entitled “An Act to regulate the laying out and making a Road from Cumberland, in the State of Maryland, to the State of Ohio” (United States, Statutes at Large, II. 357). By the provisions of the act the President was required to appoint, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, three discreet and disinterested citizens to constitute a board of commissioners to lay out the road. The men selected were Thomas Moore and Eli Williams of Maryland, and Joseph Kerr of Ohio.
In their second report, under date of January 15, 1808, the commissioners show that the new road followed only a very small portion of the Braddock Road. “The law,” runs the document, “requiring the commissioners to report those parts of the route as are laid on the old road, as well as those on new grounds, and to state those parts which require the most immediate attention and amelioration, the probable expense of making the same passable in the most difficult parts, and through the whole distance, they have to state that, from the crooked and hilly course of the road now traveled, the new route could not be made to occupy any part of it (except an intersection on Wills Mountain [Sandy Gap], another at Jesse Tomlinson’s [Little Meadows], and a third near Big Youghioghana [Somerfield], embracing not a mile of distance in the whole) without unnecessary sacrifices of distance and expense” (Executive Document, 10 Cong., 1 sess., Feb. 19, 1808, 8 pp.).
On November 11, 1834, the new road through the Narrows was opened for travel, the citizens of Cumberland, Frostburg, and the vicinity celebrating the occasion in an enthusiastic and elaborate manner (Lowdermilk, History of Cumberland, 336).
[13] This was formerly the building of the Mount Nebo School for Young Ladies.
[14] This point of intersection may be further verified by reference to the first report (of December 30, 1806) made by the commissioners who laid out the Cumberland Road: “From a stone at the corner of lot No. 1, in Cumberland, near the confluence of Wills Creek and the north branch of Potomac River, thence extending along the street westwardly to cross the hill lying between Cumberland and Gwynn’s Six Mile House, at the gap where Braddock’s Road passes it” (Executive Document, 9 Cong., 2 sess., Jan. 31, 1807, 16 pp.).
[15] It probably follows the turnpike here in order to avoid a very deep hollow. This conclusion of the writer is confirmed by the resurvey of Pleasant Valley patented to Evan Gwynne on October 5, 1795, which calls for “a water oak standing above the three springs that break out in Braddock’s Road” (Deed from Evan Gwynne to Joseph Everstein, May 27, 1834, recorded in Liber R, folios 95-96, in the office of the clerk of Alleghany County, at Cumberland, Maryland). These springs are a few rods west of James H. Percy’s tenant house, which is on the old Cumberland Road.