Great Philadelphia Wagon Road
The Great Philadelphia
Wagon Road
Thousands of years-old ancient trails used by mankind and buffalo alike facilitated tens of thousands of people to follow what became the road to dreams on the American East Coast. Sheer force of will expanded the great road over time.
We have followed the roads and found the places to see and stay and now we are searching once again along these ways for the y-DNA of families from the earliest years to today.
We’ve taken the photos and there are more to take. We have seen so much and there is still so much more to see. We hope to share it all with you.
There is great research in the last years about the exact course of the road, at what times in history and herstory. I have embraced these original maps as these many towns, and now cities, are where our migrants records might well be. These modern towns, although many did not exist at the time, are where we follow to base and stay while we search out the side roads and footpaths that make up the route.
The Great Philadelphia Wagon Road is made up of multiple roads and then those roads have been retraced and replaced and some long forgotten. I am adding everyone’s work as they wish to be added. See below for another great map and research that is embraced as well as the other suspects.
Following the settlements
We are linking all the Libraries, genealogical societies and historical homes and sites that litter the roads with ancestry, history and herstory that we can find.
Philadelphia – and west
The Pennsylvania beginnings
The history and herstory
Watkins Ferry
Western Maryland
Where to stay
Winchester – Rocky Mount
Virginia’s Blue Ridge
John Catlett wrote of seeing the Blu Mountains
Bethania – Charlotte
Carolina’s North
No they did not come from the east coast
Rock Hill – Camden
South Carolina
We know they got there early and left y-DNA
Augusta
Georgia
In Question
Follow the Dreams of the Ancestors
We have used a y-DNA plus study of our family line’s male McKnight and Knight descendants. The map reflects where to stay today to enjoy the routes.
Using your own families’ genetic results you can follow the routes they took and use those matches to guide your searches for paper records and documentation. You are welcome to download this map. This is from a 1751 map that is in the public domain. (See Library of Congress website of map free maps, newspapers and records – all online and easily and freely accessible.) Although we know maps must be tweaked and re-tweaked, we must have a public domain map to work from and this is a great place to start.
The Great Philadelphia Wagon Road Passport
The Routes:
Coming soon with Haplogroups!
They Went Thatta Way!
Topics
I can see the person standing on the road and when asked which way “they” went, the locals crossed their arms in front of their chests and pointing both right and left, exclaim, “they went thatta way!” The great roads of the Americas are our paths to searching for our history and herstory.
I include Philadelphia because we are looking for arrivals to the continent also and very much wish to follow DNA via the people back across the pond, north to Canada and from there also back across the pond. Across the continent and east. Matching y-DNA in New Brunswick.
With tracing DNA we can take the many peoples of the Americas back to their origins. Countless have been here many thousands of years and we see and know their paths along these roads from thousands of years. Today there are many thousands more from all over the world arriving for the last few hundred years in droves.
Humans searching across humanity for a place to be. Still asking, where did I come from? From Nunavut to Tierra del Fuego.
More @.
2024
Google with care – but – Google all the time
Who is talking about the Great Wagon Road?
To use a Google search most effectively – use the Boolean – place a phrase in quotation marks and you will only get those words as a group. Otherwise you will get hits on every word making the search too broad.
“thegreatphiladelphiawagonroad”
add other words or phrases to see if your specific ancestors are named with that phrase anywhere.
And, you can ask Google to send you an email alert if that phrase happens!
Google maps link to a 10-stop wagon road guide from Philadelphia to Augusta
So many roads and over such a long period of time
When I think of what we forget or do not acknowledge about our continent’s history and herstory, I remind myself of the Bishop Mead’s writings and also the history of two of my early American Ancestors, John Catlett and his friend, in-law, Robert Taliaferro (pronounced Toliver). The French might not count for the “first settlers” but the French were here more than 100 years and traversed the countless roads that were 1,000s of years old. Native Americans did not break and turn ankles and they traveled from our blessed Shawanaga to the lands of the Mohawk, and to this day many winter in the south, now places like the reserves in Oklahoma. There has been extensive travel and roads for many moons before the early 18th century travelers began to look for places to settle – that were not already taken.
Sequoyah
Like my Knight McKnight ancestors of the late 18th century, Sequoyah was from what became east Tennessee. He did not move to Alabama until his later middle age. Although the roads were well expanded by the time he was born, his ancestral heritage was instilled in him by his people who knew the same beauties of nature and mankind my family grasped from the end of this wagon road.
The Creeks, our great writer was not hobbling around with no decent path to walk.
Sequoyah was one of the most influential figures in Cherokee history. He created the Cherokee Syllabary, a written form of the Cherokee language. The syllabary allowed literacy and printing to flourish in the Cherokee Nation in the early 19th century and remains in use today.
The roads of the North American Petroglyphs Artists, Mound Builders and world wide ancient followers of hot springs also had great roads of travel for
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Pennsylvania
- Big and Little Indian Rock Petroglyphs
- Francis Farm Petroglyphs
- Indian God Rock
- Sugar Grove Petroglyphs
The Mound Builders
There was contact and trade and travel for thousands of years.
Indian settlements map which even LOC says is shamefully incomplete. The east coast has countless mounds and they are no where on the map
Catlett and Taliaferro bought the property of the French Mission in the place that became Fort Royal where Catlett and Taliaferro were both killed. They had contacts and guides and even would likely have had French cohorts. The history books note him being on the “first” expedition (first of the English) to the Blue Mountains.
Today the location is Port Royal, Virginia
From Rootsweb:
“Allegedly killed by Indians at a fort that later became Fort Royal. His estate was submitted for probate on 7 May 1673. “The First party to explore and reach the summit of the Blue Ridge Mountains was led by Col. John Catlett, of Rappahannock Co, as gleaned from “an account of Virginia” communicated to the Royal Society in 1676 by Mr. Thomas Glover, an ingenious Chirugion that hath lived some years in that country.” (Blackwell’s Reprint, Oxford, 1904). Accompanying Col. Jno. Catlett, the immigrant, besides his half-brothers, Ralph and Edward Rowzie, were Nicholas and Thomas Catlett, believed to be the sons of Col. Jno by his first wife, who died before his emigration to VA in 1650. Land Office patent Book 2, p. 224 on 23 May 1650, a patent for 400 acres of land is granted to John Catlett and Ralph Rousey on the south side of Rappahannock River for the transportation of eight persons into this colony…Ralph Rousey, John Catlett, Nicholas Catlett and others. Land Office Patent Book 3, p. 114, on 7 June 1652, John Catlett and Ralph Rouzee granted 300 acres of land adjoining their first patent and among their headrights they listed: Sarah Rouzee, Edward Rouzee and Martha Rouzee.; Book 3, p. 360 on 1 Jul 1655, a patent for 1,542 acres of land in Lancaster County (later became Rappahannock County) to John Catlett and Ralph Rouzee. Other large patents were in co-ownership with Ralph Rouzee and Thomas Lucas, Sr as well as to himself alone. Known Issue: John CATLETT. Jr.; William CATLETT; Elizabeth CATLETT; Sarah CATLETT. “The following will is transcribed and provided by Fran Osborn. “Undated but 1657-1658 (Old Rappa. Recs. 1656-1664, I:65) (missing) Francis SLAUGHTER sick in body but…”
The first party to explore and reach the summit of the Blue Ridge Mountains was led by Colonel John Catlett, of Rappahannock County, as gleaned from ‘An Account of Virginia’, communicated to the Royal Society in 1676 by Mr. Thomas Glover, an ingenious chirugion that hath lived some years in that country. [Blackwell’s Reprint, Oxf ord, 1904]. Mr. Glover’s account states further that ‘There was a Colonel Catlett that was a good Mathmetician, who with some other gentlemen took a Journey to make some further discoveries of the Country to the Westwards and arriving at the foot of the Mountains early in the morning they left their horses and endeavored to gain the tops of the mountains which they accomplished about four o’clock in the afternoon, and then looking further forward they discovered other mountains, whereof they took the altitude and judged them inaccessible; which discouraged them from any further attempts, their design being chiefly to discover whether there were any rivers that ran into the South-Ocean…etc.’ Accompanied John Lederer on his third exploration of the country west of the Blue Ridge Mountains.”
Catlett and parties did not have to hack their way through anything. Roads traversed the continent. The search for ancestors often sees us looking straight to the coast for the immigrant ancestor. But the Great Philadelphia Wagon Road and all its many paths, foot paths, buffalo paths, tributaries of rivers and creeks the thousands of years old paths were celebrations took place and people from all over the continent went to gather at Mounds and Springs since ancient times.
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We may never know all the many miles of the Great Philadelphia Wagon Road but we can know the many towns and cities now along the path, that we need on our maps to tell us where the historical societies and libraries are! We know the road had tentacles that went every direction and linked other regions and directions. Where those roads intersected and branched is where we can trace the ancestors back even farther.
I add the websites as I am given permission to add a link to these many wonderful sites.
In north America, particularly in the USA, the history, herstory of the Native Americans is all but lost. In Canada there is some remaining knowledge and in South America also the heritage has not been completely obliterated.
County Formation and state formation affects all aspects of the Great Wagon Road. I keep a county formation chart for each place handy as I work each family and their movements. One site to start with for studying county formation is USGENWEB
https://www.usgenweb.org/
This is a fabulous map about the road and below see the link to the website for the map credit. They show so much great vital info about the route.
From the great site of Southwest Virginia Campbells
Another fabulous site for our road Hodge PodgePourri
- Knight McKnight y-DNA Along The Great Wagon Road
- Ancestors Tours ~ World Travel with Genetic Genealogy
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The Great Philadelphia Wagon Road
The genetic genealogy and family and local history and herstory of the great Philadelphia wagon road.
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