History of the County of Westmoreland, Pennsylvania, with Biographical Sketches of Many of its Pioneers and Prominent Men, Part 45

Author: George Dallas Albert, editor
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USA > Pennsylvania > Westmoreland County > History of the County of Westmoreland, Pennsylvania, with Biographical Sketches of Many of its Pioneers and Prominent Men > Part 45

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It should be remembered that Braddock in 1755 did not follow the In- dian path or the road cut by Washington on it the whole length of his route. He left it to the right before he crossed Jacobs Creek, although afterwards the whole lower mal both the part Braddock opened to the place of divergence and the, from there on to Redstone, which was, as we said, opened by Col. B rd in 1759, was commonly known as Brad- dock's road.

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sage of the cannon and heavy army-wagons, but the undergrowth of the forest spontaneously springing up, and the wash of the mountains, with their periodical floods, choked the ravines with débris, and left at re- curring intervals large bodies of logs and stones in the road-beds. With the exception of these two main roads, the first passage-ways were not made for heeled vehicles. The first vehicles were those used, at times apart, by the government. The common roads, so called, were single narrow paths under the foliage of the trees, with the heavier and lower limbs lopped off, and the stumps left standing, around which the path turned. For many years the great roads were in a barely passable condition, and all of them so much later than 1775. Bouquet, in 1764, had to leave his wagons and heavy baggage at Ligonier on account of the state of the road, and in 1774 Dun- more's army for the same reason had to transport their war materials to the frontier of Western Virginia on horses and mules. One of the first petitions presented to the court in April, 1773, was from the inhabitants

along the Gicat . cad, who represented that, from the fallen timber and the deep morasses, the road was almost impassable, and they prayed the court to ap- point viewers to report ; and at several successive ses- sions viewers were appointed and rates laid. Among other petitions in the matter of roads was one by the inhabitants of Springhill township, west of the Mo- nongahela, for a road from opposite the mouth of Fish-Pot Run (half-way between Ten-Mile and Red- stone) to the forks of Dunlap's path and Gen. Brad- dock's road on the top of Laurel Hill. In the next year the inhabitants of Tyrone, Menallen, and Spring- hill asked for a road from near Redstone Old Fort to Henry Beeson's mill (Uniontown), and thence to intersect Braddock's road near the forks of Dunlap's road and said road on the top of Laurel Hill ; giving as a reason that " We, who at present live on the west side of the Monongahela, are obliged frequently to carry our corn twenty miles to the mill of Henry Beeson, near Laurel Hill, and in all probability at some seasons of the year will ever have to do so."

From the difficulty of making roads in a new country, and one whose surface was so unfavorable, and from the few people there were to make them, it was not possible that good roads could be made and kept in repair. The rates and the labor were not adequate to make them anything like passable from early in the fall to late in the spring. There was no ballast in the bottom of the roads, and movable tim- ber washed in the widening ruts. In the winter they were deep with mire. There were no culverts, and nothing like a respectable bridge. A corduroy affair was thrown over marshy and open places, but all the large streams were forded. There were no fences along the road, but the deep forest came up to the very verge, and the traveler not unfrequently saw crossing his path before him a wild cat with her kit- tens or a bear with her cubs. In the warmth of

spring rank vegetation covered the road-bed in the lower bottoms. Before wagoning, and even after wagons were in use on it, the old road was worse than the worst roads in the mountains now which have been temporarily made to get out bark and ties.

In this stage of the public roads travel by vehicle was to a great extent, of course, unknown. Vehicles did not come into general use till after the State road was made in 1785, although as early as 1782 there was complaint that the old road was not fit for wagon travel. But you may say that wagons were not used till villages had sprung up all along it, and till the

country justified the necessity. All travel for both busi- ness and pleasure was on horseback, and this method, for its conveniency and speed, remained a favorite method long after it had ceased to be the only one. As the chief part of the carrying trade was accomplished by the same means, the superintending of such trans- portation became a business. And making allowance for the limited amount of merchandise which could be so transported, it was, withal, we may judge, a profitable business. We are told that about 1784 the rates for carrying from Philadelphia and Baltimore to Pittsburgh was forty-five shillings per hundred- weight. In 1786 the price of carriage to Philadelphia was sixpence per pound. In 1796 it is marked at the same. In the relative value of money we may then say that in round numbers it would cost now at such rates from twelve to fifteen dollars to carry a barrel of flour the length of the Pennsylvania Rail- roud.1

These packers went and came in trains. A train consisted of from five to ten, and even more, horses tethered by a hitching-rope one behind the other. Sometimes the horses were so well trained that they followed the leader alone. The master of the train rode before or behind the horses, and directed their movements by his voice. A train could travel fifteen or twenty miles day by day, and each horse could probably carry two hundred-weight.' The furniture

1 The charge for hauling when wagons first went over the southern route from Hagerstown to Brownsville was three dollars a hundred weight, or sixty dollars a ton.

" The operations on the lakes during the war of 1812 called attention again to the cost of transportation, and in 1818 the House directed the Secretaries of War and of the Treasury to report at the next session a list of the internal improvements in progress, and j.lans for alding them by appropriations. In the discussion upon this motion it was stated that the expense for the transportation of each barrel of flour to Detroit was not less than sixty dollars, while for every pound of ammunition and other material it was not less than fifty cents."-Hazard's Register. ? Hear what Pistol shoots off:

" Shall pack-horses, And hollow pampered jades of Asia, Which cannot go but thirty miles a day, Compare with Caesars, and with Cannibals, And Trojan Greeks?"

King Henry IV., Second Part, Act II., Scene 4. (The thirty miles were the rouds of England.)

At June sessions, 1785, appears the following record :

" May 30, 1785, Received of George Hixon & Philip Bradly six pounds for Breaking Sunday by following their ordinary employment of driving

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of the horse was a pack-saddle and a halter ; and the lead horse had in addition a circling band of iron over his withers from the sides of the saddle, to which were hung the jingling bells, whose interminable tink- ling relieved in a'kind of way the monotony of the long journeys and kept the other horses from going astray, and called the young tow-heads with their mother to the door of the cabin when they came within hearing.

The pack-saddle then in use was such a piece of workmanship as any man used to handling ordi- nary tools could with a little ingenuity and applica- tion make. To describe it minutely in the interest of those who have never seen one of those caparisons of a past age: it was made of four pieces of wood, two of these being notched limbs; the crotches fit along the horse's back, the front part resting upon the horse's withers ; the other two were flat pieces, about the length and breadth of a lap-shingle, say eighteen inches by five, and were to extend along the sides fastened to the ends of the notched pieces. It thus bore some resemblance to a cavalry saddle. The making of pack-saddles was a regular business, and very early there was a saddle-tree maker in Pittsburgh and one at Greensburg. A veritable pack-saddle is now almost as great a curiosity as Mambrino's helmet would be.

When these saddles were used for riding, stirrups were fastened to the sides, and the saddle was held to the horse by a rope, or girth, extending clean around. Pieces of cloth and worn-out blankets were habitu- ally put under the saddle to keep it from chafing the skin. Upon these saddles were packed in divers shapes by curious arrangement all kinds of general mer- chandise. Bars of iron bent in the middle were hung across, large creels of wicker-work contained babies, bed-clothes, and farming tools; and kegs of powder, caddies of domestic spice, bags of salt, rolls of calico, sacks of charcoal, and boxes of glass were thus fetched across the mountains for the use of the settlers, and pelts and roots and whiskey, when whiskey was manu- factured, were sent in return. Shop-keepers from the West went down to Philadelphia and Baltimore in

pack-horses through Hannas Town on Sunday loaded, for the use of the poor. "£6. 0. 0. " MIC'H HUFFNAGLE."

(N. B. The presumption is violent, that it was the fine that was for the " use of the poor," not the load upon the pack-horses.)

Wecannot resist the opportunity to recall the quaint words of Smollett, who has better preserved the customs of Great Britain in his novels than in his history :

"There is no such convenience as a waggon in this countrey, and my finances were too weak to support the expense of hireing a horse; I de- termined, therefore, to set out with the carriers, who transport goods from one place to another on horseback, and this scheme I accordingly put in execution on the first day of September, 1739, sitting upon a pack- saddle between two baskets, one of which contained my goods in a knap- sack. But by the time we arrived at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, I was so fatigued with the tediousness of the carriage, and benumbed with the coldness of the weather, that I resolved to travel the rest of the journey on foot rather than proceed in such a disagreeable manner."-The Adven- tures of Roderick Random, chap. vill.

squads of six, ten, or a dozen to lay in their yearly stock of goods. Members of the Assembly and mem- bers of Congress, agents, and militia officers thus traveled to the seat of government. Young men went a-courting on expeditions as dangerous as young Lochinvar's, and on such a saddle as graced the back of Petruchio's steed when he went to wed with the Shrew, or with accoutrements similar to those of Sancho Panza's placid and meek Dapple. Ordin- arily riding-saddles were but pack-saddles covered with a leather covering.

William Findley, our member of Congress from 1791, with some intermission, down to 1817, per- formed his journey to the seat of government on a horse which he used for the greater part of his long term. For a couple of weeks before his departure his family were busy preparing his wardrobe and ar- ranging his outfit. Lawyers and judges passed from one county-seat to another on such saddles covered with a tow or worn-out blanket decoration, which answered for housing, cushion, and flap. The change of apparel and the money in silver specie were stowed in the ends of the saddle-bags, or rolled into a wallet and tied behind the furniture of the horse.

This mode of travel continued until the State, taking the management of public roads in hand, com- pletely revolutionized travel and traffic. For it was only when the roads, then bad in comparison with what they are now, but good as to what they had been before, it was only in their improved condition that wagon and stage conveyance completely altered the facilities for transportation, and made intercourse be- tween the East and West safer and easier, and better adapted to the growing needs.

CHAPTER XXXV.

TURNPIKES-CONESTOGA WAGONS-PIONEER INNS.

The State assists in making Roads-The Old Pennsylvania State Road- Its Course through the County-The Villages built along it-Cones- toga Wagons and Hacks-First Load of Merchandise hauled across the Mountains-How long they were in bringing it-Cost of carrying -First Mails from Pittsburgh East and West-How Papers and the Mails were delivered-First Carringes and Carioles-The Pleasure of Traveling in these Contrivances-The Felgar Road-The Jones' Mill Road-The Harrisburg and Pittsburgh Turnpike Company incor- porated-The Northern Turnpike-The State appropriates Money to the Southern Route-Progress of the Undertaking-Its completion- Public-Houses-Their Great Number along the Turnpikes and in the Villages-They become Famous in their way-The Old Class of Inn- keepers-The Good Cheer and the Solid Comforts they offered Trav- elers-Homer gives some Hints as to their Signs-The Sceptre de- parted from Isracl-Regrets of a Certain Class that Railroads have ever been built.

Up to the time of the burning of Hannastown, 1782, many roads had been made through Westmore- land. At almost . . Quarter Sessions petitions for new roads were PEpronted and others passed on. A

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list of these is inserted in the notes.' These roads were, of course, for the convenience of different neighborhoods, and one or two influential men could have a road from their plantation or ferry to run to some mill, to the county town, or to one of the rivers. Some two prominent points were made the termini, and one of these points was usually Col. So-and-so's house. Perhaps of all the most needful requirements ! and authorized the president in Council to appoint in this line was the necessity of getting a shorter commissioners to lay it out. The road was to be made in as straight and direct a manner as the circum- stances would admit, to be of the breadth of sixty route to a mill when those were few, and when to go and return was the journey of a day. But outside of these local roads there were some roads supported by feet, and was to remain, for all intents and purposes, the State highway between these designated points." The Council had the power to direct reviews and to finally determine the course and direction of the road. This road being surveyed and partly laid out, was confirmed in Council on the 24th of November, 1787.

the county rates which were used for general traffic. We think that the road which in part became the old State road was in some places used previous to its authorization by the act of Assembly, and is the road mentioned in old papers as the road " south of the Main Road." The Forbes road .was, however, still the chief road, and remained so for some years later. There were some houses in what was afterwards Greensburg before the State road was located.

1 Petitions for roads and returns, etc., commencing at January term, 1789, and ending at September sessions, 1796, taken from the Minute Book, Common Pleas, from 1775 to 1804 :

Index for Return of Roads.

Return of a rosa from Patrick Cowan's past Hughes' old place," March 7, 1789.

Return from Greensburg to the north of Puckety.

4 Kelly's Wording to Greensburg.

J. Miller's to Sloan's Mill, thence to Greensburg.

44 A. Sharp's to the Frankstown Road.

Owens' Mill to James Stewart's.

Peterson's to Castner's Ferry.

Greensburg to Simerel's Ferry ( West Newton). Gallagher's Ford to Greensburg.

Laurel Hill to Lovinguire's Mill.

Elder's to Crooked Creek.

3 Saw-Mill Run to John Wright's (private).

C. Hauk's to J. Silvace's.

Iron-Works t to Pittsburgh road.

J. Macklin's to intercept Archibald road.

Boaring Run to Denniston's Mill.

1 Greensburg to Jacobs Creek, opposite J. Mason's.

Hays' Ferry to Budd's road.

8 Middle Gap to George Arnfredt's.

Campbell's Mill to intersect Elder's road at Thomas Ander- SOD'Y.

= Craig's Mill to Greensburg.

= Denniston's road to Shoemaker's Mill.

Trom Greensburg to the Broad Fordiug.

= William Todd's to Denniston's Mill.

Lochrey's to Asa Cook's.

3 Newport to Philip Freeman's.

. Miracle's Mill to intersect the road to Washington.

Old Place to Old Pennsylvania Road.

Congruity Meeting-House to Poke Run Meeting-House.

= Light's Lane to Hays' Ferry.

Greensburg to Old Town on the Kiskiminetas River.

The return of a road from Crooked Creek to Col. Charles Campbell's mill on Blacklick was headed " To the Worshipful Bench at Greens- burg." June 20, 1789.

Another Petition is for a road " beginning at a 'May-pole,' in the centre of Greensburg." April Session, 1789.

In another petition Greensburg is styled the " Metropolis."

On the 25th of September, 1785, the Assembly passed the act which made the old State road, the road which so long monopolized the through travel, and which in its turn gave way to the chartered turnpike. This act appropriated two thousand dollars of the public money to lay out and make a highway from the western part of Cumberland County to Pittsburgh,

The part so confirmed was from the Widow Miller's spring, in Cumberland County, through Shippensburg to Bedford, but a review was ordered of that part from Bedford to Pittsburgh. By a resolution of the General Assembly of the 21st November, 1788, the executive was authorized to draw the amount of the expenses to be incurred in making the review, and by an order of the Council of the 14th March, 1789, the surveyors were appointed, who, on the 26th of May, 1790, presented their report.

The wants of the West demanded the road, and where it came along the current of the new emigration from the Eastern and Middle States to the new terri- tories drifted along its sides. Most of the villages which became business towns of the turnpike were started at a tavern stand along the old road. The most noticeable change, however, as the effect of new emigration, was that after the settlement of the troubles arising from the Whiskey Insurrection.

As cities are usually built on large rivers, so towns and villages naturally spring up along highways, whether turnpike roads, canals, or railroads. The courses of this road being very nearly identical with the turnpike, it is known with tolerable precision to most. It entered the county on the east over Laurel Hill beyond the village of Laughlinstown, and pass- ing through the villages, as we have them now, of Ligonier, Youngstown, Greensburg, Adamsburg, and south of Irwin, passed out of the county at Turtle Creek. None of these places of the old road age had any pretension to the name of town except Greens- burg. The rest were collections of from half a dozen to a score of log-cabin houses.

It was on this road that pack-horses, strong wagons, and mail-hacks first ran with anything like regularity. We cannot note the change as we would desire, but, thanks to some one who anticipated the curiosity of the coming race, there has been preserved some in- formation which, although not expressly throwing

* This road began at Cowan's house, on Budd ruad, and passed Ne- hemiah Stokely's. Width of all these roads to be twenty-five feet. t Turnbull & Marmie's works on Jacobs Creek.

" The old Forbes road was sometimes called the King's highway.

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light upon our road, will partly explain the state of travel. Such an innovation was considered worthy to be remembered. For although there were in 1785 five stores in Pittsburgh, and a couple in Brownsville, yet the merchandise was still brought from the East in the usual way by packers. The first load of mer- chandise unloaded at Brownsville from a wagon which had been loaded beyond the mountains was the event which, with good judgment, has been thought worthy of historical notice; an event, by the way, more worthy to be commemorated than hun- dreds of other events which go to make up the early histories.

John Hayden, the wagoner, brought out a load of about two thousand pounds' weight, with four horses from Hagerstown, for Jacob Bowman, merchant. The distance ,was one hundred and forty miles, and the teamster was nearly a month on the way. The route was the Braddock road. This was in 1789. At this time the Northern or Forbes road was described as being in some places so steep that great boughs of trees had to be tied as drags to the wagons, which acted on the principle of the rudder to a ship.

Until some time after the Revolution all correspond- ence was carried on by express-riders or by casual travelers. About 1786, Mr. James Brison was ordered by the authorities at New York to establish a post from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh, and from Winchester to Bedford. In July, 1784, a project had been started by private subscription for a post-rider, but the pro- ject fell through.

The next mail spoken of from Pittsburgh was from there to Fort Limestone and Fort Washington, Cin- cinnati. This was in July, 1794, when a line of steamboats was established to run from Limestone to Wheeling and back once every three weeks. From Wheeling to Pittsburgh it was to be carried on horse- back. The men on the boats were armed with mus- Lets.

In the Greensburg and Indiana Register of Nov. 12, 1812, the information is given that a post-route had lately been established from Bedford to Greensburg. The post left Greensburg every Saturday morning, passed through Youngstown, Laughlinstown, and Stoystown, and arrived at Bedford on Sunday evening. Subscribers on that route then were first served with their papers by mail. To that time and much later the paper off the authorized mail-route was carried to designated points at the expense of the subscribers, and from these points distributed around.

It is said that the first of the old-fashioned carriages used on our side of the mountains was one belonging to Col. Morgan, the agent appointed by Congress for Indian affairs. This must have been in the early part of the Revolution. He brought his family out in it, and for years the remembrance of it was vivid among the members of the Chartiers congregation. The honor of having first crossed the mountains in a carriage is, however, contested by Dr. Schoepf in

the memorandum he has left of a visit to Pittsburgh. This Dr. Schoepf was a physician and naturalist, and having been employed as surgeon to the German troops in America, he remained in the country some two years after the war was over. He has left an in- teresting account of this visit in his travels, published at Erlangen in 1788, and since translated into Eng- lish.

He came to Pittsburgh in 1783, and on arriving in the town his vehicle was the. chief object of interest to the "many well-dressed gentlemen and highly- adorned ladies" whom he encountered at the tavern.1 He says that as his " karriol" drove past lonely houses in the wilderness, its appearance created intense ex- citement, mothers showing their children something they had never seen before. And ask any of your oldest citizens who is native to the county, and he will tell that he recollects when there were only two or three carriages to be seen at the largest congrega- tions at church, and when a dead body was carried to the burying-ground in a four-horse wagon, not for ceremony, but of necessity, which became formal.

The wagons and hacks, called mail-wagons, used on these roads were clumsy structures to those used on the later turnpike. Every part of it had to be built on the principle of the wonderful " one-hoes shay," each part the strongest. The tires on the wheels were at first put on in pieces of about the length of a felloe, and the bed rested on huge square bolsters. Indeed, nothing else could have stood the roughness and the jolting. The old road in the valleys ran over swamps and marshes ; in the mountains over logs, stumps, and rocks, along the sides of the hills, and up and down the walls of precipitous ravines. Sometimes the wheels would fall perpendicularly two to three feet over a rock; again they would swing sideways over the washed-out shale more than fifty yards down a precipitous hill. From the fall to the spring the roads did not have any bottom. In some of the cuts there was not room enough for two wagons to pass each other, then sometimes there was a fight. At other places the driver or the wagoner had to walk on the bank above his team, so narrow was the passage-way. Sticking in the mud was a common amusement. A wagoner had often to spend three nights, one after the other, at the same house, being no nearer it after a day's drive than he was to the next house towards which he journeyed. So bad were the roads frequently that old persons recollect of teams having to be stabled while making the ascent of the "hogback," upon which Greensburg is built, then a miry, narrow way, now known as West Otto- man Street, but which in the first days of the town was far worse than most of the township roads now.

On this road from Philadelphia and the East came those trains of emigrants who proceeded westward to the newly-opened Territories in their own convey-

Supporto was they s tavern

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ances, and with their arrangements previously made to establish little colonies. Land speculators and business men also made an important element in the travel at this time.

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History of the County of Westmoreland, Pennsylvania, with Biographical Sketches of Many of its Pioneers and Prominent Men, Part 45

Author: George Dallas Albert, editor Publication date: Publisher: Number of Pages:

Author: George Dallas Albert, editor
Publication date:
Publisher:
Number of Pages: