Lannie Dietle

Reconsidering Braddock's Road to Martin's Lannie Dietle

Few events in America's colonial history have spurred as much interest as English General Edward Braddock's ill-fated expedition from Fort Cumberland in Western Maryland to Fort Duquesne during the French and Indian war in 1755. Famously accompanied by Virginia militia Colonel George Washington, Braddock's forces struggled over a harried and difficult route that has been mapped and studied many times in the centuries since. Early maps exist in the British Archives and major interpretations comparing these maps to features on the ground were written in 1847 and 1908. Despite this intense and continuous study, some questions still remain - including a question raised in this book by history author Lannie Dietle. As in his other works about colonial roads along the Allegheny Front, Mr. Dietle conducted an exhaustive study, not only of Braddock's route, but extensive history of Nemacolin's Trail and the Ohio Company Road through this same region. The fascinating alternative theory presented here involves the route between Braddock's first and second camps, ending with his arrival at a mysterious, now lost, location called Martin's Plantation. This book presents significant and harmonious evidence that Braddock did not turn southwest at the confluence of Porter Run and Braddock Run, but instead followed the existing Ohio Company Road through an area later known as Eckhart Mines. This theory continues, drawn from the same sources, that Martin's Plantation was located west of George's Creek, not to the east of the drainage as previous authors have surmised. The evidence thoughtfully presented here is already stimulating new efforts by other Braddock scholars and hobbyists to begin a new search for evidence on the ground of a more northerly route to Martin's - which could lead to a major revision in this historic narrative of George Washington's only military service with a regular British army unit.