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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