198 years ago, soldiers
camped where thisIf Beaver is, as its friendly critics maintain, as much a state of mind as an actuality, there is a historic rationale for such a reputation.
Indians who made their crude tools here 3000 years ago left no endorsements, but in the early 1750's Christopher Gist, Washington's guide and companion, wrote of its "good land, not very broken, fit for farming." Twenty years later George Washington on an exploring trip wrote in his journal, "At I I we came to the Mouth of Beaver Creek opposite to which is a good situation for a house, and above it, on the same side (that is the West) there appears to be a fine body of land."
In January of 1785, Arthur Lee, one of the United States Commissioners at the Treaty of Fort McIntosh, referred to it as being on "a beautiful plane", and also wrote that it would be a "choice morsel for some legislator."
That summer, Surveyor Alexander McLean in laying out the Beaver Reserve inscribed on his map, "The situation of McIntosh is truly delightful and will afford a seat for a large Town. The Prospect of the River is beautiful . . .". General Josiah Harmar was writing at the same time, "I wish you could see the beauties of Fort McIntosh . . .".
More tangible evidence is the description in Cramer's Navigator "there has been established in Beaver (actually Bridgewater) an extensive brewery by Mr. George Grier, whose beer is esteemed at Natchez and New Orleans."
In the 1890's, Britain's Poet Laureate, Rudyard Kipling, wrote, "Imagine a rolling wooded English landscape, with the softest of blue skies, dotted at three mile intervals by fat, quiet villages . . . ".
But these compliments, even when coupled with the fact that the founders wisely provided for wide streets, large lots, open spaces, for an educational system and a water supply, would not have sufficed had not those who came here found it a pleasant place to live.
198 years ago, soldiers
camped where this
home stands on River Road - but in far less
comfort - while constructing the fort.
