Shepherdstown register. [volume] (Shepherdstown, Va. [W. Va.]) 1849-1955, 1910-04-21

grave VI HSdl LuiAlSidof EaPiA -
1901
Just two hundred years ago. in ITO,
Alexander Spottswood came to the colo
ny OF Virginia as its Governor. He very
much pleased the Virginians by bringing
with him the great writ of habeas corpus,
and more delighted them in the year l7l6
by leading an expedition to the summit OF
the long ridge of blue mountains that sep
arated civilization from the savage tribes
that dwelt beyond.
The picturesque cavalcade left Will
liamsburg in August, and soon struck the
Indian trail, made by the buffalo trotting
along the upper waters of the Rappahan-
mock to find his way into the great, but
then unknown, valley beyond the rocky
pass that we now call "Swift Run Gap"
Panthers glided along il, wolves lurked
beside it, the fox and the lynx knew it,
and another creature, with the instinct OF
all these animals added to an acute human
intelligence, found his way by it from the
settlements of the whites to the ever west
ward moving wigwam. The Shawnee
had at this time enSconced himself in the
great valley between the "Blue Ridge,
and the "Laurel Hills" or the "Allegha-
nies," and seemed reaching out his right
hand to the English aggreSSor as If to say
FAREWELL" and his left in Supplication
to the French explorer who had already
penetrated the great Ohio Valley. Spots
woods gay cavaliers, followed by pack
horses and servants, rangers, pioneers,
and Indians" as the Chronicer tells us,
went along this highway, Laughing, Jest
ing, and regaling themselves with Viz
ginia wine, white and red, Irish Usque-
baugh, brandy, shrub, two kinds OF rum,
champagne, canary, cherry punch, and
cider"
In due time they reached the Gap, and
from the summit of the mountains looked
over into the home of the Cherokee In
dians. Here they drank to the health OF
the King, and named the neighboring
peaks, the one Mt. George, for the King,
and the other, Mt Alexander, for the
Governor. They descended to the rivers
brink, and named the river "EuphrateS, "
and on its bank they buried bottle, en-
closing a paper, which declared that the
land belonged to their King. Upon their
return to Williamsburg, SpottSwood sent
TO London and had made for his compan-
ions little golden horSe-ShoeS set with
Jewels, bearing the inscription, "Sic juvat
transcendere montes," and thus establish
ed the order OF the knights OF the Gold
en- Horseshoe. :"
Four years later Spottsylvania county
was marked out, and its western limit
rested on the bank of the newly found
river. Thus had organized government
crossed into the Valley ofthe Shenandoah.
Now what surprises us most about these
slow-motioned English is the fact that one
hundred years had passed before theyiex-
tended their authority across the Blue
Ridge.
Governor SpottSwood was not the first
to view this Valley, which has since be-
come so famous in history. Forty-Seven
years before he drank here to the health
OF King George, a German, in the employ
of Governor Berkeley, had penetrated the
wilderness, perhaps as far as Cheat river.
Iohn Lederer, in 1869, went through the
great rift at what is now Harper'S Ferry,
and followed up the Potomac, the Cohon-
goruta, and the Wappatacoma, and left
his official record on a map that teStifeS
to his achievement. Three years later
Captain Thomas Bats took official pos
session of the great Kanawha Valley. The
French were also busy beyond the Allie
ghanieS, for La Sale descended the Ohio
river in the same year that Lederer map
ped the upper Potomac.
In 1725, less than ten years after Spots
wood had penetrated the Valley OF the
Shenandoah, or Sherando, the Daughter
of the Stars" as the ShaweeS called 1t,
Iohn Van Meter, New York Dutchman,
followed the trail laid out by Lederer, and
traded with the ShawneeS and other In
dians who inhabited the rich valleys that
empty their streams eventually into the
Chesapeake. Van Meter knew person.
ally all the Indian inhabitants, and it is
unnatural to think that up TO this time he
was the only man that had found a way
to make merchandise of the rich barter
that this Valley offered to the enterpris-
ing trader.
History tells us that Morgan Morgan
was the first white man to find perma-
nent home in the Valley Of Virginia; that
in about 1926 he settled near what is now
Bunker Hill in Berkeley county We do
not beleveit. History refuteS it. In this
graveyard, where we now stand, the ash
es OF a seemingly lone German girl, Cat
erina Bierlin, were laid TO rest, l9
years before Morgan Morgan entered this
valley, Is years before John Van Meter
traded with the Indians, and 9 years be-
fore Governor Spottswood buried the
record of his grand achievement on the
bank of the Sherando in an empty whisk-
ey bottle. Here we see again:
How nations slowly wise and meanly Just,
To buried merit raise the tardy bust
Catenna Berlin, mark you, was buried
here. She was young German girl OF
twenty years when she died, in l7OI.
She more than possibly lived here. She
lived, loved, died, and was buried here,
in this sacred spot-the Oldest graveyard
in the Valley or in West Virginia. Whose
were the loving hands that laid away her
body, and in these early years, before
Morgan Morgan entered this Valley,
erected over her grave such fitting testi-
r,ou;al of her worth T? She, doubtless,