The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1927-09-01


built on the Potomac by Col John
Carlyle, a Dumfriesshire Scotchman,
in 1852.
The house was three years old when
in February, ITS, General Braddock
landed his two regiments, the Forty
fourth and Forty eighth, lately mutt
nous in Ireland, at Alexandria, and
with a presentiment of his fate set
about ordering the colonials to give
him service of transportation and sup
plies for the march across the noun
tains and through the forest to throw
the French out of Fort Duquesne, now
Pittsburgh.
In the blue room of the Carlyle
House, preserved for the imaginative
visitor as a chamber of the past, the
general met the Governors of the
American Colonies which were going
to help with men and wagons-Din-
widdle, of Virginia; Shirley, of Mas
sachusetts; Delaney, of New York;
Sharpe, of Maryland, and Morris, of
Pennsylvania. They sat by charm
ing fireplace in pleasant room and
discussed discouraging prospects, not
knowing the half of them.
The legend of the house is that the
American Revolution started there
and then, twenty years before its first
shot was fired at Lexington, because
the royal Governors told Braddock
that Great Britain never would get
anything out of the stubborn colon
lists except by taxation.
A former lieutenant-colonel Of Vir-
ginia militia, George Washington,
aged %, who thought his defeat the
year before by the French in the
Pennsylvania mountains had closed a
military career, rode over from Mount
Vernon and made the acquaintance of
the general. The fascinating Sally
Gary Fairfax also graced the house,
and she is thought to have told Brad
dock that the young Washington,
however detected by failure, was the
best officer in Virginia.
Braddock liked the young man and
offered him post as aide-de-camp.
Nine. Washington, his mother, pro-
tested in apprehension and annoyance,
but her son went soldering again.
The event was momentous. 1t re-
stored his confidence.
From Alexandria Braddock moved
his troops by way of Winchester in
the Shenandoah Valley to Fredericks-
town, and there he and the colonists
almost came to blows. They were not
furnishing him with horses and wag-
ons, and his men were becoming mutt
nous again on short rations and no
pay. There was road to be cut, and
his regulars couldn't do it and would
not do it.
He had been promised Cherokee and
4Catawba Indians as scouts and forest
fighters. A few hundred of them
came. They brought their women.
The redcoats beguiled the forest
ladies. The scalp dances of the war
riors were intended by the British
officers to accustom the rank and file
to the maniacal terrors of an Indian
onset, but they only Mortified the
regulars and fixed in them a Fremont
ton of doom in the dark forest. With
this done, the Cherokees went back to
their mountains.
Pennsylvania Germans and Quakers
were at outs with the Virginians over
this western land, were opposed to the
attack on the French and would not
supply horses. The road was a Vir-
ginia road to be cut through Pennsyl-
vania to the Ohio, and if cut and kept
open it would be available for Viz
ginia land takers and traders.
George Croghan, the great scout,
land locker, trader and Indian agent
of the Northwest, got Braddock some
horses and eight Indians. Benjamin
Franklin visited the general at Fred
erickstown and promised him some
horses. He got them by pledging his
oVH ClSOll'
Braddock moved his troops on to
Wills Creek, Fort Cumberland on the
Potomac. Wills Greek is at the Mar
rows. 1t is the jump-off into the will
derne IS of mountain and forrest and
rivers. The frontiersman, Thomas
HCresap, had been employed by the
Ohio Company of Virginia five years
before to make trail from Wills
Creek to the forks of the Ohio. Cres-
ap had a Delaware Indian, Menace
lin, blaze it. Washington and Chris
topher Gist, pioneer land locker, had
travelled it when Washington carried
the Virginia orders to the French in
the neighborhood of Lake Erie to get
out of the Ohio territory. Washing
ton had travelled it again in 1854
with force of Virginians and an in
dependent company of British to
throw the French out. He was de-
feated in Fort Necessity at Great
Meadows.
The trail had been buffalo trace
through Maryland and Pennsylvania
W. 81,