Note 68 — Front matter

It is only fair to say, however, that there is much difference of opinion in regard to the location of this camp. On July 3 Orme records, “The swamp being repaired, we marched about six miles to the Salt Lick Creek.” Many of the later maps and later accounts of the period identify Jacob’s Creek with Salt Lick Creek (see Sargent’s History, 346; Veech’s Monongahela of Old, 61; Scull’s map, 1770, etc.); but there is no real authority for holding that the Salt Lick Creek mentioned by Orme is Jacob’s Creek. A small tributary of the Youghiogheny, now known as Indian Creek, was, it is true, formerly called Salt Lick Creek, whence came the name of Salt Lick township; but the well-known salt licks and Painter’s Salt Works were located along the banks of Sewickley Creek near Hunkers. Here salt wells used to be drilled to a depth of about five hundred feet; and to these wells stock was driven from miles around, and people came from far and near to boil down the salt water in order to secure salt for domestic use. In the absence, therefore, of any authoritative evidence that the Salt Lick Creek mentioned by Orme is Jacob’s Creek, it seems to the writer that the most probable location of Salt Lick Camp is on the Edward Stoner farm, about two miles east from the fording of Sewickley Creek. Among other indications that point to this farm as a favorable place for encampment one notes the fact that a short distance west of the Stoner house, under a large oak tree, there was formerly an excellent spring (now filled up), and that there is also a run near by. Mr. Stoner showed me a one-pound cannon ball which he found in a stump less than a quarter of a mile from the road, and said that other bullets had been picked up on the farm.