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| Garrett County History | ||
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“Colonial History” |
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Little Meadows |
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One of the camping places along Indian paths during Colonial times was Little Meadows. It was
where early trappers and explorers would camp; it was well known to George Washington and
other notable travelers; there are Colonial soldiers buried there from French and Indian War
days and was one of the many camps established by Gen. Braddock during his ill-fated campaign
against Fort Duquesnie.
When thinking about famous people in Garrett County during Colonial days, a person’s mind naturally turns George Washington. However, there were a number of others who were in and out of the County’s boundaries during this same time: two of them were Christopher Gist and Thomas Cresap; both men got along well with the Indians and traveled freely in the frontier wilderness. |
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Christopher Gist (1706 – 1759) |
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Born near Baltimore in 1706, Christopher Gist was a well educated man for his times. Today he
would be classed as a scholar, a brave explorer, an extensive diary keeper, but a very poor
businessman. It was in the decade 1749 – 1759 that he crossed back and forth through Garrett
County.
Since he was well acquainted with the frontier wilderness, Gist was the person selected to guide George Washington to Fort LeBoeuf on the upper reaches of the Allegheny River. Washington carried a letter from Virginia’s Governor Dinwiddie, demanding that the French leave the area since it was land claimed by the Colony of Virginia. Gist and Washington met at the Wills Creek trading post (Cumberland) and started westward. They camped one night at Little Meadows on November 16, 1753, and again camped there on their return trip on January 5, 1754. At this time Gist owned land near the present city of Uniontown, Pa., which he called Gist’s Plantation and began to build a model town there. Unfortunately, all the buildings were burned by the French and Indians after Washington’s defeat at Fort Necessity on July 3, 1754. Gist also owned land in North Carolina and came north with part of that colony’s militia to join General Braddock’s forces in 1755. Young Daniel Boone was in the group which accompanied Gist on this trip. Later, in the summer of 1759, Christopher Gist journey to Williamsburg, Va. He contracted smallpox and died along the road between Williamsburg and Winchester. |
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Thomas Cresap (1694 – 1790) |
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Thomas Cresap was born in England in 1694 and came to America in 1718. He settled in the
eastern “disputed territory” between Maryland and Pennsylvania. Cresap got into a quarrel with
a Pennsylvania county sheriff, a deputy was mortally wounded in an exchange of gunfire, and
Cresap spent eight months in a jail in Philadelphia, finally being released in the summer of
1737. Three years later, he established a trading post beside the Potomac River at Old Town,
Maryland.
Like many trappers and explorers of his time, Thomas Cresap made trips westward through the Allegheny Mountains. He developed a number of friendships with the local Indians. Thus, when the Virginia Company authorized him to cut a packhorse trail from Wills Creek (Cumberland ) to Redstone Fort ( Brownsville, Pa.) beside the Monongahela River, he hired Chief Nemacolin and his Indians to do the work. This pack horse route became the famous “Nemacolin Path.” Because of poor communications with the various Colonies involved, Gen. Braddock did not receive the supplies he ws supposed to have for his soldiers. As a result, he had to depend on Thomas Cresap for many of his supplies during the 1755 campaign. After the disastrous ambush by the French and Indians and retreat of the Colonial forces, the Indians loosed a reign of terror on the settlers in the mountains. Thomas Cresap organized a group of Rangers in the Spring of 1756. On June 30, 1756, the Rangers got into a skirmish with the Indians on the Braddock Road, several miles west of Little Meadows. During the fight, one of Cresap’s slaves was killed and his name was later given to the mountain were he died. Today it is called “Negro Mountain.” |
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Along The Way To Little Meadows |
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Located on MD Rt. 495, Bittinger is on the eastern edge of one of the largest “glades” area of
Garrett County. Named after Henry Bittinger who first settled in the area, other German
settlers moved in and took up the fertile farm land. Geographically, this is an area which
seems to have been affected by the last great ice sheet of North America. Two miles south east
of Bittinger, there is a large deposit of peat moss.
Not far from the intersection of Rock Lodge and Mosser roads, on land belonging to the Nature Conservancy, can be found isolated boulders containing flint. It was a source for flint arrowheads when the Indians came to spend the summers in Garrett County. |
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Jennings |
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The name “Jennings” is derived from the family name of Cortez and Worth Jennings. Know as the
Jennings Brothers company they purchased land near the junction of Big Laurel Run and the
Casselman River for the erection of a large saw mill in 1901. The settlement associated with
the saw mill became the town of Jennings.
The saw mill continued in operation until it closed in 1918. At the same time the saw mill was built, Jennings Brothers began construction of a railroad to follow the Casselman River to the community of Jennings. It began as an extension of the B. & O. Railroad’s Salisbury branch line. Although the mill closed in 1918, the railroad continued to operate under different names until 1959, when it was abandoned and the rails removed. |
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“Loess” Dunes |
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In the Casselman River valley, 1 mile south of Grantsville and beside MD Rt. 495, a person can
see remains of geological evidence about the last great ice sheet over North America. A series
of low mounds can be seen in the fields on the west side of Rt. 495 which are “loess” (wind
blown) material. Apparently, these are the only ones still visible in the northern part of
Garrett County.
The mounds were formed when a glacier lake existed in the Casselman valley, and the ice around the edges of the frozen lake would melt. Wind would blow fine grains of earth into the water around the edges where it would sink to the bottom, and the mounds were the result of the deposit of this wind-blown material. |
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