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Updated: May 16, 2025
"FORT CUMBERLAND, 18 July, 1755. "To Governor Dinwiddie: "HONBL. SIR As I am favored with an opportunity, I should think myself inexcusable was I to omit giving you some account of our late Engagement with the French on the Monongahela, the 9th instant.
But other officers, with stronger forces, were expected to follow close behind. Late in May the little army reached the valley of the Monongahela, and began to build a fort at a place called Great Meadows. By this time the French and Indians were aroused, and hundreds of them were hurrying forward to defend the Ohio Country from the English.
And so, sorrowfully bidding my friends good-by, away we went upon the sorry trail of captivity, arriving in due time at Fort Du Quesne, at the junction of the Ohio and the Monongahela, where I was courteously treated. There I bettered my French and made the acquaintance of some ladies from Quebec city, who took pains to help me with their language.
Governor Dennison, in close correspondence with the leading loyalists, had been urging McClellan to cross the Ohio to protect and encourage the loyal men, when on the 26th of May news came that the Secessionists had taken the initiative, and that some bridges had been burned on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad a little west of Grafton, the crossing of the Monongahela River where the two western branches of the road unite as they come from Wheeling and Parkersburg.
There was Lieutenant Thomas Waggoner, whom I was to know so well a year later. And above all, there was Ensign Carolus Gustavus de Spiltdorph, a quiet, unassuming fellow, but brave as a lion, who lies to-day in an unmarked grave on the bank of the Monongahela.
The current of the Monongahela, as it flowed from the south, covered with mists rising into the wintry air, for the temperature was but a few degrees above zero, had not a particle of ice upon its turbid bosom.
The Richmond was so badly injured that she was compelled to turn down stream, having suffered a loss of three killed and fifteen wounded, while the Monongahela had six killed and twenty-one wounded before she was able to wrench herself loose from where she had grounded and drift out of range.
So far as we could see down the Monongahela, the air was thick with the smoke of glowing chimneys, and the pulsating whang of steel-making plants and rolling-mills made the air tremble. The view up the "Yough" was more inviting; so, with oars and paddle firmly set, we turned off our course and lustily pulled against the strong current of the tributary.
He had found the inner country to the right of the river and below the Yough too rough and hilly for his march, hence had turned back toward the Monongahela, fording the river to take advantage of the less difficult bottom. Some four miles below this first crossing, hills reapproach the left bank, till the bottom ceases; the right thenceforth becomes the more favorable side for marching.
Placing his slaves in the charge of one of their number, a mulatto man who had already made the journey to Illinois with his master, he started them in wagons on their long journey in April, 1819, over the Alleghany Mountains to a point on the Monongahela River.
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