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II

WESTWARD OVER THE CUMBERLAND ROAD

THE reasons which caused Jabez Kirkwood to seek a new home in the West were not altogether of his own making, nor did they spring primarily from any yearning for an abode in a place less densely peopled. Financial embarrassment was the real cause of his decision, for he had been the victim of misplaced generosity and of later misfortune. First, he had furnished security for a friend, a merchant, who desired to borrow a considerable sum of money. In time the friend failed in business, thereby shifting to the shoulders of his bondsman such a burden that nearly all of Kirkwood's accumulated savings were swept away and he was left with little more than the farm with which he had started. Rallying from this severe blow, he turned to raising fine horses for the Baltimore market a business that offered large returns. Success in this undertaking was just beginning to replenish the empty family treasury when there suddenly came another calamity: a fatal disease broke out among his horses and when it had run

its course scarcely one out of a goodly herd was left alive. 1

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To a man who was nearing three score years these reverses of fortune could have been little less than disheartening. The soil on a portion of the Maryland farm had long since become so exhausted that it had been allowed to lie uncultivated;11 while the patronage of country blacksmiths had greatly diminished as more and more manufactured tools and iron articles came into use. The prospect of again accumulating a comfortable competency in the home where he had lived so long seemed small indeed. And so, in the year 1835, at the age of fifty-nine, Jabez Kirkwood turned his face toward the West the land of new hope for myriads of discouraged men - and determined to seek a more favorable home in the State of Ohio.

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After disposing of his property, the elder Kirkwood secured the necessary equipment for the four hundred mile overland journey.15 large, strong wagon was procured, possibly of the type called "mountain ship", with broadtired wheels, curved bottom, and white canvas cover.16 Into this vehicle were loaded all of the goods which the family could take, and to it were hitched as many horses as were necessary to haul it to its destination. Then the emigrants consisting of Jabez Kirkwood and certain of his sons including Samuel-bade

farewell to the Harford County home; the word was given to the horses, and the heavy wagon rolled out on the road that led westward.

From Baltimore there was a much traveled thoroughfare extending to the northwestward. After a space it joined another highway coming up from Alexandria and Washington City to the south; and thence followed very closely the path marked many years before by the ill-fated Braddock through forests and mountains until at last it emerged at Cumberland in the western end of the State.17 Marylanders bound for the Ohio Valley in 1835 found this road to be the best and most direct. Hence it would be natural for the Kirkwood party to prefer as soon as possible to strike this well-known highway rather than to seek their way over less frequented roads. But by whatever route they traveled they at last found themselves at the town of Cumberland on the Potomac, the eastern terminus of the great Cumberland or National Road which "carried thousands of population and millions of wealth into the West; and more than any other material structure in the land, served to harmonize and strengthen, if not save, the Union. ''18

The Cumberland Road in those days was no mere wilderness trail through an uninhabited country. It was a highway the like of which was never again built in America until the auto

mobile worked a revolution in the character of the roads. Stretching like a ribbon from the Potomac through Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana, it eventually reached the banks of the Mississippi; and throughout the greater part of this distance it was macadamized with a surface of crushed stone several inches thick. "Leaping the Ohio at Wheeling", the road extended "across Ohio and Indiana, straight as an arrow, like an ancient elevated pathway of the gods, chopping hills in twain at a blow, traversing the lowlands on high grades like a railroad bed, vaulting river and stream on massive bridges of unparalleled size.'' 19

Nor did the traveler over this highway suffer from loneliness: at least in Pennsylvania and Ohio the National Road was a busy thoroughfare. It was traversed by regular stage lines carrying mail and passengers, both local and long distance, to and from the West in gaily decorated and richly upholstered coaches. Heavy freighters, drawn by six or eight horses, carried the manufactured goods of the East to the growing settlements in the Ohio Valley, and returned laden with the produce of western farms. Emigrants by the thousands also traveled over the road to find new homes in the West. Farmers hauled their wheat or corn or tobacco or drove large herds of cattle or hogs along the road to eastern markets. And finally,

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the traveler along the National Road might expect to meet persons of note riding in stylish conveyances capitalists, literary lights, Congressmen, and even the President of the United States.20

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Along this lively roadway Jabez Kirkwood and his sons journeyed after leaving the town of Cumberland on the Potomac. At first the road wound upward toward the west through the rugged, mountainous country of western Maryland. Then, finding a pass between the hills it turned into Pennsylvania, crossing the first westward-flowing water - the Youghiogheny River at the town of Somerfield. A short distance further to the northwest the road passed close by the grave of General Braddock, the man who had blazed the trail which had now grown into a great highway. Thence, descending gradually into the fertile, smiling valley of the Monongahela, crossing the ponderous stone bridge at Big Crossings (now Smithfield), and passing through Uniontown, the route led at length to Brownsville, the village on the Monongahela River which in early years had attained prominence under the name of Redstone Old Fort. Crossing the river at this historic point the thoroughfare ran through the prosperous farms of Washington County across the West Virginia line to Wheeling, whence after cross

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