[80] G. E. F. Gray, chief clerk of the Edgar Thomson Steel Works at
Braddock, Pa., wrote to me under date of December 9, 1908, that their
chief engineer, Sydney Dillon, had already done some preliminary
work toward locating the original banks of Turtle Creek and of the
Monongahela River, and toward fixing the place of Frazer's Cabin and
of the road through Braddock. The steel works are located on a part of
the battlefield, along the river.
On February 11, 1909, Mr. Dillon communicated to me the results of
his labors based on a study of the ground in connection with the two
maps made by Patrick Mackellar, Braddock's chief engineer (Parkman,
_Montcalm and Wolfe_, 1905, I. op. 214-215), supplemented by the
plan in Winsor's _Narrative and Critical History of America_, V.
449, and by the Carnegie McCandless Company's property map of 1873.
This is by far the most able and careful study of the battlefield
that has been made in modern times. Mr. Dillon's plans enable one to
follow the course of the road through the battlefield, and to form
an idea of the action with a distinctness that has not been possible
heretofore. In order to comprehend the nature of the fight, however,
and to understand the conditions that made Braddock's defeat almost
inevitable, one must see the field for himself.
[81] On the two plans of the battlefield drawn by Patrick Mackellar,
see Parkman, _Montcalm and Wolfe_ (1905), I. 229, n. 1.
[82] See maps, _ibid._, op. 214-215, and in Sargent's _Expedition
against Fort Du Quesne_, op. 219.
[83] Hyacinth Mary Liénard de Beaujeu.
[84] If the course of the road as thus indicated be correct, then
the thickest of the fight would have been east of the Pennsylvania
Railroad between Thirteenth and Sixth Streets, the location of
the Hollow Way and of Frazer's Run respectively. The writer was
told that when the Pennsylvania Railroad built its roadbed through
the battlefield it unearthed a great number of human skeletons, a
circumstance which, if true, would seem to confirm his conclusion as
to the ground on which the principal fighting took place. Mr. Dillon
seems to think that the Hollow Way was between Ann and Verona Streets,
and that the farthest point reached by Braddock's party was across the
ravine near Corey Avenue. Another view is that the course of the road
never extended above or east of the Pennsylvania Railroad, but stopped
a few rods short of it in the Robinson burying-ground.
* * * * *
Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:
Gwynn's Six Mile Houe=> Gwynn's Six Mile House {pg 8 n.}
National turnpke=> National turnpike {pg 18 n.}
Crooked run=> Crooked Run {pg 35 n.}
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Braddock Road, by John Kennedy Lacock
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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