Yes, wouldn't it? Upon reaching the Shenandoah River, they of course
feasted and drank more toasts to the King and to his family [one
wonders to what degree- 5th cousins? Great-great aunts? Another
round, boys!]; the account lists Virginia red wine and white wine,
Irish whiskey, brandy, shrub, two kinds of rum, champagne, canary,
cherry punch, cider, "etc." Maybe that's why there is no list of the
gentlemen along. Everyone forgot who was there, once they got home
and their wives made them sober up.
That could bring up another topic for this group- the amazing
alcoholic drinks that were common in the south. "Chatham Artillery
Punch" from SC, and I need to look up a similar concoction mixed for
the barbeques of the Richmond Light Infantry Blues. Apparently all
these local militias had their own recipes. Incredible stuff, they
would probably double as paint-stripper.
After doing more reading I am thinking Rt 33 was not where they
crossed, the now-closed road would be more likely. Accounts tell of
Spotswood taking tools to engrave the King's name on the highest
peak, which they named after him, but the stone was so hard it
wouldn't work. Now I used to practically live along the drive, hiked
many trails, and have some geology books about Skyline Drive. The
stone around Rt 33 is softer, quartzite, shale, sandstones, basalts.
Stone engraving tools should have worked on those. But farther north
is the Pedlar/ Old Rag granite, some of the oldest rock on earth [1.1
billion years] and it is extremely hard. After all, it has withstood
weathering for 1.1 billion years! That road would have gone right
through an area full of it, right by Old Rag Mountain itself, to the
north, and to the south of the road would have been Upper Hawksbill,
the highest point; could that have been the "highest mountain" they
named for the king? They also reached the Shenandoah River 7 miles
after getting down into the valley. A quick look at maps seems to
show that the Rt. 33 road was too close to the river; the now-closed
road would have been about right. It makes a lot more sense overall
than the Rt. 33 road.
Nancy
-------
I was never lost, but I was bewildered once for three days.
--Daniel Boone
On Jan 28, 2007, at 10:33 AM, Lonny J. Watro wrote:
> Sounds like the first American pub crawl - LOL. Would make a good
> novel.
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Sunshine49" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Saturday, January 27, 2007 9:07 PM
> Subject: Knights of the Golden Horseshoe
>
>
>> I finally made it to the history center at Germanna today. I went
>> in and told the person there [not a lot of tourist traffic on a
>> January day...] what I was looking for and he said oh, that
>> should be no problem. Till he started looking. And later 4 people
>> he knew stopped by, had the same response, oh, that should be
>> easy to find-- everyone was as surprised as I was, to find that
>> it's not readily available. So what I did find out:
>> He suggested looking through John Fontaine's account of the
>> journey. You can buy it for $25, or get a copy through an inter-
>> library loan. It should be interesting reading anyway, for anyone
>> wanting to learn more about the expedition.
>> The Germanna group has a website at germanna.org that has
>> information [after leaving my name at the place, the president
>> later called me and suggested looking there]; there are also
>> germanna.com and germanna.net The germanna.com might be worth
>> contacting, I was told the guy who runs it knows pretty much
>> everything there is to know about the era, and is happy to help
>> researchers.
>> I also came across a site on their computer, West Virginia
>> Archives and History [look up "Alexander Spotswood's Transmontane
>> Expedition", extracted from a book written in 1860 which uses a
>> book from 1722], it names a few more of the members of the
>> expedition- Spotswood, Fontaine, Beverly [it was at Beverly's
>> house at Middlesex, where after being "hospitably entertained" by
>> Beverly, the governor the next day "left his chaise and mounted a
>> horse for the rest of the expedition"], Colonel Robertson, Austin
>> Smith ["who returned home owing to a fever"], Todd, Dr.
>> Robertson, Taylor, Mason, Brooke, and Captains Clouder and Smith.
>> "The whole number in the party, including gentlemen, rangers,
>> pioneers, Indians and servants, was probably about fifty. They
>> had with them a large number of riding and pack horses, an
>> abundant supply of provisions, and an extraordinary variety of
>> liquors." The first leg of the trip was three miles, and when
>> they camped they named each camp after a member of the
>> expedition; the first camp was Camp Beverly. The fellow at
>> Germanna said they used every stop at every camp, church, house
>> or inn as an excuse for another round of drinks. This was not a
>> "Lewis and Clark" type expedition, more an adventure for
>> gentlemen. The exact route is still not known, many think it was
>> over the mountains at what is now Rt. 33, where a commemorative
>> stone pyramid now stands. But others think it was a road back
>> through the towns of Syria and Graves Mountain, which once
>> crossed the mountains and was called something like "Mountain
>> Crossing Road", but it was closed in the 1930s when the federal
>> government bought and built Skyline Drive. The road now ends in a
>> fire road with a gate across it. When they crested the mountains
>> and saw a river below them, Spotswood named it Euphrates. Luckily
>> saner heads later prevailed and it now bears the beautiful Indian
>> name of Shenandoah.
>> There are also the Spotswood family papers, in possession of the
>> Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. If you can track them down,
>> they might have something. So this is as much as I could gather
>> about the Knights of the Golden Horseshoe.
>> Nancy
>> -------
>> I was never lost, but I was bewildered once for three days.
>> --Daniel Boone
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