Cumberland, Maryland

“ It is 1/4 mile northerly from the summit of the Western Maryland Railroad, which is here the highest point on that line between Cumberland, Maryland, and Elkins, West Virginia.
The stone is easily reached by a trail from Fairfax station, which is 1/2 mile to the southeast. The large timber all around has been cut by mill men and fire has destroyed the balance, so that the immediate spot is now largely covered by brush and briers. ”

“ They were marched to Will's Creek, where they were joined by an independent company from South Carolina; and these troops, under command of Colonel Innes, during the autumn, built Fort Cumberland in the fork between Will's Creek and the north branch of the Potomac, on the Maryland side, about fifty-five miles northwest of Winchester. It was called after the Duke of Cumberland, captain-general of the British army. The fort was mounted with ten four-pounders, and some swivels; and contained magazines and barracks. A prosperous town has arisen on the spot. ”

“ The measure to which the citizens of Cumberland object, grows, of necessity, out of existing circumstances; and the bridges will have to be built in the manner and of the materials named in the instruction of the department to the superintendent of the road, or the new location to turn Wills hill must be abandoned. The people of Cumberland are doubtless aware that estimates were submitted to Congress last fall for funds sufficient to put up the structures in conformity with the law of Maryland, to which you refer ”

“ When this West was in its teens and began suddenly outstripping itself, to the marvel of the world, one of the momentous factors in its progress was the building of a great national road, from the Potomac River to the Mississippi River, by the United States Government—a highway seven hundred miles in length, at a cost of seven millions of treasure. This ribbon of road, winding its way through Maryland, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, toward the Mississippi, was one of the most important steps in that movement of national expansion which followed the conquest of the West. ”

“ Those were the days when Frederick in Maryland and Chambersburg in Pennsylvania were frontier points, the Alleghanies were Pillars of Hercules, and all beyond was a blank!
Still continuing our course on the Virginia side of the Potomac, through what is known in this State as the Virginia Valley, while in Pennsylvania the same intervale is called the Cumberland Valley, we admire the increasing sense of solitude, the bowery wildness of the river-banks, and the spirited freshness of the hastening water. At a station of delightful loneliness we alight. ”

“ W. Jackson, Papers and Pedigrees relating to Cumberland (2 vols., London, 1892) ; T. Ellwood, The Landnama Book of Iceland as it illustrates the Dialect and Antiquities of Cumberland (Kendal, 1894) ; Victoria County History, Cumberland; and Transactions of the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society.
CUMBERLAND, a city and the county-seat of Allegany county, Maryland, U.S.A., on the Potomac river, about 178 m. W. by N. of Baltimore and about 153 m. S. by E. of Pittsburg. Pop. (1890) 12,729; (1900) 17,128, of whom 1113 were foreign-born and 1100 were of negro descent ”

“ Washington's dream of a connected waterway was, of course, hopelessly chimerical, and after him no one pushed the subject of a highway of any kind between the East and the West through Virginia. Washington's own plans materialized in the Potomac Navigation Company, and his highway, that should be a strong link in the chain of Federal Union between the improved Potomac and the Ohio, became the Cumberland Road; and it ran just where he did not care to see it—through Maryland and Pennsylvania. ”

“ Their two principal achievements were the erection of the first house built by white men between the Cumberland Mountains and the Ohio River—a feat, however, which led to no important developments; and the discovery of the wonderful gap in the Alleghanies to which Walker gave the name Cumberland, in honor of the ruthless conqueror at Culloden, the "bloody duke."
In 1748 the Ohio Company was organized by Colonel Thomas Lee, president of the Virginia council, and twelve other gentlemen, of Virginia and Maryland. ”

“ Soon after he cast his lot in Cumberland he was appointed Superintendent of the Maryland Division of the road by Governor Hicks, and served in that office for a number of years previous to the late war. He had a brother, Robert, who was also an old wagoner, and subsequently, and for several years, a postal clerk on the Baltimore & Ohio railroad between Cumberland and Pittsburg.
Henry Puffenberger, a “regular,” given to blustering, but not a vicious man, and Jacob Breakiron, a “sharpshooter” and a fat man, met one day on the road and indulged in a wrangle about the right of way. ”

“ Historic Cumberland, in Maryland, was chosen by Congress as the eastern terminus of the great highway which should bind Ohio to the Old Thirteen. Commissioners were appointed in 1806 to choose the best route by which the great highway could reach the Ohio River between Steubenville, Ohio and the mouth of Grave Creek; but difficulties of navigation in the neighborhood of the Three Sister Islands near Charlestown, or Wellsburg, West Virginia, led to the choice of Wheeling, farther down, as a temporary western terminus. ”

“ Construction began in 1836, and because of the level valley some 52 miles of line was completed between Harrisburg and Chambersburg by November 16, 1837. In 1860, by way of the Franklin Railroad, the line extended to Hagerstown, Maryland. It was not until 1871 that the Cumberland Valley Railroad reached its projected southern terminus, the Potomac River, by extending to Powells Bend, Maryland. Winchester, Virginia, was entered in 1890 giving the Cumberland Valley Railroad about 165 miles of line. ”

“ It is aimed, in its construction, to secure the mail in the safest manner possible, under lock and key, and to accommodate three outside passengers under a comfortable and complete protection from the weather. It is worth going to see." ↑ Before the era of the Cumberland Road the price for hauling the goods of emigrants over Braddock's Road was very high. One emigrant paid $5.33 per hundred for hauling "women and goods" from Alexandria, Virginia, to the Monongahela. Six dollars per hundredweight was charged one emigrant from Hagerstown, Maryland, to Terre Haute, Indiana. ”

“ McCausland was also directed to proceed from Chambersburg towards Cumberland, Md., and levy contributions in money upon that and other towns able to bear them, and if possible destroy the machinery at the coal pits near Cumberland, and the machine shops, depots, and bridges on the Baltimore and Ohio railroad, as far as practicable. ”

“ But [Pg 186] were they all gathered together—from Indiana and Ohio and Pennsylvania and Virginia and Maryland—and cemented into a monstrous pyramid, the pile would not be inappropriate to preserve the name and fame of a highway which “carried thousands of population and millions of wealth into the West; and more than any other material structure in the land, served to harmonize and strengthen, if not save, the Union.”
What of the future? The dawning of the era of country living is in sight. It is being hastened by the revolution in methods of locomotion. ”

“ A New England variation was, "Come, Lysanders;" and in Pennsylvania, on the Maryland border, the first line has been ingeniously distorted into "Cumberland city-town-boys" marching! Cumberland being a town in the latter state.
No. 10.
Marriage.
(1.) By this name was known in Massachusetts, at the beginning of the century, an elaborate dance (for such, though practised in a Puritan community, it really was) which has a very decided local flavor.
Partners having been chosen, the girl says—
"Come, my dearest partner, and join both heart and hand ”

“ In this inquiry the commissioners can only form an estimate by recurring to the experience of Pennsylvania and Maryland in the business of artificial roads. Upon this data, and a comparison of the grounds and proximity of the materials for covering, there are reasons for belief that, on the route reported, a complete road may be made at an expense not exceeding six thousand dollars per mile, exclusive of bridges over the principal streams on the way. The average expense of the Lancaster, as well as Baltimore and Frederick turnpike, is considerably higher ”

“ The point of the Potomac being viewed as a great repository of produce, which a good road will bring from the west of Laurel Hill, and the advantages which Cumberland, as a town, has in that respect over an unimproved place, are additional considerations operating forcibly in favor of the place preferred. ”

“ One cannot go a single mile over it without becoming deeply impressed with the evidence of the age and the individuality of the old Cumberland Road. There is nothing like it in the United States. Leaping the Ohio at Wheeling, the Cumberland Road throws itself across Ohio and Indiana, straight as an arrow, like an ancient elevated pathway of the gods, chopping hills in twain at a blow, traversing the lowlands on high grades like a railroad bed, vaulting river and stream on massive bridges of unparalleled size. ”

“ Timbered ravines lend charm to much of its shores, and in the mountains the scenery is most beautiful. Below Nashville the stream is some 400 to 500 ft. wide, and its high banks are for the most part of alluvium, with rocky bluffs at intervals. At the mouth of the river lies Cumberland Island, in the Ohio. During low water of the latter stream the Cumberland discharges around both ends of the island, but in high water of the Ohio the gradient of the Cumberland is so slight that its waters are held back, forming a deep quiet pool that extends some 20 m. ”

“ Seldom has the town cut a wide swath in the metropolitan press, because it avoided gross scandals and attended strictly to home-affairs. The chief dissipation is a trip by boat to Nashville or Point-Burnside, or a drive overland to Glasgow, the terminus of a branch of the Louisville & Nashville Railroad.
The first great event to stir the hearts of the good people of Cumberland county occurred in 1829. A half-mile from the mouth of Rennix Creek, a minor stream that empties into the Cumberland two miles north of the county-town, a well was sunk one-hundred-and-eighty feet for salt-water. ”

“ A number of these emigrants, however, returned at the beginning of the Revolutionary War, and others after the war was over.
The townships of Cumberland, Amherst, and Sackville were established in 1763. The township of Cumberland had an area of 100,800 acres. It included all the territory between the La Planche and Aulac Rivers, and extended east to Bay Verte and southwest to the Cumberland Basin. Old Beausejour, now Fort Cumberland, was within the township of Cumberland. ”

“ In the course of arrangement, and in its order, the first point located for the route was determined and fixed at Cumberland, a decision founded on propriety, and in some measure on necessity, from the circumstance of a high and difficult mountain, called Nobley, laying and confining the east margin of the Potomac, so as to render it impossible of access on that side without immense expense, at any point between Cumberland and where the road from Winchester to Gwynn's crosses, and even there the Nobley mountain is crossed with much difficulty and hazard. ”

“ About the close of the year 1779, Colonel Bledsoe and his brothers, with a few friends, crossed the Cumberland Mountains, descended into the valley of Cumberland River, and explored the beautiful region on its banks. Delighted with its shady woods, its herds of buffaloes, its rich and genial soil, and its salubrious climate, their report on their return induced many of the inhabitants of East Tennessee to resolve on seeking a new home in the Cumberland Valley. ”

“ The Cumberland Road was not to Indiana and Illinois what it was to Ohio, for somewhat similar reasons that it was less to Ohio than to Pennsylvania, for the further west it was built the older the century grew, and the newer the means of transportation which were coming rapidly to the front. ”

“ The city is about 635 ft. above sea-level, and from a distance appears to be completely shut in by lofty ranges of hills, which are cut through to the westward by a deep gorge called “The Narrows,” making a natural gateway of great beauty. Cumberland has a large trade in coal, which is mined in the vicinity. ”

“ Cumberland Road, an early highway, constructed by the national government to connect Cumberland, Md., on the Potomac, with the Ohio River, an undertaking of much importance in opening up the west and southwest to the east before the era of railways. ”

“ For when all is said this track from tide water through Cumberland Gap must remain a monument to the courage and patriotism of the people of old Virginia and North Carolina.
Cumberland Gap, “that high-swung gateway through the mountain” stands as [Pg 206] “a landmark of what Nature can do when she wishes to give an opportunity to the human race in its migrations and discoveries, without surrendering control of its liberty and its fate.” ”

“ CUMBERLAND COUNTY FORMED January 27, 1750; named for county of Cumberland, England. One of the two or three rich agricultural valleys in the United States. Early industries were iron furnaces and forges. First settlers, Scotch-Irish, men of stout heart and wonderful nerve; almost contemporaneous with their building forts and providing means of protection for themselves and families, they established Presbyterian churches, the fine springs of the valley being selected as sites, namely, Silver Springs Church, nine miles west of the Susquehanna; Trindle Spring, now a Lutheran Church ”