See this URL:
http://www.patc.net/history/archive/spotswood.html
for more info on Spotwood's Golden Horseshoe's.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Sunshine49" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, January 28, 2007 11:03 AM
Subject: Re: Knights of the Golden Horseshoe
> 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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