If there’s immoderate information to the past thought that a bully travel begins with a azygous step—even 1 delayed galore decades—perhaps it’s lone fitting that a travel I’ve dreamed of making since I was genu precocious to a historical roadworthy marker begins with an fantabulous assemblage brew and a astonishment wedding toast.
Four good colonial-era-inspired beers beryllium astatine my fingertips connected a late-August evening, a sampling committee of brews that includes Alexander Hamilton’s Federalist Ale, Thomas Jefferson Tavern Ale, George Washington’s full-bodied porter, positive a spruce brew called Poor Richard’s, made from Ben Franklin’s ain location recipe. While I await transportation of my period-correct supper, savoring the thought of the agelong and chartless roadworthy ahead, I nibble delicious cinnamon-and-pecan biscuits from Tom Jefferson’s ain Monticello look publication and polish disconnected each 4 mini-glasses of beer, promptly ordering a afloat pint of Franklin’s best.
Three hours aft my accomplishment successful Philadelphia, I americium a enactment of 1 but hardly unsocial successful the noisy, candlelit second-floor eating country of historical City Tavern, a spot that claims to beryllium the birthplace of American cuisine.
A fewer feet from wherever I sit, awaiting transportation of their ain suppers, is simply a array with 3 young couples who look to beryllium having a lively solemnisation of relationship and matrimony, offering rowdy toasts to a blushing mates portion a ginger-haired pistillate struggles to support their trivia crippled connected the rails.
“Where and what year,” she calls retired implicit her boisterous tablemates, speechmaking from a crippled card, “were the Articles of Confederation, the nation’s archetypal constitution, created?”
My receptor rises to the question similar a trout to a mayfly. Nobody but me, however, is paying the slightest attention.
I americium yet yielding to my interior eighth grader, hoping to find the occurrence tenders of a forgotten American road earlier clip runs out.
“Earth to people,” the frustrated moderator declares, “are we playing pub trivia oregon not?”
The large chap seated adjacent to her astatine the table, his Penn State shot headdress reversed, makes a remark that produces a burst of laughter and touched pewter mugs. She glances my mode and shrugs.
“Sorry for the noise,” she apologizes. “We’re celebrating a astonishment engagement. You astir apt can’t adjacent bask your publication due to the fact that of us.” She nods toward the paperback resting astatine my elbow.
I guarantee her that speechmaking by eighteenth-century candlelight isn’t my thing.
“Tony and Elise—they’re the 2 cuties astatine the extremity of the table— amazed america this day with quality of their engagement.”
She adds that they are the past of her assemblage assemblage to marry, having met connected trivia nighttime astatine a barroom astatine Penn State thirteen years ago. “The boys played nine lacrosse together. We bash this each fewer years successful the cities wherever we present live.” They’ve convened from Nashville to San Francisco. This twelvemonth it’s Philadelphia, truthful American past and the commencement of ideology is their chosen topic. My caller person sips her achromatic vino and mildly slurs her words. “Every clip we get together, I’m afraid, we look little funny successful trivia and much funny successful conscionable being silly tourists.”
For an instant, I’m tempted to marque a plea for much silliness successful a satellite that seems to beryllium fracturing by the minute. But there’s a effect much relevant. “I judge it’s York, Pennsylvania. November 1777. By the way, the Articles of Confederation contained the archetypal usage of the operation ‘United States of America.’”
She checks her crippled paper and her freckled look lights up, evidently pleased that the lonely aged dude successful the acheronian country of the country knows the reply disconnected the apical of his graying head.
“Correct! How’d you cognize that?”
“Because it happened connected the Great Wagon Road.”
Her eyebrows arch. She scooches her seat person to excavation and tilts forward, truthful we don’t person to outcry arsenic her mates motorboat into immoderate benignant of fraternal combat song. “So, what is the Great Wagon Road?”
She is acold from unsocial successful asking. The Great Wagon Road is astir apt the slightest known historical roadworthy successful America. So, I springiness her the little elevator code I’ve prepared for conscionable specified moments: “It’s the eighteenth century’s backcountry roadworthy that tens of thousands of European settlers traveled to find their spot successful the wilderness of North America, our archetypal migrant highway.”
She gulps her chardonnay, amazed and grinning. “Seriously? That is so cool!” A steadfast manus comes astatine maine successful the candlelight. Gina Sparrow, I learn, hails from Grand Rapids.
“As it happens,” I add, taking her hand, “I’m mounting disconnected time to question it.”
She wonders however agelong the travel volition take. I admit that I person nary clue. The roadworthy stretches much than 8 100 miles, opening connected Market Street successful Philadelphia and ending successful Augusta, Georgia, crossing six contiguous states and immoderate of the astir historical and hallowed landscapes, battlefields, and burying grounds of eastbound America, not to notation colony squares wherever ideology archetypal took basal and bloomed. During its highest years of usage successful the 1750s, I explain, a determined traveler connected horseback could sometimes marque it from Philly to Virginia oregon the Carolinas successful a substance of weeks, though astir traveled by wagon and successful groups for information and often took 2 oregon 3 months to get (provided decent upwind and nary unexpected problems similar flooded stream fords, incorrect turns, abrupt illness, oregon hostile encounters with antheral oregon beast). Many travelers stopped on the mode to remainder and resupply for lengthy periods of time, sometimes taking years to scope their last destinations. My anticipation is to divided the quality and implicit the roadworthy successful conscionable 3 oregon 4 weeks, I archer Gina, though successful information I person nary thought if this clip framework is tenable oregon a romanticist tube dream.
“In that case,” she says with a laugh, “I definite anticipation you person a bully equine and wagon!”
“As a substance of fact, I do. My wagon has 3 100 and 50 horses.” She gives a charming goose honk erstwhile I explicate that I’m traveling successful a vintage 1994 Buick Roadmaster Estate presumption wagon with a 350-horsepower V-8 engine, acquired 10 years agone from an aged retiree successful North Carolina with this precise travel successful mind. The Pearl, arsenic I telephone it, is similar galore things successful America: a awesome of a bygone era, 1 of the past existent iconic presumption wagons that rolled disconnected the enactment earlier General Motors switched to gathering SUVs.
“Is that the 1 with, like, the spot facing backward and fake wood paneling and stuff?” she asks.
“That’s it.”
“Oh, wow! We had 1 similar that erstwhile I was little. My younger member and I fought to the decease implicit that 3rd spot each clip we went connected a vacation.”
Just past a brace of waiters successful assemblage livery and brass-buckled shoes swoops down connected america holding six suppers connected ample trays for Gina’s table. Quickly but carefully, they spot steaming dishes successful beforehand of each subordinate of her party.
“Well,” she says, “I conjecture I should get backmost to my friends. Sorry to interrupt your reading. What’s your publication about, if I whitethorn ask? The Great Wagon Road, I suppose?”
“Indirectly.” I amusement her Susan Cheever’s addictively readable Drinking successful America: Our Secret History, 1 of respective histories, biographies, and works of favourite poets I’ve packed for the road.
Gina tilts guardant and asks if I tin springiness her a “juicy tidbit” astir drinking for the group’s adjacent trivia night, since drinking present seems to beryllium their favourite radical activity.
I notation that the Pilgrims were astir apt legally drunk erstwhile they landed astatine Plymouth Harbor successful 1620, missing their people country of Virginia by hundreds of miles, and lone enactment to Cape Cod Bay’s acold November enactment due to the fact that they’d tally retired of beer.
She looks surprised. “I thought the Pilgrims were religious!” “Very overmuch so. But theirs is simply a communicative of God and bully beer.”
Ignoring her supper, she asks to perceive more. I concisely notation that fermentation made brew harmless to portion from the Middle Ages to the Age of Enlightenment, adjacent suitable for tiny children. As a result, according to Cheever, each man, woman, child, and ship’s mate connected the Mayflower was provisioned a afloat gallon of brew per time for their grueling water crossing.
The large chap adjacent to Gina abruptly leans our way, tuning successful arsenic I notation that aft 3 unspeakable months astatine sea, 1 of the archetypal things the pious Pilgrims did was conception a brewhouse for making caller beer, followed by a tavern and a location of worship, a signifier of colony that established itself crossed New England and the remainder of assemblage America.
“That’s wherefore Ben Franklin said brew is impervious that God loves us, hon,” helium contributes with a rima afloat of something.
“This is Jerry. My husband,” Gina says, stopping conscionable shy of a wifely oculus roll. “We got joined successful April. I don’t deliberation Ben Franklin truly said that, Jerry. You conscionable saw it connected a T-shirt astatine Penn’s Landing.”
Jerry grins. “True, babe. But everyone knows Ben Franklin truly said it.” “He’s going down the Great Wagon Road,” Gina declares matter-of-factly, nodding astatine me. “All the mode to Georgia.”
Jerry, chewing slowly, considers this news. “Never heard of it.”
Gina shakes her head. “It’s only the astir historical roadworthy successful America, Jerry.” He nods. “Yeah? So wherefore you doin’ that?”
The simplest mentation is that I americium yet yielding to my interior eighth grader, hoping to find the occurrence tenders of a forgotten American road earlier clip runs out, though I don’t consciousness the slightest inclination to stock this with Jerry, oregon anyone other for that matter. Six months ago, 2 weeks earlier my planned starting date, a mysterious symptom successful my broadside sent maine to spot Doc Morris for a checkup that led to a astonishment treble country to region some a dodgy gallbladder and a carrot-sized tumor from my little intestines, the archetypal superior aesculapian situation of my life. Time waits for nary man. All that matters now, pursuing respective months of dilatory recovery, is that I’ve been cleared by Doc Morris to deed the road, and not a infinitesimal excessively soon.
Fortunately, Jerry’s plucky bride rises to my rescue.
“Because, Jerry, his radical came down the Wagon Road and household past is wholly freaking blistery close now. Even you should cognize that much.”
In truth, Jerry is acold much funny successful his platter of ale-braised sausage, ail mash, and seasoned German sauerkraut. And who tin blasted him? His supper smells divine. I ordered the aforesaid dish, arsenic it happens, with a broadside of chestnut fritters and corn-fried oysters from Martha Washington’s idiosyncratic cookbook.
Gina gives maine a 2nd steadfast handshake. “Well, golly, it’s been truthful overmuch amusive to speech with you. I anticipation you find tons of chill things connected the Great Wagon Road.”
I convey her for the benignant words and privation she and her merry set of trivial pursuers a agelong and prosperous travel of their own.
*
My prime of City Tavern arsenic a starting constituent is nary accident.
Not lone does it beryllium conscionable 2 abbreviated blocks from the archetypal Great Philadelphia Wagon Road, but it opened for concern successful January 1773, conscionable past the highest years of the Wagon Road’s use. At the time, Philadelphia was the second-largest and astir prosperous municipality successful North America, the 3rd largest successful each of the British empire, and the halfway of assemblage art, culture, and commerce, boasting 20 1000 citizens, ceramic streets illuminated by whale lipid lamps, a college, 3 libraries, and the archetypal infirmary successful the New World. Twenty ships a week arrived astatine its engaged ports connected the Delaware River, releasing hundreds of European immigrants into Philly’s bustling streets, wherever wagons teeming with nutrient cultivated by German migrant farmers southbound and westbound of the metropolis arrived regular done the summertime months.
Funded by fifty-three salient Philadelphians who paid twenty-five pounds sterling to beryllium chartered members and investors, among them a aboriginal politician of Pennsylvania and respective aboriginal signers of the Declaration of Independence, the tavern was considered the finest eating acquisition successful the British colonies. Its expansive opening was accompanied by glowing announcement by the ambitious steadfast of the Pennsylvania Gazette, a sociable polymath named Benjamin Franklin, who noted that the five-story ceramic gathering featured the champion equipped room successful the city, a well-stocked bar, 2 java rooms perfect for backstage conversations, 3 eating rooms, and the second- largest ballroom successful the New World. There were besides 5 lodging rooms and a servants’ quarters for hire.
It became a play gathering spot for overseas dignitaries and members of the First and Second Continental Congresses. Regulars included Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Sam Adams, Dr. Benjamin Rush, George Washington, and Patrick Henry. It was here, arsenic speech of gyration crackled successful the steamy summertime aerial of 1776, that George Washington supposedly met John Adams for the archetypal time, pursuing Adams’s wearying thrust down the King’s Highway from Boston. Adams was peculiarly impressed with City Tavern’s prime of fare. (“A caller welcome,” helium committed to his diary afterward. “As elegant arsenic was ever laid upon a table.”) And adjacent aft the British service took possession of the metropolis successful 1777 and the Congress fled town, it remained the spot to beryllium for Philadelphia’s elites. Its popularity lasted good into the aboriginal nineteenth century, declining lone aft the surrounding vicinity fell into disrepute, causing the erstwhile arrogant constitution to yet unopen its doors. The gathering was utilized arsenic a mercantile speech until occurrence gutted the operation successful 1834, lone to beryllium arsenic a vacant hulk until the gathering was razed 20 years later.
Its seeds of rebirth were sown successful 1948 erstwhile the Truman medication authorized the US Department of the Interior to make an Independence National Historical Park, which would see respective archetypal structures successful the oldest portion of the city. Following twenty-five years of painstaking probe and municipality archaeology, City Tavern was reproduced brick-for-brick successful clip to observe the nation’s bicentennial successful 1976, becoming a fashionable tourer halt for astir 2 decades until it closed doors for a 2nd clip successful 1992.
Two years later, it was resurrected again by an enterprising German migrant named Walter Staib, an award-winning cook who hailed from a household of celebrated cooks and bakers. With an exclusive declaration to service arsenic the sole proprietor of historical City Tavern, Staib researched and developed a revolutionary culinary conception based connected the authenticity of colonial-era cooking. An award-winning cooking amusement connected PBS called A Taste of History soon followed.
“You had 2 irresistible subjects—cooking and American history,” Chef Staib told maine implicit the phone. “No federation connected world tin lucifer the taste diverseness of America, a information beautifully reflected successful the astonishing diverseness of our aboriginal American cuisine. We speech astir workplace to array today—ha! Everything past was fresh, local, and acold much originative than radical of contiguous tin adjacent imagine. The much I traveled and researched, the much I became convinced that we had the accidental to archer the communicative of America done assemblage cooking, a melting cookware of blended traditions and tastes from everyplace beyond our shores. That’s what made City Tavern the archetypal large edifice successful America.”
Trooping downstairs for a nightcap successful the tavern bar, I find myself reasoning astir Staib’s mission, and however it mirrors my own. I, too, had travel to this odyssey done researching frontier American life. The root that rekindled my long-dormant phantasy of uncovering and traveling the Wagon Road of my ancestors had been a folksy, dog-eared, long-out-of-print gem from 1973 called The Great Wagon Road: From Philadelphia to the South by the precocious Williamsburg historiographer Parke Rouse, Jr. that I’d recovered successful a utilized bookshop successful Roanoke successful 2006 portion serving arsenic writer-in-residence astatine Hollins University. Packed with accusation and a schematic drafting that showed the approximate way of the roadworthy from Philadelphia to Georgia, it rapidly became my inspiration, and my bible.
*
Owing to mediocre oregon nonexistent aboriginal record-keeping, historians person ne'er afloat settled connected the precise numbers of America’s archetypal wide migration movement. But astir mostly hold that good northbound of 1 100 1000 migrant travelers made the arduous trek down the Great Wagon Road betwixt the adjacent of the seventeenth period and the commencement of the American Revolution—hearty dreamers who arrived from each corners of occidental Europe successful successive waves ample and small: German Lutherans, English Quakers, Saxony Moravians, and Swiss Mennonites; Scots-Irish Presbyterians and Wesley Methodists; French Huguenots and Dutch adventurers, foundational generations of the world’s archetypal migrant nation.
Not dissimilar refugees from our ain time, the road’s archetypal travelers were life-hardened souls consenting to brave a perilous water crossing to flight a continent ravaged by a thirty-year spiritual war. Fleeing their fractured autochthonal lands, immoderate arrived hoping to physique a New Jerusalem successful the confederate American wilderness. Others came successful hunt of a mythic onshore of beverage and chromatic they’d heard awaited successful the untamed vastness of the North American backcountry.
Many sold everything they owned to money the journey, oregon traveled arsenic indentured servants committed to enactment their mode into a New World life, astir arriving connected the engaged docks of Philadelphia oregon adjacent Delaware enactment fueled by unsighted religion and a willingness to endure immoderate hardships of illness oregon information they mightiness brushwood for the accidental of a caller start. Others near down hard-earned lives arsenic prosperous farmers and skilled artisans, answering an ageless telephone to question greater prosperity successful a spot they’d lone heard wondrous tales about.
Undeterred by uncertainty, they claimed onshore and carved retired farms, planted crops, formed communities and militias, built taverns and raised churches, created log schools and trading posts that grew into crossroad settlements arsenic southbound postulation accrued crossed the turbulent decades of the eighteenth century. Many enactment down roots portion others moved on, restless to find adjacent much land, less people, much freedom, and amended soil. In time, a twelve towns populated the large fertile valleys that laic betwixt the Blue Ridge and the Allegheny Mountains, an Appalachian wilderness stretching from Western Pennsylvania to Georgia, seeding a fledgling nation’s archetypal tender shoots of commerce, politics, religion, education, and industry—providing some a gateway and a staging crushed for an adjacent broader opening of the lands beyond the Appalachian range, into the Golden West itself.
A longtime person named Tom Sears, an adept connected Southern assemblage architecture and furniture, erstwhile described the Great Wagon Road to maine arsenic “America’s archetypal exertion road and Fertile Crescent of American democracy—essentially the roadworthy that made America.” Everything from the Conestoga wagon to aboriginal machine processing was developed on it. As the federation grew, villages and towns and cities of the Wagon Road became, successful effect, the archetypal incubators of America’s aboriginal concern age.
In my imagination, I astir heard the creaking hinges and grinding complaints of workplace wagons inching crossed the shallow fording spot.
By my unsmooth count, much than a twelve colleges and universities had their beginnings connected oregon adjacent the Great Wagon Road, elemental affairs typically begun by Presbyterian preachers who maintained that Christian acquisition was adjacent to godliness. Equally important to the evolving culture, technology, and commerce was the flood of German artisans and farmers who brought refined farming techniques and Old World craftsmanship to the beating bosom of a chaotic frontier, resulting successful revolutionary agriculture and immoderate of the world’s finest furniture, decorative arts, and metallic craftsmanship. Along with their precocious farming skills, Wagon Road Germans besides imported their emotion of communal ineffable hymns and the euphony of Haydn and Bach, portion their feisty autarkic Scots-Irish counterparts brought Old World balladry and communicative people song, dance, and poetry, and a God-given accomplishment for warring and making fantabulous maize whiskey.
In time, their soulful fiddle euphony took imperishable basal successful the shaded hollers of Appalachia, blending with African enslaved songs to springiness commencement to the archetypal American philharmonic forms of Southern gospel, bluegrass, and state music; Johnny Cash’s and June Carter’s ancestors were travelers of the Great Wagon Road. So were the forebears of Bill Monroe, the Father of Bluegrass, and Nashville songbirds Patsy Cline, Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson, and a 1000 different sons and daughters of today’s state euphony scene.
And they were not the lone ones: Joe Wilson, America’s starring roots-music historian, observed that “a 4th of Americans contiguous person an ancestor who traveled the Great Wagon Road. You tin inactive spot traces of it, a way crossed precocious ridges, a trough done piney woods, guarded by chaotic turkey and chipmunks, a roadworthy that was successful usage for a century—the astir important roadworthy successful American history.”
Given the road’s strategical value connected the borderline of the contested occidental frontier, it’s nary enigma wherefore 3 large North American wars happened connected oregon adjacent it, including the aboriginal days of the bloody French and Indian struggle and pivotal Revolutionary War encounters astatine Camden, Kings Mountain, Cowpens, and Guilford Courthouse.
Eighty years on, the Confederacy’s doomed Valley of Virginia campaigns followed the roadworthy northbound to the pivotal bloodbaths of Antietam and Gettysburg, bold strikes meant to unit an extremity to the warfare successful the South’s favor; instead, they became sidesplitting fields that turned the tide successful favour of the Union. In November 1863, Abraham Lincoln—whose gramps settled connected a homestead conscionable disconnected the Wagon Road northbound of Harrisonburg, Virginia—gave his Gettysburg Address from the Soldiers’ National Cemetery overlooking an aboriginal subdivision of the Great Wagon Road.
Half a twelve of America’s presidents, successful fact, grew up connected oregon adjacent it, including a young George Washington, who began his subject work arsenic an Indian scout on the roadworthy and aboriginal lost—then won—his archetypal elected bureau successful the colony of Winchester. Thomas Jefferson, whose daddy, Peter Jefferson, helped William & Mary mathematician Joshua Fry survey and officially sanction the “Great Waggon Road” connected a representation from Philadelphia to North Carolina’s Yadkin River successful 1753, traveled the roadworthy extensively passim his life, and adjacent owned the spectacular Natural Bridge that the Great Wagon Road traversed.
Fellow Virginian James Madison, Andrew Jackson, James Polk, and Woodrow Wilson each had birthright connections, portion Zachary Taylor and Andrew Johnson traveled it extensively passim their aboriginal careers successful work to warfare and government.
Equally important to the evolving communicative of a young federation were legendary people figures similar Daniel Boone, who astatine property sixteen followed the Wagon Road with his household to North Carolina’s fertile Yadkin Valley, and aboriginal took the roadworthy backmost to Big Lick (today’s Roanoke) earlier blazing the Wilderness Road done the Cumberland Gap to the unsettled territories of Kentucky and Ohio; likewise, icons Meriwether Lewis, David Crockett, Molly Pitcher, Susanna Wright, General Daniel Morgan, General Nathanael Greene, Francis Marion, Sam Houston, Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, “Light-Horse” Harry Lee, and his lad Robert E. Lee were portion of the romanticist saga of the Great Wagon Road.
*
From the outset of my adventure, the starring question—echoing the 1 I enactment to my begetter by the Haw River successful 1966—was whether the archetypal way of the roadworthy of my ancestors could someway beryllium determined aft the Great Road efficaciously accomplished its ain vanishing enactment with the coming of the railroads and ever-expanding towns that created caller and improved highways for a federation connected the move.
During the aboriginal days of my carnal recovery, this question was answered by a brace of sources from my ain backyard.
The archetypal was an aged person and distinguished Southern historiographer and adept connected North Carolina’s historical backcountry roads named Charles Rodenbough, who invited maine to luncheon aft proceeding from a communal person astir my planned Wagon Road odyssey.
It was Charlie who pointed retired that involvement successful the Great Wagon Road had grown dramatically successful caller years acknowledgment to the enactment of a tiny service of assemblage historians, authorities archaeologists, Southern genealogists, authorities and section humanities associations, preservationists, depository curators, and adjacent mundane past nuts similar me. “As a result,” said he, “the archetypal way of the roadworthy has been beauteous good determined and you tin travel it. It’s astir apt the astir important—but slightest known—old roadworthy successful America, 1 that shaped the values and civilization of this country. There are radical on the roadworthy contiguous who are keeping its stories alive. How breathtaking that you program to find them and perceive to those stories.”
But helium had 1 caveat: “Keep successful caput that the Great Wagon Road didn’t question successful a consecutive line. It besides had respective branches, which mightiness be confusing. Don’t beryllium amazed if you get mislaid conscionable similar galore of the road’s archetypal travelers undoubtedly did. That volition astir apt beryllium fractional the fun.”
It was Charlie who besides showed maine a transcript of the 1753 Frye-Jefferson representation that delineated the archetypal way of the roadworthy to precocious North Carolina, and explained that if I started my “pilgrimage”—his word—by venturing up Sandy Ridge Road conscionable westbound of Greensboro to the Virginia line, I would yet travel to a tiny meadow by the South Mayo River where, arsenic helium enactment it, “you volition spot the spot wherever your Scottish ancestors crossed into North Carolina.”
A fewer days later, arsenic wintertime slipped into spring, connected a acold day threatening snow, my canine Mulligan and I drove up Sandy Ridge Road to the Virginia authorities enactment and recovered the spot Charlie had described. Ice glittered successful the South Mayo River’s shallows. Wading up of maine crossed a slippery support of submerged rock, Mully, my aging flat-haired retriever, dropped her chemoreceptor and charged up the acold bank, portion I recovered myself staring astatine a wide gully ascending the bare wintertime woods, intelligibly the sunken remains of a forgotten road. A shiver ran done maine that had small to bash with the acold of the afternoon. In my imagination, I astir heard the creaking hinges and grinding complaints of workplace wagons inching crossed the shallow fording spot.
I followed Mully a 4th of a mile up that darkened leaf-strewn gully earlier turning backmost successful a abrupt downpour of sleet, feeling the road’s gravitational propulsion similar ne'er before.
Several weeks later, my workfellow connected the unit of O. Henry magazine, elder exertion Nancy Oakley, walked into my bureau and placed an point from the magazine’s events calendar connected my desk. “Talk astir the manus of providence,” she said with a grin.
It was an announcement from the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts (MESDA) successful Old Salem of an upcoming one-day seminar connected the furnishings and decorative arts of the Great Wagon Road.
Nancy promptly enactment maine successful interaction with her person Robert Leath, MESDA’s manager of collections, who graciously invited maine to beryllium successful connected the seminar with a fractional twelve experts connected Southern furnishings and decorative arts, respective of whom proved to beryllium incomparable sources up and down the Wagon Road, including Alexandra Kirtley of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, who gave me her paper and invited maine to travel spot her erstwhile I arrived successful Philly to commencement my travel down the road.
Without a doubt, these generous folks, who appeared serendipitously during my summer-long recovery, fired up my imaginativeness and acceptable maine connected the roadworthy of my ancestors with precocious expectations.
__________________________________
From The Road That Made America: A Modern Pilgrim’s Journey connected the Great Wagon Road by James Dodson. Copyright © 2025. Available from Avid Reader Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster.
