Done at the City of Washington, this seventh day of March, A. D. 1891, and of the Independence of the United States the one hundred and fifteenth.
JAMES G. BLAINE.
[CHAPTER IV.]
Special Message of President Jefferson—Communicating to Congress the First Report of the Commissioners—They View the Whole Ground—Solicitude of the Inhabitants—Points Considered—Cumberland the First Point Located—Uniontown Left Out—Improvement of the Youghiogheny—Distances—Connellsville a Promising Town—“A Well Formed, Stone Capped Road”—Estimated Cost, $6,000 per Mile, exclusive of Bridges.
No. 220.
NINTH CONGRESS—SECOND SESSION.
January 31, 1807.
To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States:
In execution of the act of the last session of Congress, entitled, “An act to regulate the laying out and making a road from Cumberland, in the State of Maryland, to the State of Ohio,” I appointed Thomas Moore, of Maryland, Joseph Kerr, of Ohio, and Eli Williams, of Maryland, commissioners to lay out the said road, and to perform the other duties assigned to them by the act. The progress which they made in the execution of the work, during the last season, will appear in their report now communicated to Congress; on the receipt of it, I took measures to obtain consent for making the road of the States of Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia, through which the commissioners propose to lay it out. I have received acts of the Legislatures of Maryland and Virginia, giving the consent desired; that of Pennsylvania has the subject still under consideration, as is supposed. Until I receive full consent to a free choice of route through the whole distance, I have thought it safest neither to accept nor reject, finally, the partial report of the commissioners.
Some matters suggested in the report belong exclusively to the legislature.