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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