The Road to Lancaster

Click the picture to see the full view (half of the picture has been cut off on this blog page, but clicking the pix reveals the whole scene).

I found this interesting picture posted on TMP today, depicting the baggage train of General Forbes as it was leaving Lancaster, PA to march on Fort Duquesne and avenge the defeat of Braddock's army during the French & Indian War. The picture comes courtesy of an interesting blog called Flintlock & Tomahawk.

It is an interesting picture on several levels; for one, it provides a nice template for laying out Colonial America terrain for wargames. I see lots of ideas in that picture - different kinds of fencing and structure, some log cabins and others board and clapboard.

I foresee some serious orders sent to Herb Gundt for some of this terrain.

On another level, it reminds me of where my ancestors came from. I have been doing a lot of genealogic research on my family of late, and I have found that we are basically descendants of Pennsylvania Dutch settlers in the York and Lancaster counties of Pennsylvania. Undoubtedly my ancestors fled religious persecution in Germany in the early 18th Century and joined a lot of other Germans from the Rhenish and Palatinate parts of the country, landing in Philadelphia.

Somewhere along the way, an ancestor named Jacob married Rebecca Edwards, whose grandfather,Thomas Edwards, was the Lt. Colonel in charge of the 2nd Lancaster Militia battalion in 1780, during the American Revolution (or AWI for those of you on the other side of the pond). Edwards had emigrated from County Antrim in Ireland and married an English girl, whose daughter married a German. That is quite an ethnic stew for you.

I've also been working on some Continental regiments, using my Fife & Drum figures, and hope to post the first unit within the next day or two, after I have terrained the bases. Next in the queue, a Continental regiment in brown coats, rather than blue coats.