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
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I was never lost, but I was bewildered once for three days.
--Daniel Boone
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