The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1932-06-30
A Memorial To A Bad Beginning

thrust him into the spotlight of his
tory at %. Because Fort Necessity
played so large a part in the cam
paigns to protect the Maryland from
tier from the Indians and to save it
from French control, the Governor of
Maryland is one of four Governors in
vited to be guests of honor at the GER
emonies on the Fourth of July. The
other States that shared in the Great
Meadows expedition are Pennsylvania,
Virginia and South Carolina; North
Carolina and New York might have,
but their soldiers never arrived.
Besides the Governors of the four
States, there has been planned great
mastering of other prominent folk,
and the committee in charge Of the
dedication says it expects 100000 Wis
itors to see the little log stockade on
July 3 and another hundred thousand
on the Fourth. DR.. Albert Bushnell
Hart, noted historian, heads the list
of speakers. Others are to include
Maj .-Gen. Douglas Macarthur, chief
of staff of the army; Maj.-Gen. Paul
B. Malone, of the Third Army Corps
Area; Mrs. William Russell Magma,
president-general of the Daughters of
the American Revolution; Hanford
McNider, United States Minister to
Canada, and Edward E. Spafford, past
national commender of the American
Legion.
The crowds that go to the dedication
will drive out to Great Meadows along
the old National Pike-Highway No.
30. Forty miles west Of Frostburg,
Nd, and ten miles southeast of I'm
iontown, Pa, they will come to a
place where the paved road crosses a
high rounded hill Beside the road
they will see a series of stone markers
bearing bronze tablets-the tributes
of various organizations to the men
who fought there. Thanked on either
side by these tablets, they will see an
old brick house built a century or
more ago, and now turned into a
museum as an adjunct to the Great
Meadows memorial.
Behind the house, the hill drops
away rapidly to a swampy valley.
Across the valley other hills rise in a
semi-circle. Down in the bottom of
the cup of the hills is Fort Necessity.
Sitting in their cars at the road
side, or standing on the hills, the Wis
itors will be able to look right down
into the restored fort. Many of them
will probably have a feeling that an
enemy, preparing to attack that fort,
had a grandstand seat from which he
could see everything that went on in
side the stockade. They may even
feel that a garrison inside that fort
must have had all the privacy of a
fly on a window pane. The French
army must have been able to see every
movement.
For on July 3, hundred and eigh-
ty-eight years ago, the French and
their Indian allies were swarming on
the hills overlooking the stockade. In
side it were a Virginia boy of %, in
regimentals he had bought and paid
for himself; some 300 Virginia pro-
vincial volunteers in hunting shirts,
and $50 South Carolinians similarly
uniformed.
The Virginia boy was not altogether
happy. He had been sent out with
an expedition ordered to support one
Captain Trent, who was building a
fort at the forks of the Ohio to keep
out the French. He had been led to
expect artillery, and had spent months
at the painful work of cutting a road
through the wilderness so the guns
could come up. And he had been led
to expect heavy reinforcements. But
the guns hadn't come, and the only
achievements were the South Caro-
linians, under a captain who wouldn't
take orders from the Virginia boy,
and who wouldn't help build roads.
And long before the expedition got to
the Forks of the Ohio, it was discov-