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Archiver > BRETHREN > 1998-09 > 0906812642


From: Merle Rummel <>
Subject: Re: more migration routes
Date: Sat, 26 Sep 1998 08:24:02 -0400


>An early BURNS ancestor of mine migrated from ?Northumberland Co., PA, to
Red Holes, Bath County, VA, between 1781 and 1791. What might have been his
family's route?
>
>Thanks--Linda Beher
>
My mother's maiden name was Burns --(a Virginia Burns -plantation near
Shepherdstown WVA) -desc of Uncle of Bobby Burns of Scotland.

The migration to and from Northumberland Co was up and down the Susquehanna
(OK -for you purists --there were a couple main trails over the ridge from
Reading and from Tulpehocken -but they don't apply here).

>From York Co PA, Michael Danner had opened the Monocacy Road (to Hanover,
to Taneytown MD), going down the Monocacy River to near Frederick MD, where
they crossed the South Mt to the Antietam, crossed the Potomac at Harpers
Ferry, or above.

The main (only) route down the Valley of Virginia was the Great Valley
Road, or Great Wagon Road, which was the old Great Warrior's Path of the
Iroquoise. At Harrisonburg, or Stanton, or Lexington they would have
crossed the ridge into the (Back Creek?) Valley.

An alternate route would have been to follow Braddock's Road to Cumberland
MD and come down the South Branch of the Potomac.

This is Emmert Bittinger's area - his book, Allegheny Passage -and I didn't
go in to Earlham College to pick it up again to see what it might say.

OR -they could have dropped down into the Juniata Valley and come down
through Morrison's Cove to the Conococheague or to Cumberland MD.
(Northumberland Co PA was HUGE in those days --really -almost the entire NE
quarter of the state -going over beyond State College, and up to the New
York line.)

Were they Brethren? (I don't know of any Brethren Burns -till my
grandmother) I'm finding quite an early group of Brethren settlers in
Northumberland Co -almost as many, and as early, as Morrison's Cove.

Merle C Rummel
Church Historian

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