THE OLD PIKE.
A HISTORY OF
THE NATIONAL ROAD,
WITH
INCIDENTS, ACCIDENTS, AND ANECDOTES
THEREON.
ILLUSTRATED.
BY
THOMAS B. SEARIGHT.
UNIONTOWN, PA:
PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR.
1894.
Copyright, 1894, by T. B. Searight.
PRESSES OF
M. CULLATON & CO.,
RICHMOND, IND.
LETTER FROM JAMES G. BLAINE.
Stanwood, Bar Harbor, Maine.September 8th, 1892. }
Hon. T. B. Searight,
Uniontown, Pa.
My Dear Friend:—
I have received the sketches of the “Old Pike” regularly and have as regularly read them, some of them more than once, especially where you come near the Monongahela on either side of it, and thus strike the land of my birth and boyhood. I could trace you all the way to Washington, at Malden, at Centreville, at Billy Greenfield’s in Beallsville, at Hillsboro (Billy Robinson was a familiar name), at Dutch Charley Miller’s, at Ward’s, at Pancake, and so on—familiar names, forever endeared to my memory. I cherish the desire of riding over the “Old Pike” with you, but I am afraid we shall contemplate it as a scheme never to be realized.
Very sincerely,
Your friend,
JAMES G. BLAINE.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I. PAGES Inception of the Road—Author’s Motive in Writing its History—No History of the Appian Way—A Popular Error Corrected—Henry Clay, Andrew Stewart, T. M. T. McKennan, General Beeson, Lewis Steenrod and Daniel Sturgeon—Their Services in Behalf of the Road, etc., etc. 13-19 CHAPTER II. Origin of the Fund for Making the Road—Acts for the Admission of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Missouri, etc., etc. 20-24 CHAPTER III. The Act of Congress Authorizing the Laying Out and Making of the Road 25-27 CHAPTER IV. Special Message of President Jefferson—Communicating to Congress the First Report of the Commissioners—Uniontown left out, etc. 28-35 CHAPTER V. Pennsylvania grants Permission to make the Road through her Territory—Uniontown Restored, Gist left Out, and Washington, Pennsylvania, made a Point—Heights of Mountains and Hills—On to Brownsville and Wheeling, etc., etc. 36-40 CHAPTER VI. Albert Gallatin, Secretary of the Treasury, called upon for Information Respecting the Fund Applicable to the Roads mentioned in the Ohio Admission Act—His Responses 41-43 CHAPTER VII. The Life of the Road Threatened by the Spectre of a Constitutional Cavil—President Monroe Vetoes a Bill for its Preservation and Repair—General Jackson has Misgivings—Hon. Andrew Stewart Comes to the Rescue 44-51 CHAPTER VIII. State Authority Prevails—The Road Surrendered by Congress—The Erection of Toll Gates Authorized— Commissioners Appointed by the States to Receive the Road, etc., etc. 52-56 CHAPTER IX. Plan of Repairs—The Macadam System Adopted—Mr. Stockton offers his services—Captain Delafield made Superintendent, etc., etc. 57-63 CHAPTER X. Lieut. Mansfield superseded by Capt. Delafield—The Turning of Wills Mountain, etc., etc. 64-76 CHAPTER XI. On with the Work—Wooden Bridges Proposed for the New Location up Wills Creek and Braddock’s Run—The War Department holds that Wooden Superstructures would be a Substantial Compliance with the Maryland Law—Cumberland to Frostburg, etc. 77-86 CHAPTER XII. Gen. Lewis Cass, Secretary of War, Transmits a Report—More about the Wooden Bridges for the New Location near Cumberland, etc. 87-94 CHAPTER XIII. The Iron Bridge over Dunlap’s Creek at Brownsville 95-99ILLUSTRATIONS.
T. B. Searight Frontispiece Old Mile Post 5 Stage House and Stables at Mt. Washington 13 Gen. Henry W. Beeson 15 Hon. Daniel Sturgeon 16 Hon. Andrew Stewart 47 Old Toll House 53 Iron Bridge over Dunlap’s Creek 95 Hon. T. M. T. McKennan 107STAGE HOUSE AND STABLES AT MT. WASHINGTON.
THE OLD PIKE.
CHAPTER I.
Inception of the Road—Author’s Motive in Writing its History—No History of the Appian Way—A Popular Error Corrected—Henry Clay, Andrew Stewart, T. M. T. McKennan, Gen. Beeson, Lewis Steenrod and Daniel Sturgeon—Their Services in Behalf of the Road—Braddock’s Road—Business and Grandeur of the Road—Old and Odd Names—Taverns—No Beer on the Road—Definition of Turnpike—An Old Legal Battle.
The road which forms the subject of this volume, is the only highway of its kind ever wholly constructed by the government of the United States. When Congress first met after the achievement of Independence and the adoption of the Federal Constitution, the lack of good roads was much commented upon by our statesmen and citizens generally, and various schemes suggested to meet the manifest want. But, it was not until the year 1806, when Jefferson was President, that the proposition for a National Road took practical shape. The first step, as will hereinafter be seen, was the appointment of commissioners to lay out the road, with an appropriation of money to meet the consequent expense. The author of this work was born and reared on the line of the road, and has spent his whole life amid scenes connected with it. He saw it in the zenith of its glory, and with emotions of sadness witnessed its decline. It was a highway at once so grand and imposing, an artery so largely instrumental in promoting the early growth and development of our country’s wonderful resources, so influential in strengthening the bonds of the American Union, and at the same time so replete with important events and interesting incidents, that the writer of these pages has long cherished a hope that some capable hand would write its history and collect and preserve its legends, and no one having come forward to perform the task, he has ventured upon it himself, with unaffected diffidence and a full knowledge of his inability to do justice to the subject.
It is not a little singular that no connected history of the renowned Appian Way can be found in our libraries. Glimpses of its existence and importance are seen in the New Testament and in some old volumes of classic lore, but an accurate and complete history of its inception, purpose, construction and development, with the incidents, accidents and anecdotes, which of necessity were connected with it, seems never to have been written. This should not be said of the great National Road of the United States of America. The Appian Way has been called the Queen of Roads. We claim for our National highway that it was the King of Roads.
Tradition, cheerfully acquiesced in by popular thought, attributes to Henry Clay the conception of the National Road, but this seems to be error. The Hon. Andrew Stewart, in a speech delivered in Congress, January 27th, 1829, asserted that “Mr. Gallatin was the very first man that ever suggested the plan for making the Cumberland Road.” As this assertion was allowed to go unchallenged, it must be accepted as true, however strongly and strangely it conflicts with the popular belief before stated. The reader will bear in mind that the National Road and the Cumberland Road are one and the same. The road as constructed by authority of Congress, begins at the city of Cumberland, in the State of Maryland, and this is the origin of the name Cumberland Road. All the acts of Congress and of the legislatures of the States through which the road passes, and they are numerous, refer to it as the Cumberland Road. The connecting link between Cumberland and the city of Baltimore is a road much older than the Cumberland Road, constructed and owned by associations of individuals, and the two together constitute the National Road.
While it appears from the authority quoted that Henry Clay was not the planner of the National Road, he was undoubtedly its ablest and most conspicuous champion. In Mallory’s Life of Clay it is stated that “he advocated the policy of carrying forward the construction of the Cumberland Road as rapidly as possible,” and with what earnestness, continues his biographer, “we may learn from his own language, declaring that he had to beg, entreat and supplicate Congress, session after session, to grant the necessary appropriations to complete the road.” Mr. Clay said, “I have myself toiled until my powers have been exhausted and prostrated to prevail on you to make the grant.” No wonder Mr. Clay was a popular favorite along the whole line of the road. At a public dinner tendered him by the mechanics of Wheeling, he spoke of “the great interest the road had awakened in his breast, and expressed an ardent desire that it might be prosecuted to a speedy completion.” Among other things he said that “a few years since he and his family had employed the whole or greater part of a day in traveling the distance of about nine miles from Uniontown to Freeman’s,[A] on Laurel Hill, which now, since the construction of the road over the mountains, could be accomplished, together with seventy more in the same time,” and that “the road was so important to the maintenance of our Union that he would not consent to give it up to the keeping of the several States through which it passed.”