Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 4).djvu/112

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CHAPTER V

THE BATTLE OF THE MONONGAHELA

SIR PETER HALKET moved out from Fort Cumberland on June 7 with a brigade comprising the 44th Regiment, two Independent Companies of New York, two companies of Virginia Rangers, one of Maryland Rangers, a total of nine hundred and eighty-four men, six hundred woodchoppers under Sir John St. Clair having been sent forward to widen and improve Washington's road. The next day but one Colonel Thomas Dunbar marched away with another brigade comprising the 48th Regiment, a company of carpenters, three companies of Virginia Rangers, and one from South and North Carolina each, a total of nine hundred and ninety-three men. On the tenth, Braddock and his aides and the rest of the army which was approximately two thousand two hundred strong—a force powerful enough to have