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Rh straightening and improving it as early as 1795; acts of a similar nature were also passed in 1798 and 1802.

A pilgrim who passed westward with his family over Braddock's Road in 1796 leaves us some interesting details concerning the journey in a letter written from Western Virginia after his arrival in the "Monongahela Country" in the fall of that year. Arriving at Alexandria by boat from Connecticut the party found that it was less expensive and safer to begin land carriage there than to ascend the Potomac further. They then pursued one of the routes of Braddock's army to Cumberland and the Braddock Road from that point to Laurel Hill. The price paid for hauling their goods from Alexandria to Morgantown (now West Virginia) was thirty-two shillings and sixpence per hundred-weight "of women and goods (freight)"—the men "all walked the whole of the way." Crossing "the blue Mountain the Monongehaly & the Lorral Mountains we found the roads to be verry bad."

It is difficult to say when Braddock's