There is a substantial lesson in this for us who today profess heartfelt desires and intensities of purpose. Ahead of these men lay months of winter, severe enough in the settled communities but far more to be feared in the hazardous wilderness of the Alleghany Mountains. Travel by foot, for 800 miles with a plodding ox team for part of their baggage, over the roughest of roads and uncharted trails, and across swollen streams was to be their lot. So severe was the risk that no women could accompany the party. During the trip and at its end possible Indian attacks endangered them. Such was their prospect which they faced cheerfully, unflinchingly and enthusiastically.
PIONEER PARTY
Drawn by Betty Kimmell, Vincennes, Ind.
The company of 48 men was divided into two parties. The boat builders and their assistants, 22 in number, met at Cutler’s home in Ipswich, Massachusetts, on December 3, 1787. Cutler not only helped to fashion the government for the Ohio Company of Associates; he also provided for their migration a wagon covered with black canvas and lettered with his own handwriting “For the Ohio Country.” At dawn the men paraded to hear an address from Cutler, fired three volleys with their rifles, and went to Danvers, Massachusetts, where Major Haffield White assumed command. With their plodding ox team they took a route south and then southwest over stage coach roads, mountain trails, or cutting their own path as they went, to the old Glade Road westward through Pennsylvania. After a toilsome journey, they reached Sumrill’s Ferry on the Youghiogheny River 30 miles southeast of Pittsburgh on January 23, nearly eight weeks after leaving home. At this place (now West Newton, Pa.) they started to build boats in readiness for the arrival of the other party.
Putnam assembled the second party of 26 surveyors and assistants at Hartford, Connecticut, on January 1, 1788. But business at the war office in New York required him to send the party ahead under the leadership of Colonel Ebenezer Sproat and rejoin them at Swatara Creek between present Harrisburg and Lebanon, Pennsylvania. When Putnam arrived, progress was delayed because the ice on the creeks would not support wagons. With the courage and energy developed by long military service, Putnam set the men to work cutting an opening so that the stream could be forded. During the day spent in cutting ice a heavy snow blocked the roads and made travel difficult. At Cooper’s Tavern near the foot of Tuscarora Mountain the snow was so deep that they were forced to abandon their wagons and build sledges to carry baggage and tools. The horses were then hitched to the sledges in single file, and the men walked ahead to break a path. After two weeks of this slow travel, they arrived at Sumrill’s Ferry on February 14.
PIONEER SETTLERS BUILDING ADVENTURE GALLEY ON THE YOUGHIOGHENY
On account of the severe cold and deep snow little progress had been made by White’s men in building boats; but with the arrival of the superintendent and more laborers the work went ahead rapidly under the direction of Jonathan Devol, a ship builder. The largest boat was a galley constructed of heavy timber to deflect bullets and covered with a deck-roof high enough for a man to walk upright under the beams. It was 50 feet long and 13 feet wide with an estimated carrying capacity of 21 tons, although, as Putnam records it, it was of green timber and its real capacity, therefore, uncertain. The Adventure Galley is the name commonly ascribed to this boat, although as an afterthought some called it the American Mayflower. Rufus Putnam in his diary written at the time calls it “Union Galley.” Since one boat would not transport the 48 men with their horses, tools, baggage, and food to support them until their crops matured, a large flatboat, 28’ x 8’, and three canoes were also constructed. It will be interesting to know something of what these “canoes” were like. They were not the hollowed-out log Indian canoes, nor were they of birch bark. Putnam describes them as of two tons, one ton, and 800 pounds burthen, respectively.
The popular small boat of the Ohio River, large enough to carry more than would the log canoe, was called a pirogue. It was a log canoe split in half lengthwise and with a wide flat section inserted between the two halves. This made a substantial and safer boat, with greatly increased carrying capacity, yet easy to handle, and, of course, easy for the pioneers to build with the primitive materials at hand.