Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 12).djvu/68



YELLOW letter, almost in tatters, lies before me written by one Samuel Allen to his father, Mr. Jason Allen of Montville, New London County, Connecticut, from Bellville, Virginia, November 15, 1796. Bellville is in Wood County, West Virginia, eighteen miles by the Ohio River from Parkersburg.

This letter, describing a journey from Alexandria and Cumberland to the Ohio by way of "broadaggs [Braddock's] old road," gives a picture of certain of the more pathetic phases of the typical emigrant's experience unequaled by any account we have met in print. Incidentally, there is included a mention of the condition of the road and, what is of more interest,