Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 10).djvu/26

26 President Jefferson appointed Thomas Moore of Maryland, Joseph Kerr of Ohio, and Eli Williams of Maryland commissioners. Their first report was presented December 30, 1806, as follows:

"The commissioners, acting by appointment under the law of Congress, entitled, 'An act to regulate the laying out and making a road from Cumberland in the State of Maryland, to the State of Ohio,' beg leave to report to the President of the United States, and to premise that the duties imposed by the law became a work of greater magnitude, and a task much more arduous, than was conceived before entering upon it; from which circumstance the commissioners did not allow themselves sufficient time for the performance of it before the severity of the weather obliged them to retire from it, which was the case in the first week of the present month (December). That, not having fully accomplished their work, they are unable fully to report a discharge of all the duties enjoined by the law; but as the most material and principal part has been performed, and as a communication of the progress