Monette, John W. History of the Discovery and Settlement of the Valley of the Mississippi, by the Three Great European Powers, Spain, France and Great Britain, and the Subsequent Occupation, Settlement, and Extension of Civil Government by the United States, Until the Year 1846, in two volumes, Volume II . New York: Harper and Brothers, Publishers, 1846. [format: book], [genre: history]. Permission: Schingoethe Center for Native American Cultures, Aurora University
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Heretofore the western settlers had been compelled to send their annual "caravans" across the mountains to Fort Cumberland, Hagerstown, Frederictown, or some other point, for all their supplies, which were transported upon pack-horses several hundred miles to the West. But this usage was now about to cease, and be superseded by regular commercial houses at Brownsville, which could supply the emigrants with implements of agriculture, provisions, salt, iron, and other articles indispensable in a new country.

[A.D. 1787.] By the following year, several mercantile houses were established, and supplied with goods hauled in wagons across the mountains from Forts Cumberland and Ligonier. These tended to give additional importance to Brownsville, as a point of embarkation for the West. Emigrants could carry money with less inconvenience than the heavy articles for which they could exchange it at the end of their journey. Of course, money would seek its way to the West, instead of being carried to the East.

A good wagon road had been opened to Brownsville from the East, and a regular line of freight-wagons from Baltimore and Frederictown had been established, each wagon making the trip to Brownsville and back, with full loads, once a month. The cost of transportation over this route was generally three dollars per hundred weight, and the great numbers of emigrants to the West soon opened a profitable commerce between these remote points. The same cause soon made Brownsville one of the most active trading and manufacturing towns in the West. The demand for mechanics and manufacturers of a certain class brought great numbers of adventurers from the East in search of profitable employment. The great demand was for carpenters and boat-builders, to supply conveyance for the hundreds of emigrants who arrived every week, seeking boats of all kinds for the voyage to Kentucky and Western Virginia, as well as to the Northwestern Territory. The boat-building and the boating business soon became an important branch of western enterprise. Hundreds of arks, keels, barges, and every variety of boats, kept up a constant intercourse between the Monongahela and the settlements on the Ohio below, and also with the city of New Orleans, and the rich settlements on the Lower Mississippi. ²¹⁵