February 27, 2023 • 45 mins
Send us a textIn this first episode of Season 3, James and Jerry journey to Mineral County, West Virginia. Why Mineral County? This is where the city of Fort Ashby is located and home to the Ashby's Fort Museum. After taking in this historical location built during the French and Indian War, we had the fantastic opportunity to interview Randy Crane who is a volunteer curator for the museum. What we found out on our visit was, although it is a small-town museum, it provides a wealth of information to any and all who visit. For more information about the location, hours of operation, and directions we have attached their website. Simply click this link for quick access to their site: Fort Ashby.Support the show
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
All right, Welcome back, every one. It's another edition of
West Virginia Talk with James and Jerry. I'm James, I'm Jerry,
and we're in a special little town in West Virginia today,
Fort Ashby, and we're at Ashby's Fort and we're here
with Randy Crane, curator of the Fort Museum, and the
friends of Fort Ashby.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Yeah, yeah, thank you for having me.
Speaker 3 (00:19):
Absolutely, thank you for being on for us.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Sure.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
So this fort was built in seventeen fifty five. Who
gave the orders to build.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
This a man you might know the name of George Washington.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
George Washington, the very first president, famous general.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
That's incredible to me, absolutely incredible.
Speaker 4 (00:36):
That's something within our state was directed due to the
fact that a former president he gave you all for.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Yeah, he spent a lot of time in this area.
In fact, when he was sixteen, he was an apprentice
to learn how to become a surveyor and he surveyed
the very property we're sitting on. So wow, So he
was very familiar with it, and I think that's one
of the reasons why he designated this to be a
spot for one of the first two forts to be
built our sister fort Fort Cock, which is located in Headsville,
(01:09):
which is just about twelve miles from here. He gave
the order for that one as well.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Okay, so why did he give the orders to build
a fort specifically where we are.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Well, this was a few months after Braddock's defeat, which
was English General Edward Braddock came over with a pretty
sizable army from Great Britain and the idea was to
take his army to Fort Duquine, which is in modern
day Pittsburgh and capture that fort because it was a
(01:41):
really strategic area for both the French and the English.
So Braddock went up there and suffered a disastrous defeat,
just phenomenally lopsided. He lost close to nine hundred men
and French and English lost something in the twenty So anyway,
(02:02):
Washington was along on that battle as an aid to
General Braddock. He survived, obviously, and led everybody back. There
weren't that many to lead back, unfortunately, but at least
unfortunately for the English. And shortly after that he was
made commander of the Virginia Regiment by the governor. He
(02:22):
was only twenty two at the time, or twenty three,
But can you imagine being that young and being with
that kind of responsibility. So what they wanted to do
was erect fifty five forts or a string of forts
from the Maryland border all the way down to North Carolina.
This was part of Virginia back at that time, and
(02:45):
so this was their frontier. Definitely, I really didn't go
much further west. I mean, the state did, but they're
not people wise. So they wanted to protect the frontier
until they could figure out whether another army was going
to come over, or whether they had to do it themselves,
or what the story was. So they this was a
(03:05):
defensive fort, as all of the string of forts were
that were built.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
So there was there were a lot of forts from
the French Indian War in this area. How close were
we to New France.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
Well, we're Canada as we call it today. Ah, if
you're traveling on foot, it's it's probably or even if
you're traveling on horseback, you're you're talking a couple of
weeks at least, you know, and the border is a
little fluid. Uh if you go due north from here
and uh follow the shores of Lake Erie, you'll run
(03:41):
into Canada pretty quickly. It was pretty Wild territory back
then all Indian nominated.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
So New France wasn't near here, No, no, okay. So
the Indians and the French, how many times did they
attack this fort.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
So the Indians were the primary of opponents in this
part of the French and Indian War in this region.
And there was a Delaware Indian war chief, Bemino, who
just prior to the fort being built, he attacked all
the settlements along Patterson Creek and all the way up
(04:17):
to Headsville, which is where the second fort was built
as well. Those were all the settlements that Washington had
surveyed and laid out, and later people had built on them.
And then in the spring of the next year, spring
of seventeen fifty six, in April, Bemino came back and
demanded that Ashby surrender his fort. But Ashby stood up
(04:39):
to him and said, no, I'll fight you for it,
but I'm not going to just give it to you.
And they went back and forth a couple of times,
and they both knew that Bemino had no chance attacking
from the outside of a well defended fort, even though
he claimed he had five hundred but that was an exaggeration.
He really had. He probably had two to three hundred
men with him, which is sizeable, especially compared to thirty
(05:01):
two men at Ashby had. But Ashby was behind a
wooden fort, and you know, Bemino's men were out out
in the open. It was very open too, because all
the trees had been cut down to build the fort
and feed the fire and so forth. So it wouldn't
have been a fair fight. In fact, statistically he would
not have won it all Bemino. So Ashby brought out
(05:23):
a dram of rum. They both drank to each other,
and then off Bemino went. And it's kind of interesting.
He went a few miles east of here. He followed
Patterson Creek and he found a supply fort that was
located there at the time that was really for Fort Cumberland.
Fort Cumberland had outgrown its walls and they needed to
(05:46):
store it though, and so they built that little fort
right on the Ptomac River, and they just if they
needed anything, they just brought it back on a barge.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
Was that fort?
Speaker 2 (05:56):
Yes? Exactly? Very good.
Speaker 4 (06:00):
Did we cover how the fort got his name, how
it became Fort Ashby?
Speaker 1 (06:03):
No quick question though? Before that? How long did it
take to build it. Ah, no more than six weeks,
six weeks to build the entire thing.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
Which is incredible. Washington ordered a fort built that had
one hundred foot curtain walls, which are the walls in
between the bastions, which is a pretty sizable fort. When
we did archaeology here, we discovered that the walls, the
curtain walls, are only thirty three feet long, so a
third of the length that Washington had ordered. The bastions
(06:35):
were still large, though in relative scale, So that brought
up a bunch of questions up. Why did they make
it so much smaller? Well, I think the obvious. There's
two obvious reasons. They started building this in late October
of seventeen fifty five. Winter was coming and they didn't
want to be trying to dig trenches and frozen ground
(06:57):
snow coming down on them. It's just a bad time
a year to try to build a fort. They only
had thirty two men, so just digging enough dirt to
fill the bastions, they only had probably three or four
shovels amongst them. It would have taken months to do that.
You have to remember there's no John Deer tractors or
(07:18):
anything like that. It's just pure manpower and shovels and picks.
So they came up with a brilliant idea. They made
the interior of the fort much smaller, which would have
eliminated the possibility of them building barracks or officers quarters.
(07:38):
They did manage to put the powder magazine in there,
but what they did it was novel at the time.
Instead of filling the bastions with dirt, and they would
fill those with dirt so that they had a platform
to stand on so they could shoot out over the walls,
which were twelve to fifteen feet high. So instead of
(07:59):
doing that, they said, it's just we'll put in a
central wall and then we'll just cut planks and lay
them across and make a shooting platform, and then that
will give us a ceiling. They've already got the walls,
so you've got you know, it's rough, but it's a
good quarters for men to sleep in. In fact, it
(08:19):
gave them so much space that they didn't need any
buildings at all on the inside of the fort. They
ended up putting the powder magazine in the fourth bastion
along with their trash pit. We just had archaeology on
that done last summer, and that was great. You wouldn't
think a trash pit would be that much fun, but
that's where you find all kinds of goodies.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
Men seventeen hundreds trash maybe interesting.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
Oh, absolutely, But it told us a lot about how
they lived and what they used, you know, just little
things like the type of dishes and glassware and the
types of things they ate. We found different animal bones,
so that gives you a good clue of what they
were eating. They actually ate pretty well. Washington supplied them
(09:02):
with one hundred head of cattle at the beginning of
seventeen fifty five. That's going to last them a while.
I also gave them a lot of flour so they
could make bread or biscuits or heart attack or what
have you.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
They had to have molasses, right, that was a staple then, right.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Oh yeah, and rum and there's some funny stories about
that if you want me to go there. But they
had plenty to eat. They also supplemented that with deer,
and we found there's turkey and rabbit and all kinds
of things. So they would go out and hunt and
find things on the land. And since these plantations had
(09:42):
just been destroyed, they probably were able to get some
crops or some things to eat from that as.
Speaker 3 (09:48):
Well some residual from the occupants.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
Right.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
Jerry asked earlier about the name the namesake.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
Sure, Ashby. Well, it was named after John Ashby. He
was the captain of this fort. And that was pretty
common when Washington wrote his letters. And we're so grateful
for those, because we wouldn't know hardly anything about this
fort without his letters. But he would write to all
of his commanders, and he would then later write letters
(10:16):
to other people saying, oh, Ashby's fort did this, Edwards
Fort did that, And they're all named after usually the
captains that were commanding them.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
Now, his wife lived with him, right.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
She sure did, and she was a pistol apparently. So
they got the fort built by the first of December
of seventeen fifty five. Before the end of the month,
George Washington wrote a pretty scurrilous or nasty letter to
John admonishing him for the behavior of his wife selling
(10:53):
Rum to the men. Oh geez, yeah, And you have
to put everything in context. Rum was a pretty big
state for everybody back then, not just the military, but now,
if you lived in a place like Williamsburg, Virginia and
you had a well, you could drink the water, and
they knew that it was safe. They knew also that
if you drank water out of a stream or a river,
(11:15):
it was a gamble, you know. The Paris Now they
didn't know why. They didn't know about germs and things
like that.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
They didn't know about boiling it too.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
Right, So if you just drank out of the river,
chances are you're gonna pay for it, right right. So
so to work with that, the population as a whole
was drinking alcohol. Now a lot of it was watered down.
For example, in the military, they would issue rum that
(11:47):
was called grog. Well, grog is rum that's watered down.
So it gave them something to drink, but it didn't
impair them. That doesn't mean that some soldiers didn't go
out of their way to getting paired, just like people
do today, I suppose. And it seemed like James's mission
was to help them get impaired because she was selling
(12:08):
them straight rum. Washington didn't appreciate that. He was a
pretty stickler, pretty severe in terms of discipline, even though
he was young, And maybe that's because he was young.
He didn't want things to get out of hand with
his own troops, so he insisted that she stopped selling rum,
(12:28):
and apparently she was also the sewer of sedition in
Washington's words, which means that men were not happy here
at Fort Ashby, and a lot of them deserted. Now,
they didn't desert to go home because they didn't like
the war. They knocked on the doors of other forts
(12:49):
in the area and asked if they could serve there.
And that tells me that between the two of them,
John and Jane Ashby, there wasn't very good leadership and
were very good discipline. So it's interesting I don't from
everything that I've been able to read, which isn't much
because we wish there would be so much more information,
(13:09):
but he did not keep a diary, so much of
most of what we get is through Washington's letters.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
While you're speaking, I keep looking around the walls and
just everything on the inside of this it's original, right.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
So the building that we're sitting in right now is
a barracks building for what we believe is the third
fort that was built on the site. And we determine
that because we did some dendro chronology on the walls,
which is a pretty fancy word for drilling a hole
through the logs in the log building and that gives
(13:46):
you a core that shows the tree rings. And what
the scientists do is they compare those tree rings to
known trees from that time period that are in this area.
It's important that they compare something that's similar, and they
the dendro chronologist was able to determine that these logs
(14:06):
were all cut down in the fall of seventeen eighty three.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
Wow, they got it to the sea to the season.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
Which amazed me too. I'm glad you've picked up on
that because that's pretty accurate. So this was built really
at the tail end of the Revolutionary War. We don't
think it was built for the Revolutionary War, we believe,
although we're searching for more documentation, but we believe that
it was because of the continuing Indian wars.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
Gotcha, that were in this area.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
This was still the wild frontier of at the time
the United States.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
Now, you mentioned Delaware, but they weren't the only tribe, right.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
Correct, There were Delaware and Shawnee were the predominant Indians
in this area at that time. Delaware Indians actually originated
in Delaware and southeast Pennsylvania, New Jersey in that area,
but they were pushed out with the you know, colonization
of those colonies and ended up in this area. Prior
(15:05):
to the seventeen fifties, they kind of were pushed out
of this area as well. I mentioned Bemino earlier. He
was that Delaware Indian War chief. He actually lived nearby.
He lived before the French and Indian War. He lived
along the south branch of the Potomac.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
Let me ask you something real quick, because you triggered
a memory when you said Chawney and Delaware. Weren't they
the two tribes that fought at the base of Hanging
Rock going towards Romney? Were they the two tribes that
fought there?
Speaker 2 (15:37):
Believed they were?
Speaker 1 (15:38):
Okay and so. But Bemino wasn't from that spot.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
No, well no, he he lived close to the trough,
so it's not far, oh, okay, not far. But he
was all by himself and he got along with his
English neighbors. There weren't that many people in that area,
but he got along with them, no problem at all.
But once the war started, all Indian tribes had to
(16:05):
decide who they you know, were they going to align
with someone with one of the powers of the British
or the French. Most of them did, and most of
them aligned with the French prior to the war. They
got along with both to some degree, but at the
same time the English colonials were pushing westward. They wanted land.
(16:27):
The French really didn't want the land as much. They
just wanted to trade with the Indians. The Indians had
access to something as valuable as oil or gold today,
and that was fur, and they would send the fur
back to Europe because the Europeans had hunted out almost
all of the fur that was already there. They used
(16:47):
the fur for clothing, for hats, for blankets, things to
keep warm.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
So the French were only intrusive to where they wanted
what was on the land. But the British wanted both right.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
And the Indians were happy to trade fur because they
in return they would get European goods that they couldn't
make themselves, mostly metal things, axes and knives and guns.
And so everybody thinks, oh, the Indians just shot bows
and arrows. Well they did, but they also had they
had just the same weapons that the British and the
(17:22):
French did so they were not any weaker in that regard.
They had traded things to get those items.
Speaker 4 (17:30):
Now I've noticed, like I said, inside this museum here
that you have a lot of mannequins stationed. Can you
tell us a little bit about the mannequin displays that
you have what people will see if they come sure.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
In this building. It was important to us to tell
the stories of some of the people that were involved here.
We didn't want to just make it a boring history
lesson of dates and numbers. You know, so many people
died or some whatever. I mean, that's important, but we
wanted to tell a little bit about the people themselves
that were here. So we have mannequins that represent Bemino
(18:05):
because he was an important part of this story, and
he's kind of scary looking. He's got his war pain
on and he looks pretty fierce, and that really, you know,
especially for kids, that helps tell the story and they
ask a lot of questions, which is great because we
want to share that information. We have displays of John
and Jane Ashby and not just them, and we tell
(18:28):
the stories but also the clothing that they wore. They
were pretty well to do. They weren't the elite in
the colonies, but they were just below that level. They
had money, so they wore terrific clothes and they had,
you know, all that you could really ask for, especially
out here. And then right behind me here is Daniel Morgan.
(18:50):
He's an incredibly important piece of history in general, not
just in the French and Indian War, but later he
became a great general during the Revolution, had a vital
part of helping with the battle at Saratoga, and his
tactics were so cool because he had picked up while
he was here during the French and Indian War. He
(19:13):
watched the Indians and what they did and which was
so different from how the Europeans or the colonies who
were Europeans really they just moved over here. But the
English and the French would fight in big, long lines
and point guns at each other in a field somewhere,
and the Indians kind of laughed at that. They're like,
(19:34):
why do you want to kill each other and know
that you're going to die. They preferred to hide behind
a tree and take a shot and then run to
another tree and take another shot, which today seems really
obvious common sense, but back then, you know, it was
part of tradition and part of valor and honor and
(19:55):
stuff like that.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
But anyway, right, it was improperty do it. And the
Revolutionary War one of the bigger reasons why we overcame
the British was guerrilla warfare, which they frowned upon.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
Right, wow, a good example Daniel Morgan using those tactics
and now being in power. First everybody in his regiment
had to have a rifle. Well, the vast majority of
troops back in the Revolutionary War did not have a rifle.
They had muskets. Now, what's the difference. Well, a musket
is sort of like a shotgun, So when the ball
(20:31):
goes down the barrel, it kind of bounces around and
whatever direction it's going when it leaves the barrel, that's
that's where that ball is.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
Going, almost like a knuckleball pitch, right, So not really accurately.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
We don't even aim a musket. You just pointed in
the general direction and hope it hits something. Now, a rifle,
the only difference between a rifle and a musket is
the rifle riflings.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
It's got like a helix, Yeah, a little bit twist.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
That's in the inside of the barrel. It spins the
ball so that centrifugal force keeps it spinning even after
it leaves the barrel.
Speaker 1 (21:06):
I'm going to make a really bad comparison, kind of
like fletchings on an arrow. It would cause it to spin, Yes,
and it would be more true.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
Yes, exactly.
Speaker 3 (21:16):
So.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
The range of a musket was typically under sixty yards.
The range of a rifle was three to four hundred yards,
a much much greater capability. So all of his men
and he wouldn't even even if you had a rifle,
Morgan wouldn't necessarily take you. He would go out he
(21:39):
would recruit people, usually at taverns, and he would go
out back and he would set up a target and
he would have the men shoot at targets. He would
only take the ones who could really shoot.
Speaker 4 (21:50):
So.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
That gave him one advantage. The second advantage was something
that drove George Washington crazy. He would go around the
flank of the British and then have his men start
picking off officers. Well, that just wasn't done back then.
That was just cruel and not gentlemanly at all. But
(22:15):
Washington put up with it because Morgan was so effective.
If you pick off all the officers. The men were
trained to listen to the officers. If they weren't there,
they didn't know what to do. It's very different than
today's army.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
Right, So it wasn't just because they were high ranking officers.
Without officers, there was no order.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
That's right, and so all the inevitably if that happened,
the men all turned and ran. So they were very
victorious at that battle and most of the battles that
he was involved with. He took a break in the
middle of the war, went home. He was tired, but
they called him back and he came and he was
(22:56):
sent down south to battle Banister Tarlton, who was giving
the South fits. Tarleton was kind of doing what the
Indians do too. He was burning homes and taking anything
of value away from the homes, burning everything in sight.
But he met his match with Morgan. Morgan planned he
(23:20):
was kind of leading him along, and he led him
to this place called cow pens, and it was literally
because it was for cattle, but the landscape was such
that there were hills and dales and spots where you
could hide divisions of men without being seen. So he
(23:43):
sort of brought Tarleton over a hill down into a
swale where there were men on either side that just
demolished his army to the point where he had to retreat,
taking the few men that he had left. They captured
over eight hundred as well, so it was a huge
defeat and they retreated to Yorktown and you know the
(24:05):
rest of the story after that.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
Yeah, So, got a question. It's a multi faceted question,
so bear with me. Jerry mentioned like the clothe the
avatars in here and who they are. Yes, what gets
my heart fluttering is the relics that you have on display.
So are the relics actual items found around the ford
(24:26):
through archaeology or they donated or both a.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
Little bit of both. The vast majority we're found here.
We have all kinds of really cool things available, lots
of musket balls and flints and pieces of guns and
glassware and pottery and things that help tell the story
of how they lived life inside of a fort. We
(24:51):
also have had things donated. We have a beautiful fowler
a musket. It's a smooth boar that was donated to
us and it's from the time period, so it's very
much it could easily have been used by someone, you know,
serving in a fort like this. We also have something
that is priceless to me. We have an arrow. It's
(25:13):
a Cherokee arrow from the time period, wow, from the
seventeen fifties. Now it was not found here, that was
donated to us by a family in Virginia. The Cherokee
are from that part of the country, Virginia, North Carolina
originally yeah, originally yeah. And there are one of two
(25:34):
tribes that sided with the English. Everybody else sided with
the French. The Cherokee and the Cataba both sided with
the English. So it's in tremendous condition for being two
hundred and sixties some years old. Whatever. It is. One
of the neat things about it too. From that time
(25:54):
period until even recently, Indians were always sort of looked
down upon a second class citizens, as not intelligent and
so forth, and that just could not be further from
the truth. And this arrow is a great example of that.
Instead of using an arrowhead, which most arrows did have
(26:18):
an arrowhead, they took something that they could buy for
pennies from the English. They took cut nails, which are
the same type of nail that are in these floors
that we're sitting on.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
Here, or these original nails.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
Yeah, oh yeah. And so a cut nail has a
rectangular head, and what they did is they cut a
rectangular slot in the end of that arrow. They pushed
it in. And the arrow is made from a reed,
so it's a little bit soft on the inside, so
they pushed it in and then they twisted and that
(26:55):
locked it in place. It took five seconds to do that.
Whereas an arrowhead, Now almost all Native Americans were really
good at making arrowheads, but it still took time. You
had to nap flint from with steel or some other
hard object, and it would usually take a good twenty
(27:16):
minutes to make an arrow if you knew what you
were doing, probably take me like fort days. But if
you know what you're doing, it's about twenty or thirty minutes.
But why do that if you can just take a
cut nail, which you can buy a bag full for
pennies and then just.
Speaker 3 (27:33):
Boom, be done, be done with it.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
And it still was very effective. It would pierce, they
would go right through you.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
Well, they did digs, and are they still doing them?
Speaker 2 (27:45):
Yes, I think we probably only have one or two left.
We've done the vast majority of the fort and that's
over about a twenty year time period, and our archaeologist,
doctor Stephen McBride, is coming back again this summer I believe.
I don't have the exact dates yet, but he and
his wife, who's also an archaeologist, have been just terrific
(28:05):
to us. So every year they've comfort about a week
and concentrated on certain parts of the fort, found all
kinds of wonderful things. So he's coming back to do
one more sweep of the inside area of the fort.
He actually does not expect to find a lot because
the living areas were inside the bastions, but he wants
(28:27):
to do inside the square area of the fort, so
we'll see maybe something will turn up that'll be really neat.
I feel like we have ninety five percent of the
information that we desired from his digs, and they've proven
a lot of things wrong, like the size of the
(28:48):
fort and all sorts of things, which is good. We
want to know, honestly, what happened, just like this building
one we're sitting and wasn't there at the time. Everybody
thought that it was, including some of us, but some
of us had suspicions that really wasn't, you know, just
being on the outside of the boundaries itself, it wouldn't
(29:10):
have survived. So this was part of the third fort
and the walls were built around it. Part of those
walls would have gone across Dan's Run Road here, which
goes in front of our building. No telling how big
that was. Maybe someday we could do some more digging
on that, just to find out that that would be interesting,
just like we want to find out more about this building.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
When they did their digs, did they ever find skeleton
remains or precious metals?
Speaker 2 (29:38):
The only bones that were found were animals precious metal.
We found a lot of lead that's not so precious,
but then it was for well, yeah it was if
you were a ranger. He needed that a lot more
than gold.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
I'm referring to coins, is what I'm doing.
Speaker 2 (29:56):
Oh oh, yes, we have found coins, and some of
them are just fabulous. We have a halfpence or halfpenny
was from the time period King George is on one side,
and it's in relatively good shape, especially for being buried
for you know, two hundred and fifty years or so.
(30:18):
There's also pieces of Spanish dollars and that's fascinating too,
because that's where a lot of our terminology comes from today.
So the Spanish dollar was the only dollar permitted to
be cut into pieces to give change, and it was
allowed to be done not only in Spain and its
(30:40):
territories or colonies, but also here in colonial America. So
we found quarters of a coin. That's where the term
a quarter comes from. A quarter of a dollar, and
you can split that the most. You can split these
pins into our eighths, so you can have half a
(31:00):
quarter or an eighth. And if you have two aces,
they were called two bits, and that's where the term
two bits comes from. It's the same equivalent as a quarter.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
But these coolings were silver, right, Yeah? How did they
separate it with?
Speaker 2 (31:13):
Usually a knife or a hatchet?
Speaker 1 (31:16):
Wow?
Speaker 2 (31:17):
Yeah, it was and sometimes and it was done by
the person who was handling it. So if they needed
to give change.
Speaker 4 (31:25):
Could you see the cashiers nowadays of walking into Walmart
giving your change?
Speaker 3 (31:29):
Right, you get fifty cents back?
Speaker 1 (31:30):
Quack were just carrying?
Speaker 2 (31:33):
Right?
Speaker 5 (31:33):
Oh yeah, yeah, you and I've talked before, and you
actually have some things that lent, right, we do.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
We have a butt plate from the Brown Bess, which
is really cool.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
Did you ever figure out what the initials on the top.
Speaker 2 (31:51):
Miant Honestly, No, I want to say it's.
Speaker 1 (31:54):
Where the rifle was made. It could be it says
CM and ILL haven't. I found one online that looks
like it, but they had no description of what that meant.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
I looked and couldn't find anything. So I'm not totally sure.
Speaker 1 (32:11):
And I had high hopes that CM stood for Captain Morgan. Ah,
but I think you dispelled that.
Speaker 2 (32:18):
Yeah, he wasn't. He was just a I guess they
would refer to him as a private here while I
was here. Later on became major and in general so so,
and he came back to this place. In fact, I'm
sure he was in this building now. So let me
let me go fast forward here. All right after the
(32:40):
Revolutionary War, the country became a country, and Washington became president,
and they had something called the Whiskey Rebellion, right that
was in Pennsylvania seventeen ninety four, right, and they needed
to Washington felt so that there were Pennsylvania farmers who
were complaining about having to pay at whiskey, and hadn't
(33:01):
we just thought a war to get away from taxes
on things like that?
Speaker 1 (33:05):
See, I love this. I could talk about this all day.
This tax was imposed by Alexander Hamilton trying to pay
off four debts, right.
Speaker 2 (33:12):
Right, it's the same exact thing that So the French
and Indian War. The British ultimately won that, but they
had were huge debts and the king wanted to pay
that off. What kind of debts. Well, they had to
pay men's salaries, they had to pay for forts, they
had to pay for food and supplies. They had to
pay for armies to sail across the Atlantic and fight
(33:35):
the French Indian Indians.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
And if I'm thinking right, it really affected western Pennsylvania
more than Eastern Pennsylvania because when farmers grew crops, it
took such a long time to get him across the
Allegheny Mountains. By the time they would get to Eastern Pa,
they'd be spoiled. So they had to rely on distilling
it to turn it into something other than selling it
out right right, correct, So it affected them way more
(33:58):
than it did Eastern Pennsylvania.
Speaker 2 (34:00):
Yeah, I think a lot of people throughout the country
had the same thoughts, but the Pennsylvanians were more willing
to speak out on it. And if you had won
a country, you've got to pay for it. You've got
to be solvent, and you need to be recognized across
the world. You also need to have a good armed forces.
There's a lot of needs that countries have so and
(34:23):
you can't do those without money. So he felt strongly
about it, and he understood what they were saying, but
he was adamant about it. So only time in America's
history that the sitting president went out as the commander
in chief in person. You know what would be a
battle on the way to Pennsylvania. There were several armies
(34:48):
that were committed to this, which meant several thousand men
against these Pennsylvania farmers. So it was really a big
show of force. There was no battle because when the
Pennsylvania saw this, what are you going to do? So
they pretty much gave up. But on the way to that,
Daniel Morgan was one of the generals that was recalled.
(35:11):
He was made major general, and he stopped here on
the way because he, you know, very familiar with this place.
So now the original fort was probably long gone by then.
Wooden forts, when you stick logs in the ground, the
clock starts ticking and they're gonna fall, they just rode away,
(35:31):
but this building was here and probably much to his pleasure,
so I'm sure he stayed in it, probably with his officers,
and he had something close to i think eighteen hundred
men maybe or something like that. So obviously they couldn't
all sleep in here, but they camped around the area
and then I'm sure within a day or so they
(35:52):
left on their way to Pennsylvania. One of the artifacts
that we found here was a presidential button. O.
Speaker 1 (36:01):
Man, it's one for Washington.
Speaker 2 (36:03):
So that would have been during his campaign.
Speaker 1 (36:07):
And this inaugural button, yeah, there's I mean, they're rare
campaign and inaugural buttons for George Washington. Really really saw it.
Speaker 2 (36:15):
Right, It's not in great shape. It's you can tell
what it is.
Speaker 1 (36:19):
Does it have the W and cursive on it? I've
seen a couple of those. Gosh, i'd have to go
back and g G W and G W Right.
Speaker 2 (36:30):
I believe it is. We can go take a look,
but it's in the other building. But so that's kind
of a neat treasure. Now, obviously that wasn't dropped during
while Ashby was here. That's long before Washington was president.
But the fact that we found one here. I have
to think that someone from probably from Daniel Morgan's men,
(36:51):
whether it was Morgan himself or someone else, and it
dropped off or he fell out of a pocket or
something like that, and here we.
Speaker 1 (36:58):
We have it two hundred plus year and you are
strict when it comes to period artifacts.
Speaker 2 (37:05):
Oh yeah, display, We have one or two things that
we do display well, like Washington's inaugural button. We're going
to display that. We're pretty adamant about that. We want
we just want to be as authentic as we possibly can.
Speaker 1 (37:20):
So how often? How often are you open? When can
people come see all the things that you have on display?
Speaker 3 (37:27):
Sure?
Speaker 2 (37:27):
Well, appreciate you asking we open. We're not open year
round yet, we're working towards that. And we're still all volunteer.
So we're open Friday's, Saturdays, and Sundays beginning in March
all the way through October.
Speaker 1 (37:43):
So we got you early.
Speaker 2 (37:45):
Yeah yeah, So we'll be opening next next week, I guess,
which is great. So Fridays and Saturdays are from ten
to four and Sundays are noon to four. We hope
to expand that in the near future if we can
get more volunteers. If eventually if we're open enough and
we can make enough through donations and through admission, maybe
(38:07):
we can hire someone full time and that would be awesome.
Speaker 4 (38:10):
How long can someone that's traveling through expect to spend here, Well.
Speaker 2 (38:15):
If they have me, it's going to be a long time.
I've learned a lot from my reading on the history,
and I love to share that. So sometimes I'm long winded,
and I try not to be, and I try and
judge what people are wanting out of a visit, so
you can tell. If people are coming with kids and
they're antsy and they just want to know the basics,
(38:37):
that's what I get them. And if they want more,
I'll answer all day long. But I think a good
visit is probably if you can budget a couple hours.
I think you can learn a lot, and it's a
really neat peak into, you know, something that we don't
really study much in school anymore, but yet it was
(38:57):
so important to the founding of our country.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
Yeah, the French and Indian War is an oft overlooked
time period in our country's history.
Speaker 2 (39:06):
I mean it predates our it predates our country, and
that's probably why the schools don't teach it as or
put as much focus on it, but boy, it really
sets up how our country started.
Speaker 1 (39:18):
So, I mean it was part of the Seven Years War, right,
that's correct? Which why wasn't that called World War One?
Speaker 2 (39:24):
It should have been because it was the first war
that was fought on multiple continents and so forth, and
this was just a small part of it. Well, it
was a big part of it, really, but both sides
put a lot of money and effort into it. So
it's fascinating to me. I love history too. Obviously I wouldn't.
I wouldn't be here if I wasn't interested in that.
Speaker 1 (39:44):
But is there anything else you'd like to add your
open March Friday, Saturday, Sundays through what through October? October?
Speaker 2 (39:53):
Right? We like to do not just the history. We
also like to be a cultural center in this in
this area. We have a concert series, so we have
one every month. There's a couple of months where we
have two things going on. But you can check our
website out Ford Ashby dot org and find out more
about that, find out more about our hours. If you
(40:14):
don't remember things like that. It's really inexpensive to come visit.
It's five dollars for adults. Children are free if you
come in a big group. The maximum charge is ten dollars.
So all right, Yeah, it's important to us to just
share the history and let people, you know, kind of
learn something they probably didn't know about before.
Speaker 1 (40:36):
You're talking to two hundred and sixty eight year history, right,
If my math's right, I didn't go to college from math.
Speaker 2 (40:45):
Yeah, it's to sixty eight. It's amazing.
Speaker 1 (40:48):
Anything you want to add, Jerry, nothing at all.
Speaker 4 (40:50):
Like I said, well, you know what, I'll change my mind.
You do have two buildings, so people that come to
visit the first place are going to go, just so
you know, is gonna be the brick building.
Speaker 2 (41:00):
It'll be to the right, Yes, exactly. That's our visitor center.
And in there you'll get a little bit of an
overview of the French and Indian War? Was it? What
was it fought about? Kind of a little bit about
who was in it, that kind of thing. And there's
a short video it's just ten minutes that we did
(41:21):
ourselves and we'll be updating that soon. And then you
can come outside. We'll show people the outline of the fort.
Obviously the original fort is long gone, but we have
the outline of the fort and we explained that one
of our plans is to build or rebuild one of
the bastions.
Speaker 1 (41:39):
And one of the needs.
Speaker 2 (41:40):
Which will be really great, especially for kids, well even
for adults, to give you a sense of the size
and scale of it.
Speaker 3 (41:47):
Make it interactive.
Speaker 1 (41:48):
Absolutely, Okay, dumb question for people that don't know, what
is a bastion? Exactly Ford, Thank you, good question.
Speaker 2 (41:56):
It's sort of a diamond shaped corner that protrudes out
from the corner of the fort.
Speaker 1 (42:02):
Before we sign off, I just wanted to let you
know how some things I'm gonna be learning the fort today.
I want to ask you.
Speaker 3 (42:10):
I told you couldn't give them the microphone.
Speaker 1 (42:13):
The halfpenny you have pictures of, is that one that
I lent? No, Well, then I have one out there
that I will.
Speaker 2 (42:20):
Oh, thank you. This one was actually found here and
it's actually on display okay, underneath the picture.
Speaker 1 (42:29):
The one I found was about six miles from here.
Speaker 2 (42:33):
Oh cool.
Speaker 1 (42:33):
Yeah, And it's weird because I found it and a
Civil War breastplate on the very other side of the tree.
Speaker 2 (42:41):
Like, what are the odds?
Speaker 1 (42:44):
I don't know. I thought I actually found a can
leg because when I turned over the dirt. There was
an impression of it, but it was a it was
a breastplate. So yeah, that's cool. That's it. That's on
display in Romney, the breastplate. So yeah, I'll be giving
you one of those. You already have one, but still
thank you. It doesn't hurt.
Speaker 2 (43:04):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (43:04):
Yeah, some time here because I know you want to
be strict on the time frame. Yeah, so some some
buttons and stuff like that. So people, if you want
to come visit to Fort and you're taking I seventy
or I sixty eight, get off in Cumberland, take route
twenty eight south. It's about twelve miles south of Cumberland.
Speaker 2 (43:23):
When you get to Fort Ashby, there's only one light
in town. Yeah, just hang a lot at the light,
hang a left, and we are on the left about
two or three hundred yards down the road. You'll see
the log cabin on the left side.
Speaker 1 (43:34):
Definitely, just look for something that looks colonial. You're there.
Speaker 4 (43:37):
You're there if you find the primary school. You found
the fort right across the street from.
Speaker 1 (43:43):
And of course if you're coming from Kaiser, go through
the light. And if you're coming from like Winchester, Rodney Springfield,
take a right at the light.
Speaker 2 (43:50):
Yes, correct, all.
Speaker 1 (43:52):
Right, well Brandy, we really appreciate your time. This was
Randy Crane, creator of the Ford Ashby Museum and the
Ashby Fort Museum. It's two different things, right.
Speaker 2 (44:03):
Ashby's Fort Museum is what we call the entire.
Speaker 1 (44:05):
Oh okay, gotcha?
Speaker 2 (44:06):
Yeah yeah, all right, but thank you so much. I
really appreciate you know, the opportunity.
Speaker 1 (44:11):
Awesome. Hopefully we get some some out of state folks
in here to come and enjoy this. It's so neat
to come.
Speaker 4 (44:18):
In here, even in state. It's a it's a nice
gym in the in this area. I know there's a
lot of homeschooling going on in our state now, so
you're looking for something.
Speaker 3 (44:31):
To take your kids.
Speaker 4 (44:31):
It's gonna be educational, help them in their history projects
and stuff like that. This would be a prime place
to come visit and be fun.
Speaker 2 (44:38):
The kids love it.
Speaker 1 (44:39):
And we're so close to Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania is
a half an hour away. Virginia's about forty five minutes away.
It's you know, close enough that people out of state
could come enjoy it.
Speaker 4 (44:51):
And as you said, it's not going to break the bank.
Now you go to a lot of these other places.
It's gonna cost you an opening, cheap way to learn
about history this area.
Speaker 1 (45:00):
An opening day is next Friday.
Speaker 2 (45:02):
Next Friday. Actually, I'm gonna say next Saturday to be
absolutely sure. Okay, I have another commitment on Friday, and
I'm not sure if we have anybody lined up for Friday.
So let's just to be on the safe side, we'll
say Saturday the fourth. All right, we'll be our opening day.
All right, we might be open Friday.
Speaker 3 (45:20):
I can just be on the safe side. Just wait
till Saturday to come out. Yeah, all right.
Speaker 1 (45:25):
So we were at Ashby's Fort Museum today and we
want to thank Randy Crane again and anything you want
to add.
Speaker 3 (45:31):
Jerry, No, don't have done a great job.
Speaker 4 (45:33):
You've done a great job explaining what people can expect
to see and a little bit of the history of it.
Speaker 2 (45:38):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (45:39):
All right. Well, we hope you enjoyed this episode. Please
come out and visit or at least check it out online.
This has been West Virginia Taught with James and Jerry.
I'm Jerry, I'm James. This has been a Jay and
Jay production.
All right, Welcome back, every one. It's another edition of
West Virginia Talk with James and Jerry. I'm James, I'm Jerry,
and we're in a special little town in West Virginia today,
Fort Ashby, and we're at Ashby's Fort and we're here
with Randy Crane, curator of the Fort Museum, and the
friends of Fort Ashby.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Yeah, yeah, thank you for having me.
Speaker 3 (00:19):
Absolutely, thank you for being on for us.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Sure.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
So this fort was built in seventeen fifty five. Who
gave the orders to build.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
This a man you might know the name of George Washington.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
George Washington, the very first president, famous general.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
That's incredible to me, absolutely incredible.
Speaker 4 (00:36):
That's something within our state was directed due to the
fact that a former president he gave you all for.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Yeah, he spent a lot of time in this area.
In fact, when he was sixteen, he was an apprentice
to learn how to become a surveyor and he surveyed
the very property we're sitting on. So wow, So he
was very familiar with it, and I think that's one
of the reasons why he designated this to be a
spot for one of the first two forts to be
built our sister fort Fort Cock, which is located in Headsville,
(01:09):
which is just about twelve miles from here. He gave
the order for that one as well.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Okay, so why did he give the orders to build
a fort specifically where we are.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Well, this was a few months after Braddock's defeat, which
was English General Edward Braddock came over with a pretty
sizable army from Great Britain and the idea was to
take his army to Fort Duquine, which is in modern
day Pittsburgh and capture that fort because it was a
(01:41):
really strategic area for both the French and the English.
So Braddock went up there and suffered a disastrous defeat,
just phenomenally lopsided. He lost close to nine hundred men
and French and English lost something in the twenty So anyway,
(02:02):
Washington was along on that battle as an aid to
General Braddock. He survived, obviously, and led everybody back. There
weren't that many to lead back, unfortunately, but at least
unfortunately for the English. And shortly after that he was
made commander of the Virginia Regiment by the governor. He
(02:22):
was only twenty two at the time, or twenty three,
But can you imagine being that young and being with
that kind of responsibility. So what they wanted to do
was erect fifty five forts or a string of forts
from the Maryland border all the way down to North Carolina.
This was part of Virginia back at that time, and
(02:45):
so this was their frontier. Definitely, I really didn't go
much further west. I mean, the state did, but they're
not people wise. So they wanted to protect the frontier
until they could figure out whether another army was going
to come over, or whether they had to do it themselves,
or what the story was. So they this was a
(03:05):
defensive fort, as all of the string of forts were
that were built.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
So there was there were a lot of forts from
the French Indian War in this area. How close were
we to New France.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
Well, we're Canada as we call it today. Ah, if
you're traveling on foot, it's it's probably or even if
you're traveling on horseback, you're you're talking a couple of
weeks at least, you know, and the border is a
little fluid. Uh if you go due north from here
and uh follow the shores of Lake Erie, you'll run
(03:41):
into Canada pretty quickly. It was pretty Wild territory back
then all Indian nominated.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
So New France wasn't near here, No, no, okay. So
the Indians and the French, how many times did they
attack this fort.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
So the Indians were the primary of opponents in this
part of the French and Indian War in this region.
And there was a Delaware Indian war chief, Bemino, who
just prior to the fort being built, he attacked all
the settlements along Patterson Creek and all the way up
(04:17):
to Headsville, which is where the second fort was built
as well. Those were all the settlements that Washington had
surveyed and laid out, and later people had built on them.
And then in the spring of the next year, spring
of seventeen fifty six, in April, Bemino came back and
demanded that Ashby surrender his fort. But Ashby stood up
(04:39):
to him and said, no, I'll fight you for it,
but I'm not going to just give it to you.
And they went back and forth a couple of times,
and they both knew that Bemino had no chance attacking
from the outside of a well defended fort, even though
he claimed he had five hundred but that was an exaggeration.
He really had. He probably had two to three hundred
men with him, which is sizeable, especially compared to thirty
(05:01):
two men at Ashby had. But Ashby was behind a
wooden fort, and you know, Bemino's men were out out
in the open. It was very open too, because all
the trees had been cut down to build the fort
and feed the fire and so forth. So it wouldn't
have been a fair fight. In fact, statistically he would
not have won it all Bemino. So Ashby brought out
(05:23):
a dram of rum. They both drank to each other,
and then off Bemino went. And it's kind of interesting.
He went a few miles east of here. He followed
Patterson Creek and he found a supply fort that was
located there at the time that was really for Fort Cumberland.
Fort Cumberland had outgrown its walls and they needed to
(05:46):
store it though, and so they built that little fort
right on the Ptomac River, and they just if they
needed anything, they just brought it back on a barge.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
Was that fort?
Speaker 2 (05:56):
Yes? Exactly? Very good.
Speaker 4 (06:00):
Did we cover how the fort got his name, how
it became Fort Ashby?
Speaker 1 (06:03):
No quick question though? Before that? How long did it
take to build it. Ah, no more than six weeks,
six weeks to build the entire thing.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
Which is incredible. Washington ordered a fort built that had
one hundred foot curtain walls, which are the walls in
between the bastions, which is a pretty sizable fort. When
we did archaeology here, we discovered that the walls, the
curtain walls, are only thirty three feet long, so a
third of the length that Washington had ordered. The bastions
(06:35):
were still large, though in relative scale, So that brought
up a bunch of questions up. Why did they make
it so much smaller? Well, I think the obvious. There's
two obvious reasons. They started building this in late October
of seventeen fifty five. Winter was coming and they didn't
want to be trying to dig trenches and frozen ground
(06:57):
snow coming down on them. It's just a bad time
a year to try to build a fort. They only
had thirty two men, so just digging enough dirt to
fill the bastions, they only had probably three or four
shovels amongst them. It would have taken months to do that.
You have to remember there's no John Deer tractors or
(07:18):
anything like that. It's just pure manpower and shovels and picks.
So they came up with a brilliant idea. They made
the interior of the fort much smaller, which would have
eliminated the possibility of them building barracks or officers quarters.
(07:38):
They did manage to put the powder magazine in there,
but what they did it was novel at the time.
Instead of filling the bastions with dirt, and they would
fill those with dirt so that they had a platform
to stand on so they could shoot out over the walls,
which were twelve to fifteen feet high. So instead of
(07:59):
doing that, they said, it's just we'll put in a
central wall and then we'll just cut planks and lay
them across and make a shooting platform, and then that
will give us a ceiling. They've already got the walls,
so you've got you know, it's rough, but it's a
good quarters for men to sleep in. In fact, it
(08:19):
gave them so much space that they didn't need any
buildings at all on the inside of the fort. They
ended up putting the powder magazine in the fourth bastion
along with their trash pit. We just had archaeology on
that done last summer, and that was great. You wouldn't
think a trash pit would be that much fun, but
that's where you find all kinds of goodies.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
Men seventeen hundreds trash maybe interesting.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
Oh, absolutely, But it told us a lot about how
they lived and what they used, you know, just little
things like the type of dishes and glassware and the
types of things they ate. We found different animal bones,
so that gives you a good clue of what they
were eating. They actually ate pretty well. Washington supplied them
(09:02):
with one hundred head of cattle at the beginning of
seventeen fifty five. That's going to last them a while.
I also gave them a lot of flour so they
could make bread or biscuits or heart attack or what
have you.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
They had to have molasses, right, that was a staple then, right.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Oh yeah, and rum and there's some funny stories about
that if you want me to go there. But they
had plenty to eat. They also supplemented that with deer,
and we found there's turkey and rabbit and all kinds
of things. So they would go out and hunt and
find things on the land. And since these plantations had
(09:42):
just been destroyed, they probably were able to get some
crops or some things to eat from that as.
Speaker 3 (09:48):
Well some residual from the occupants.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
Right.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
Jerry asked earlier about the name the namesake.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
Sure, Ashby. Well, it was named after John Ashby. He
was the captain of this fort. And that was pretty
common when Washington wrote his letters. And we're so grateful
for those, because we wouldn't know hardly anything about this
fort without his letters. But he would write to all
of his commanders, and he would then later write letters
(10:16):
to other people saying, oh, Ashby's fort did this, Edwards
Fort did that, And they're all named after usually the
captains that were commanding them.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
Now, his wife lived with him, right.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
She sure did, and she was a pistol apparently. So
they got the fort built by the first of December
of seventeen fifty five. Before the end of the month,
George Washington wrote a pretty scurrilous or nasty letter to
John admonishing him for the behavior of his wife selling
(10:53):
Rum to the men. Oh geez, yeah, And you have
to put everything in context. Rum was a pretty big
state for everybody back then, not just the military, but now,
if you lived in a place like Williamsburg, Virginia and
you had a well, you could drink the water, and
they knew that it was safe. They knew also that
if you drank water out of a stream or a river,
(11:15):
it was a gamble, you know. The Paris Now they
didn't know why. They didn't know about germs and things
like that.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
They didn't know about boiling it too.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
Right, So if you just drank out of the river,
chances are you're gonna pay for it, right right. So
so to work with that, the population as a whole
was drinking alcohol. Now a lot of it was watered down.
For example, in the military, they would issue rum that
(11:47):
was called grog. Well, grog is rum that's watered down.
So it gave them something to drink, but it didn't
impair them. That doesn't mean that some soldiers didn't go
out of their way to getting paired, just like people
do today, I suppose. And it seemed like James's mission
was to help them get impaired because she was selling
(12:08):
them straight rum. Washington didn't appreciate that. He was a
pretty stickler, pretty severe in terms of discipline, even though
he was young, And maybe that's because he was young.
He didn't want things to get out of hand with
his own troops, so he insisted that she stopped selling rum,
(12:28):
and apparently she was also the sewer of sedition in
Washington's words, which means that men were not happy here
at Fort Ashby, and a lot of them deserted. Now,
they didn't desert to go home because they didn't like
the war. They knocked on the doors of other forts
(12:49):
in the area and asked if they could serve there.
And that tells me that between the two of them,
John and Jane Ashby, there wasn't very good leadership and
were very good discipline. So it's interesting I don't from
everything that I've been able to read, which isn't much
because we wish there would be so much more information,
(13:09):
but he did not keep a diary, so much of
most of what we get is through Washington's letters.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
While you're speaking, I keep looking around the walls and
just everything on the inside of this it's original, right.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
So the building that we're sitting in right now is
a barracks building for what we believe is the third
fort that was built on the site. And we determine
that because we did some dendro chronology on the walls,
which is a pretty fancy word for drilling a hole
through the logs in the log building and that gives
(13:46):
you a core that shows the tree rings. And what
the scientists do is they compare those tree rings to
known trees from that time period that are in this area.
It's important that they compare something that's similar, and they
the dendro chronologist was able to determine that these logs
(14:06):
were all cut down in the fall of seventeen eighty three.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
Wow, they got it to the sea to the season.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
Which amazed me too. I'm glad you've picked up on
that because that's pretty accurate. So this was built really
at the tail end of the Revolutionary War. We don't
think it was built for the Revolutionary War, we believe,
although we're searching for more documentation, but we believe that
it was because of the continuing Indian wars.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
Gotcha, that were in this area.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
This was still the wild frontier of at the time
the United States.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
Now, you mentioned Delaware, but they weren't the only tribe, right.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
Correct, There were Delaware and Shawnee were the predominant Indians
in this area at that time. Delaware Indians actually originated
in Delaware and southeast Pennsylvania, New Jersey in that area,
but they were pushed out with the you know, colonization
of those colonies and ended up in this area. Prior
(15:05):
to the seventeen fifties, they kind of were pushed out
of this area as well. I mentioned Bemino earlier. He
was that Delaware Indian War chief. He actually lived nearby.
He lived before the French and Indian War. He lived
along the south branch of the Potomac.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
Let me ask you something real quick, because you triggered
a memory when you said Chawney and Delaware. Weren't they
the two tribes that fought at the base of Hanging
Rock going towards Romney? Were they the two tribes that
fought there?
Speaker 2 (15:37):
Believed they were?
Speaker 1 (15:38):
Okay and so. But Bemino wasn't from that spot.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
No, well no, he he lived close to the trough,
so it's not far, oh, okay, not far. But he
was all by himself and he got along with his
English neighbors. There weren't that many people in that area,
but he got along with them, no problem at all.
But once the war started, all Indian tribes had to
(16:05):
decide who they you know, were they going to align
with someone with one of the powers of the British
or the French. Most of them did, and most of
them aligned with the French prior to the war. They
got along with both to some degree, but at the
same time the English colonials were pushing westward. They wanted land.
(16:27):
The French really didn't want the land as much. They
just wanted to trade with the Indians. The Indians had
access to something as valuable as oil or gold today,
and that was fur, and they would send the fur
back to Europe because the Europeans had hunted out almost
all of the fur that was already there. They used
(16:47):
the fur for clothing, for hats, for blankets, things to
keep warm.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
So the French were only intrusive to where they wanted
what was on the land. But the British wanted both right.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
And the Indians were happy to trade fur because they
in return they would get European goods that they couldn't
make themselves, mostly metal things, axes and knives and guns.
And so everybody thinks, oh, the Indians just shot bows
and arrows. Well they did, but they also had they
had just the same weapons that the British and the
(17:22):
French did so they were not any weaker in that regard.
They had traded things to get those items.
Speaker 4 (17:30):
Now I've noticed, like I said, inside this museum here
that you have a lot of mannequins stationed. Can you
tell us a little bit about the mannequin displays that
you have what people will see if they come sure.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
In this building. It was important to us to tell
the stories of some of the people that were involved here.
We didn't want to just make it a boring history
lesson of dates and numbers. You know, so many people
died or some whatever. I mean, that's important, but we
wanted to tell a little bit about the people themselves
that were here. So we have mannequins that represent Bemino
(18:05):
because he was an important part of this story, and
he's kind of scary looking. He's got his war pain
on and he looks pretty fierce, and that really, you know,
especially for kids, that helps tell the story and they
ask a lot of questions, which is great because we
want to share that information. We have displays of John
and Jane Ashby and not just them, and we tell
(18:28):
the stories but also the clothing that they wore. They
were pretty well to do. They weren't the elite in
the colonies, but they were just below that level. They
had money, so they wore terrific clothes and they had,
you know, all that you could really ask for, especially
out here. And then right behind me here is Daniel Morgan.
(18:50):
He's an incredibly important piece of history in general, not
just in the French and Indian War, but later he
became a great general during the Revolution, had a vital
part of helping with the battle at Saratoga, and his
tactics were so cool because he had picked up while
he was here during the French and Indian War. He
(19:13):
watched the Indians and what they did and which was
so different from how the Europeans or the colonies who
were Europeans really they just moved over here. But the
English and the French would fight in big, long lines
and point guns at each other in a field somewhere,
and the Indians kind of laughed at that. They're like,
(19:34):
why do you want to kill each other and know
that you're going to die. They preferred to hide behind
a tree and take a shot and then run to
another tree and take another shot, which today seems really
obvious common sense, but back then, you know, it was
part of tradition and part of valor and honor and
(19:55):
stuff like that.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
But anyway, right, it was improperty do it. And the
Revolutionary War one of the bigger reasons why we overcame
the British was guerrilla warfare, which they frowned upon.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
Right, wow, a good example Daniel Morgan using those tactics
and now being in power. First everybody in his regiment
had to have a rifle. Well, the vast majority of
troops back in the Revolutionary War did not have a rifle.
They had muskets. Now, what's the difference. Well, a musket
is sort of like a shotgun, So when the ball
(20:31):
goes down the barrel, it kind of bounces around and
whatever direction it's going when it leaves the barrel, that's
that's where that ball is.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
Going, almost like a knuckleball pitch, right, So not really accurately.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
We don't even aim a musket. You just pointed in
the general direction and hope it hits something. Now, a rifle,
the only difference between a rifle and a musket is
the rifle riflings.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
It's got like a helix, Yeah, a little bit twist.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
That's in the inside of the barrel. It spins the
ball so that centrifugal force keeps it spinning even after
it leaves the barrel.
Speaker 1 (21:06):
I'm going to make a really bad comparison, kind of
like fletchings on an arrow. It would cause it to spin, Yes,
and it would be more true.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
Yes, exactly.
Speaker 3 (21:16):
So.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
The range of a musket was typically under sixty yards.
The range of a rifle was three to four hundred yards,
a much much greater capability. So all of his men
and he wouldn't even even if you had a rifle,
Morgan wouldn't necessarily take you. He would go out he
(21:39):
would recruit people, usually at taverns, and he would go
out back and he would set up a target and
he would have the men shoot at targets. He would
only take the ones who could really shoot.
Speaker 4 (21:50):
So.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
That gave him one advantage. The second advantage was something
that drove George Washington crazy. He would go around the
flank of the British and then have his men start
picking off officers. Well, that just wasn't done back then.
That was just cruel and not gentlemanly at all. But
(22:15):
Washington put up with it because Morgan was so effective.
If you pick off all the officers. The men were
trained to listen to the officers. If they weren't there,
they didn't know what to do. It's very different than
today's army.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
Right, So it wasn't just because they were high ranking officers.
Without officers, there was no order.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
That's right, and so all the inevitably if that happened,
the men all turned and ran. So they were very
victorious at that battle and most of the battles that
he was involved with. He took a break in the
middle of the war, went home. He was tired, but
they called him back and he came and he was
(22:56):
sent down south to battle Banister Tarlton, who was giving
the South fits. Tarleton was kind of doing what the
Indians do too. He was burning homes and taking anything
of value away from the homes, burning everything in sight.
But he met his match with Morgan. Morgan planned he
(23:20):
was kind of leading him along, and he led him
to this place called cow pens, and it was literally
because it was for cattle, but the landscape was such
that there were hills and dales and spots where you
could hide divisions of men without being seen. So he
(23:43):
sort of brought Tarleton over a hill down into a
swale where there were men on either side that just
demolished his army to the point where he had to retreat,
taking the few men that he had left. They captured
over eight hundred as well, so it was a huge
defeat and they retreated to Yorktown and you know the
(24:05):
rest of the story after that.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
Yeah, So, got a question. It's a multi faceted question,
so bear with me. Jerry mentioned like the clothe the
avatars in here and who they are. Yes, what gets
my heart fluttering is the relics that you have on display.
So are the relics actual items found around the ford
(24:26):
through archaeology or they donated or both a.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
Little bit of both. The vast majority we're found here.
We have all kinds of really cool things available, lots
of musket balls and flints and pieces of guns and
glassware and pottery and things that help tell the story
of how they lived life inside of a fort. We
(24:51):
also have had things donated. We have a beautiful fowler
a musket. It's a smooth boar that was donated to
us and it's from the time period, so it's very
much it could easily have been used by someone, you know,
serving in a fort like this. We also have something
that is priceless to me. We have an arrow. It's
(25:13):
a Cherokee arrow from the time period, wow, from the
seventeen fifties. Now it was not found here, that was
donated to us by a family in Virginia. The Cherokee
are from that part of the country, Virginia, North Carolina
originally yeah, originally yeah. And there are one of two
(25:34):
tribes that sided with the English. Everybody else sided with
the French. The Cherokee and the Cataba both sided with
the English. So it's in tremendous condition for being two
hundred and sixties some years old. Whatever. It is. One
of the neat things about it too. From that time
(25:54):
period until even recently, Indians were always sort of looked
down upon a second class citizens, as not intelligent and
so forth, and that just could not be further from
the truth. And this arrow is a great example of that.
Instead of using an arrowhead, which most arrows did have
(26:18):
an arrowhead, they took something that they could buy for
pennies from the English. They took cut nails, which are
the same type of nail that are in these floors
that we're sitting on.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
Here, or these original nails.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
Yeah, oh yeah. And so a cut nail has a
rectangular head, and what they did is they cut a
rectangular slot in the end of that arrow. They pushed
it in. And the arrow is made from a reed,
so it's a little bit soft on the inside, so
they pushed it in and then they twisted and that
(26:55):
locked it in place. It took five seconds to do that.
Whereas an arrowhead, Now almost all Native Americans were really
good at making arrowheads, but it still took time. You
had to nap flint from with steel or some other
hard object, and it would usually take a good twenty
(27:16):
minutes to make an arrow if you knew what you
were doing, probably take me like fort days. But if
you know what you're doing, it's about twenty or thirty minutes.
But why do that if you can just take a
cut nail, which you can buy a bag full for
pennies and then just.
Speaker 3 (27:33):
Boom, be done, be done with it.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
And it still was very effective. It would pierce, they
would go right through you.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
Well, they did digs, and are they still doing them?
Speaker 2 (27:45):
Yes, I think we probably only have one or two left.
We've done the vast majority of the fort and that's
over about a twenty year time period, and our archaeologist,
doctor Stephen McBride, is coming back again this summer I believe.
I don't have the exact dates yet, but he and
his wife, who's also an archaeologist, have been just terrific
(28:05):
to us. So every year they've comfort about a week
and concentrated on certain parts of the fort, found all
kinds of wonderful things. So he's coming back to do
one more sweep of the inside area of the fort.
He actually does not expect to find a lot because
the living areas were inside the bastions, but he wants
(28:27):
to do inside the square area of the fort, so
we'll see maybe something will turn up that'll be really neat.
I feel like we have ninety five percent of the
information that we desired from his digs, and they've proven
a lot of things wrong, like the size of the
(28:48):
fort and all sorts of things, which is good. We
want to know, honestly, what happened, just like this building
one we're sitting and wasn't there at the time. Everybody
thought that it was, including some of us, but some
of us had suspicions that really wasn't, you know, just
being on the outside of the boundaries itself, it wouldn't
(29:10):
have survived. So this was part of the third fort
and the walls were built around it. Part of those
walls would have gone across Dan's Run Road here, which
goes in front of our building. No telling how big
that was. Maybe someday we could do some more digging
on that, just to find out that that would be interesting,
just like we want to find out more about this building.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
When they did their digs, did they ever find skeleton
remains or precious metals?
Speaker 2 (29:38):
The only bones that were found were animals precious metal.
We found a lot of lead that's not so precious,
but then it was for well, yeah it was if
you were a ranger. He needed that a lot more
than gold.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
I'm referring to coins, is what I'm doing.
Speaker 2 (29:56):
Oh oh, yes, we have found coins, and some of
them are just fabulous. We have a halfpence or halfpenny
was from the time period King George is on one side,
and it's in relatively good shape, especially for being buried
for you know, two hundred and fifty years or so.
(30:18):
There's also pieces of Spanish dollars and that's fascinating too,
because that's where a lot of our terminology comes from today.
So the Spanish dollar was the only dollar permitted to
be cut into pieces to give change, and it was
allowed to be done not only in Spain and its
(30:40):
territories or colonies, but also here in colonial America. So
we found quarters of a coin. That's where the term
a quarter comes from. A quarter of a dollar, and
you can split that the most. You can split these
pins into our eighths, so you can have half a
(31:00):
quarter or an eighth. And if you have two aces,
they were called two bits, and that's where the term
two bits comes from. It's the same equivalent as a quarter.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
But these coolings were silver, right, Yeah? How did they
separate it with?
Speaker 2 (31:13):
Usually a knife or a hatchet?
Speaker 1 (31:16):
Wow?
Speaker 2 (31:17):
Yeah, it was and sometimes and it was done by
the person who was handling it. So if they needed
to give change.
Speaker 4 (31:25):
Could you see the cashiers nowadays of walking into Walmart
giving your change?
Speaker 3 (31:29):
Right, you get fifty cents back?
Speaker 1 (31:30):
Quack were just carrying?
Speaker 2 (31:33):
Right?
Speaker 5 (31:33):
Oh yeah, yeah, you and I've talked before, and you
actually have some things that lent, right, we do.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
We have a butt plate from the Brown Bess, which
is really cool.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
Did you ever figure out what the initials on the top.
Speaker 2 (31:51):
Miant Honestly, No, I want to say it's.
Speaker 1 (31:54):
Where the rifle was made. It could be it says
CM and ILL haven't. I found one online that looks
like it, but they had no description of what that meant.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
I looked and couldn't find anything. So I'm not totally sure.
Speaker 1 (32:11):
And I had high hopes that CM stood for Captain Morgan. Ah,
but I think you dispelled that.
Speaker 2 (32:18):
Yeah, he wasn't. He was just a I guess they
would refer to him as a private here while I
was here. Later on became major and in general so so,
and he came back to this place. In fact, I'm
sure he was in this building now. So let me
let me go fast forward here. All right after the
(32:40):
Revolutionary War, the country became a country, and Washington became president,
and they had something called the Whiskey Rebellion, right that
was in Pennsylvania seventeen ninety four, right, and they needed
to Washington felt so that there were Pennsylvania farmers who
were complaining about having to pay at whiskey, and hadn't
(33:01):
we just thought a war to get away from taxes
on things like that?
Speaker 1 (33:05):
See, I love this. I could talk about this all day.
This tax was imposed by Alexander Hamilton trying to pay
off four debts, right.
Speaker 2 (33:12):
Right, it's the same exact thing that So the French
and Indian War. The British ultimately won that, but they
had were huge debts and the king wanted to pay
that off. What kind of debts. Well, they had to
pay men's salaries, they had to pay for forts, they
had to pay for food and supplies. They had to
pay for armies to sail across the Atlantic and fight
(33:35):
the French Indian Indians.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
And if I'm thinking right, it really affected western Pennsylvania
more than Eastern Pennsylvania because when farmers grew crops, it
took such a long time to get him across the
Allegheny Mountains. By the time they would get to Eastern Pa,
they'd be spoiled. So they had to rely on distilling
it to turn it into something other than selling it
out right right, correct, So it affected them way more
(33:58):
than it did Eastern Pennsylvania.
Speaker 2 (34:00):
Yeah, I think a lot of people throughout the country
had the same thoughts, but the Pennsylvanians were more willing
to speak out on it. And if you had won
a country, you've got to pay for it. You've got
to be solvent, and you need to be recognized across
the world. You also need to have a good armed forces.
There's a lot of needs that countries have so and
(34:23):
you can't do those without money. So he felt strongly
about it, and he understood what they were saying, but
he was adamant about it. So only time in America's
history that the sitting president went out as the commander
in chief in person. You know what would be a
battle on the way to Pennsylvania. There were several armies
(34:48):
that were committed to this, which meant several thousand men
against these Pennsylvania farmers. So it was really a big
show of force. There was no battle because when the
Pennsylvania saw this, what are you going to do? So
they pretty much gave up. But on the way to that,
Daniel Morgan was one of the generals that was recalled.
(35:11):
He was made major general, and he stopped here on
the way because he, you know, very familiar with this place.
So now the original fort was probably long gone by then.
Wooden forts, when you stick logs in the ground, the
clock starts ticking and they're gonna fall, they just rode away,
(35:31):
but this building was here and probably much to his pleasure,
so I'm sure he stayed in it, probably with his officers,
and he had something close to i think eighteen hundred
men maybe or something like that. So obviously they couldn't
all sleep in here, but they camped around the area
and then I'm sure within a day or so they
(35:52):
left on their way to Pennsylvania. One of the artifacts
that we found here was a presidential button. O.
Speaker 1 (36:01):
Man, it's one for Washington.
Speaker 2 (36:03):
So that would have been during his campaign.
Speaker 1 (36:07):
And this inaugural button, yeah, there's I mean, they're rare
campaign and inaugural buttons for George Washington. Really really saw it.
Speaker 2 (36:15):
Right, It's not in great shape. It's you can tell
what it is.
Speaker 1 (36:19):
Does it have the W and cursive on it? I've
seen a couple of those. Gosh, i'd have to go
back and g G W and G W Right.
Speaker 2 (36:30):
I believe it is. We can go take a look,
but it's in the other building. But so that's kind
of a neat treasure. Now, obviously that wasn't dropped during
while Ashby was here. That's long before Washington was president.
But the fact that we found one here. I have
to think that someone from probably from Daniel Morgan's men,
(36:51):
whether it was Morgan himself or someone else, and it
dropped off or he fell out of a pocket or
something like that, and here we.
Speaker 1 (36:58):
We have it two hundred plus year and you are
strict when it comes to period artifacts.
Speaker 2 (37:05):
Oh yeah, display, We have one or two things that
we do display well, like Washington's inaugural button. We're going
to display that. We're pretty adamant about that. We want
we just want to be as authentic as we possibly can.
Speaker 1 (37:20):
So how often? How often are you open? When can
people come see all the things that you have on display?
Speaker 3 (37:27):
Sure?
Speaker 2 (37:27):
Well, appreciate you asking we open. We're not open year
round yet, we're working towards that. And we're still all volunteer.
So we're open Friday's, Saturdays, and Sundays beginning in March
all the way through October.
Speaker 1 (37:43):
So we got you early.
Speaker 2 (37:45):
Yeah yeah, So we'll be opening next next week, I guess,
which is great. So Fridays and Saturdays are from ten
to four and Sundays are noon to four. We hope
to expand that in the near future if we can
get more volunteers. If eventually if we're open enough and
we can make enough through donations and through admission, maybe
(38:07):
we can hire someone full time and that would be awesome.
Speaker 4 (38:10):
How long can someone that's traveling through expect to spend here, Well.
Speaker 2 (38:15):
If they have me, it's going to be a long time.
I've learned a lot from my reading on the history,
and I love to share that. So sometimes I'm long winded,
and I try not to be, and I try and
judge what people are wanting out of a visit, so
you can tell. If people are coming with kids and
they're antsy and they just want to know the basics,
(38:37):
that's what I get them. And if they want more,
I'll answer all day long. But I think a good
visit is probably if you can budget a couple hours.
I think you can learn a lot, and it's a
really neat peak into, you know, something that we don't
really study much in school anymore, but yet it was
(38:57):
so important to the founding of our country.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
Yeah, the French and Indian War is an oft overlooked
time period in our country's history.
Speaker 2 (39:06):
I mean it predates our it predates our country, and
that's probably why the schools don't teach it as or
put as much focus on it, but boy, it really
sets up how our country started.
Speaker 1 (39:18):
So, I mean it was part of the Seven Years War, right,
that's correct? Which why wasn't that called World War One?
Speaker 2 (39:24):
It should have been because it was the first war
that was fought on multiple continents and so forth, and
this was just a small part of it. Well, it
was a big part of it, really, but both sides
put a lot of money and effort into it. So
it's fascinating to me. I love history too. Obviously I wouldn't.
I wouldn't be here if I wasn't interested in that.
Speaker 1 (39:44):
But is there anything else you'd like to add your
open March Friday, Saturday, Sundays through what through October? October?
Speaker 2 (39:53):
Right? We like to do not just the history. We
also like to be a cultural center in this in
this area. We have a concert series, so we have
one every month. There's a couple of months where we
have two things going on. But you can check our
website out Ford Ashby dot org and find out more
about that, find out more about our hours. If you
(40:14):
don't remember things like that. It's really inexpensive to come visit.
It's five dollars for adults. Children are free if you
come in a big group. The maximum charge is ten dollars.
So all right, Yeah, it's important to us to just
share the history and let people, you know, kind of
learn something they probably didn't know about before.
Speaker 1 (40:36):
You're talking to two hundred and sixty eight year history, right,
If my math's right, I didn't go to college from math.
Speaker 2 (40:45):
Yeah, it's to sixty eight. It's amazing.
Speaker 1 (40:48):
Anything you want to add, Jerry, nothing at all.
Speaker 4 (40:50):
Like I said, well, you know what, I'll change my mind.
You do have two buildings, so people that come to
visit the first place are going to go, just so
you know, is gonna be the brick building.
Speaker 2 (41:00):
It'll be to the right, Yes, exactly. That's our visitor center.
And in there you'll get a little bit of an
overview of the French and Indian War? Was it? What
was it fought about? Kind of a little bit about
who was in it, that kind of thing. And there's
a short video it's just ten minutes that we did
(41:21):
ourselves and we'll be updating that soon. And then you
can come outside. We'll show people the outline of the fort.
Obviously the original fort is long gone, but we have
the outline of the fort and we explained that one
of our plans is to build or rebuild one of
the bastions.
Speaker 1 (41:39):
And one of the needs.
Speaker 2 (41:40):
Which will be really great, especially for kids, well even
for adults, to give you a sense of the size
and scale of it.
Speaker 3 (41:47):
Make it interactive.
Speaker 1 (41:48):
Absolutely, Okay, dumb question for people that don't know, what
is a bastion? Exactly Ford, Thank you, good question.
Speaker 2 (41:56):
It's sort of a diamond shaped corner that protrudes out
from the corner of the fort.
Speaker 1 (42:02):
Before we sign off, I just wanted to let you
know how some things I'm gonna be learning the fort today.
I want to ask you.
Speaker 3 (42:10):
I told you couldn't give them the microphone.
Speaker 1 (42:13):
The halfpenny you have pictures of, is that one that
I lent? No, Well, then I have one out there
that I will.
Speaker 2 (42:20):
Oh, thank you. This one was actually found here and
it's actually on display okay, underneath the picture.
Speaker 1 (42:29):
The one I found was about six miles from here.
Speaker 2 (42:33):
Oh cool.
Speaker 1 (42:33):
Yeah, And it's weird because I found it and a
Civil War breastplate on the very other side of the tree.
Speaker 2 (42:41):
Like, what are the odds?
Speaker 1 (42:44):
I don't know. I thought I actually found a can
leg because when I turned over the dirt. There was
an impression of it, but it was a it was
a breastplate. So yeah, that's cool. That's it. That's on
display in Romney, the breastplate. So yeah, I'll be giving
you one of those. You already have one, but still
thank you. It doesn't hurt.
Speaker 2 (43:04):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (43:04):
Yeah, some time here because I know you want to
be strict on the time frame. Yeah, so some some
buttons and stuff like that. So people, if you want
to come visit to Fort and you're taking I seventy
or I sixty eight, get off in Cumberland, take route
twenty eight south. It's about twelve miles south of Cumberland.
Speaker 2 (43:23):
When you get to Fort Ashby, there's only one light
in town. Yeah, just hang a lot at the light,
hang a left, and we are on the left about
two or three hundred yards down the road. You'll see
the log cabin on the left side.
Speaker 1 (43:34):
Definitely, just look for something that looks colonial. You're there.
Speaker 4 (43:37):
You're there if you find the primary school. You found
the fort right across the street from.
Speaker 1 (43:43):
And of course if you're coming from Kaiser, go through
the light. And if you're coming from like Winchester, Rodney Springfield,
take a right at the light.
Speaker 2 (43:50):
Yes, correct, all.
Speaker 1 (43:52):
Right, well Brandy, we really appreciate your time. This was
Randy Crane, creator of the Ford Ashby Museum and the
Ashby Fort Museum. It's two different things, right.
Speaker 2 (44:03):
Ashby's Fort Museum is what we call the entire.
Speaker 1 (44:05):
Oh okay, gotcha?
Speaker 2 (44:06):
Yeah yeah, all right, but thank you so much. I
really appreciate you know, the opportunity.
Speaker 1 (44:11):
Awesome. Hopefully we get some some out of state folks
in here to come and enjoy this. It's so neat
to come.
Speaker 4 (44:18):
In here, even in state. It's a it's a nice
gym in the in this area. I know there's a
lot of homeschooling going on in our state now, so
you're looking for something.
Speaker 3 (44:31):
To take your kids.
Speaker 4 (44:31):
It's gonna be educational, help them in their history projects
and stuff like that. This would be a prime place
to come visit and be fun.
Speaker 2 (44:38):
The kids love it.
Speaker 1 (44:39):
And we're so close to Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania is
a half an hour away. Virginia's about forty five minutes away.
It's you know, close enough that people out of state
could come enjoy it.
Speaker 4 (44:51):
And as you said, it's not going to break the bank.
Now you go to a lot of these other places.
It's gonna cost you an opening, cheap way to learn
about history this area.
Speaker 1 (45:00):
An opening day is next Friday.
Speaker 2 (45:02):
Next Friday. Actually, I'm gonna say next Saturday to be
absolutely sure. Okay, I have another commitment on Friday, and
I'm not sure if we have anybody lined up for Friday.
So let's just to be on the safe side, we'll
say Saturday the fourth. All right, we'll be our opening day.
All right, we might be open Friday.
Speaker 3 (45:20):
I can just be on the safe side. Just wait
till Saturday to come out. Yeah, all right.
Speaker 1 (45:25):
So we were at Ashby's Fort Museum today and we
want to thank Randy Crane again and anything you want
to add.
Speaker 3 (45:31):
Jerry, No, don't have done a great job.
Speaker 4 (45:33):
You've done a great job explaining what people can expect
to see and a little bit of the history of it.
Speaker 2 (45:38):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (45:39):
All right. Well, we hope you enjoyed this episode. Please
come out and visit or at least check it out online.
This has been West Virginia Taught with James and Jerry.
I'm Jerry, I'm James. This has been a Jay and
Jay production.
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