1799- late summer or early fall

Horton Howard, his father-in-law Joseph Dew, and widowed brother-in-law, Aaron Brown travelled from Carteret and Jones Counties, North Carolina to explore the Northwest Territory just across the Ohio River. Horton wrote home to his wife, Mary, with a progress report from Winchester, VA:

    “Dear and Loving Wife … we are all in Tolerable Health at present and have been mostly so since we came from home … and I hope if best these will find you all in health. We are now at Winchester in Virginia having crossed the Blue Ridge of Mountains and are between it and the Allegheny Mountain about Four Hundred and Fifty Miles from Home and One Hundred and thirty six from Redstone. We have been favoured to get along so far with less Difficulty and fatigue than we expected, but we have travailed slower and found after getting in the Hilly Land that our Chair would not answer so we left it at the House of our Friend Clark Moorman at Cedar Creek in Virginia 326 miles from Home, where I purchased for 100 Dollars a pleasant going Mair and now we all go comfortably on Horseback”

I was puzzled by the reference to the chair, until I found pictures from the Carriage Association of America (credit to http://theslowerroad.com/2012/01/14/our-free-afternoon/)

I can fully understand why this was not a comfortable mode of travel over hills and rough terrain