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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