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Blast from the pastOne of my favorite sayings has long been “What goes around comes around.” As a rule, it usually means, Justice will eventually be served” or You'll get your just desserts.But for me, in a special sense, the old saw boasts a particular applicability to Valley Pike,” for this reason: Folks who've assisted this column in the past have a way of showing up again years later. This tendency also brings to mind the familiar Yogi Berra gem, “It’s, like, d6ja vu all over again.Let me explain. A few weeks back, if you recall, I did a Pike” that dealt rather heavily in speculation about the origins of the “FryePath,” an offshoot of the widely hiked section of the Big Blue Trail along Great North Mountain. Inspired by an e-mail from a certain Vito Seskunas of Baltimore, an avid outdoorsman who often frequents the Big Blue, the piece also pondered the “path’s” apparent relationship to one of the many Indian massacres that raised the collective blood pressure of western Frederick County in the middle decades of the 18th century. Several possibilities were presented.Enter George Ludwig, one of those proverbial “blasts from the past” Back in the spring of 1999, when this column was still relatively young, George, a retired NASA scientist, guided me through the briars and brambles near his Shawneeland home to the centuries-old Larrick cemetery.Last week, he called once again — to talk of the Big Blue and that Indian massacre I was striving to identify.An outdoorsman himself, George informed me that the Big Blue merged with the Tuscarora Trail of Maryland and Pennsylvania. Now 250 miles long, stretching from near Luray to Carlisle, Pa., the hikers’ paradise weathered a debilitating gypsy moth outbreak in the 1980s and has regained its former allure, largely through the efforts of the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club.Then, seguing neatly into Shawneeland folklore, George said the incident currently occupying my attention was more than likely a massacre in 1764 involving three families — the Thomases, the Joneses, and the Clowsers — who resided near the base of Great North Mountain. Warned of Indian activity in the region, the families left their homes for the refuge of White’s Fort near present-day Hay-fleld . . . only to be waylaid enroute.Ever a font of information, George pinpointed the location of the fort, which, of course, prompted a look-see expedition on my part. This past Monday morning found me turning off U.S. 50 West onto one of those classic Frederick byways — Mt. Olive Road — I hadyet to traverse. Built by Maj.Robert White, the fort, so I was told, stood on the south side of Hogue Creek near Mt. Olive Church. Still covered with snow, the environs presented a scene out of Currier Ives,On the way back to the office, I got to thinking that something was remotely familiar about all this — Shawneeland, White's Fort, the Clowsers. Upon returning, I quickly “googled” our electronic archives and, sure enough, back in the spring of '99 before George introduced me to the Larrick cemetery,I had written of the Clowser home-piace and cemetery — and of the incident that stamped the family’s mark indelibly on the pages of local history.Instigating that column, by the way, was a letter from Syd Willey of Winchester, which may serve to explain a phone call I received recently from Mr. Willey, one that I regretfully neglected to return.Space does not allow me to relate details of the massacre in full once again. But, suffice it to say, Henry Clowser, who erected that home in what is now Shawneeland, lost his father, two brothers, and a baby sister in that raid by marauding Delawares. His mother and three other sisters were taken captive, but returned home safely after six months in captivity.This episode is notable as well for the travails of Mrs. Thomas, who escaped when the swift-running waters of the South Branch of the Potomac carried her away from her captors. All told, a nice encounter with d6ja vu, but for me a key question remains unanswered: Does any of this relate to the origins of the “Frye Path?”
Newspaper Details
Winchester Star
Winchester, Virginia, US
Wed, Jan 24, 2007
Page 16
Full Page
Clipped by
Anonymous
USA 13 Aug 2020
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