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 The following are a few selections from my books that tell the story of
General Braddock's march through Pennsylvania on his way to Fort Duquesne but
in actuality to a massacre and complete debacle for the British. Please note the spelling, punctuation, and grammar are theirs, not mine.
Many of these are in Adobe Acrobat format. Click here to download the free Acrobat Reader software. Most of the links that are not Acrobat files are pop-ups. Please turn off your pop-up blockers if you want to read these stories.
Click here to view a map of the route they took.
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Braddock to Newcastle (Thomas Pelham-Holles, Duke of Newcastle), March 20, from Williamsburgh, VA
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A letter from Braddock shortly after his arrival, describing the state of affairs as he finds them and orders he has given. |
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Braddock to Robert Napier, April 19, from Alexandria, VA
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A letter in which Braddock talks of his plans, including the great amount of baggage he expects to take along and the foreseen problems feeding the animals; discussions with Shirley about Sir William Johnson, and much more about plans against French encroachments. |
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Braddock to Shirley, June 9, from Fort Cumberland |
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An interesting side-fact that Braddock must dismiss some of wives of his soldiers and send them into Shirley's care, naming each woman. Apparantly, even after this, there was perhaps a couple of dozen women on the march. |
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Journal Entry by a British officer, June 10 |
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Interesting description of the baggage train and associate difficulties, plus a description of Fort Cumberland. |
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Sir John St. Clair to Robert Napier, June 13, from the Little Meadows
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From Sir John St. Clair (pronounced sinclair) describing what has occurred in initial road-building, and plans for moving all his people across the Allegheny mountains of PA. |
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Orme, July 8 |
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Orme's decription of how they decided to cross the Monongahela River. |
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Orme to Robert Napier, July 18, from Fort Cumberland
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Orme's description of the battle and subsequent retreat. |
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Sinclair to Robert Napier, July 22, from Wills Creek
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Sir John St. Clair's telling of the battle and retreat. |
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Harry Gordon to ?, July 23, from Wills Creek
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Another first-hand version of the battle and retreat. |
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Anonymous letter, July 25, From Will's Creek
Or, if you have high bandwidth, read the
5Mb pdf version.
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A long and sometimes rambling letter full of back-biting and derogitory statements about the expedition and certain people in particular (possibly all true, but we will never know!). Throughout are great descriptions about what happened during the campaign which are not mentioned elsewhere. It's long, but I encourage you to stick with it. |
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From Montcalm and Wolfe |
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The complete retelling by Francis Parkman including some (but not all) of the details in the above stories. This section from Montcalm and Wolfe contains my most favorite passage of his, which I've quoted elsewhere on this website. |
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