Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 8).djvu/56

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52
MILITARY ROADS

County route, "Twelve Mile Prairie" situated between the present towns on the Baltimore and Ohio Southwestern Railway, Xenia and Clay City; on the Wayne County route it would have been "Long Prairie" lying between Blue Point and Mount Erie. The "two Wabashes" on the Clay County route would have been the Little Wabash River and the Big Muddy Creek. By the Wayne County route the two Wabashes would have been the Little Wabash and Fox River.

The indefatigable Lyman C. Draper, after a large correspondence with many of the best informed men in Illinois on the subject of the crossing-place of the Little Wabash, came to the firm conclusion that the two Wabashes were the Little Wabash and the Fox; the present writer after studying that correspondence and visiting the ground in question—which Mr. Draper did not find time to do—quite as firmly believes that the crossing-place was above the junction of the Little Wabash and Big Muddy Creek at the old McCauley's settlement—in the southeast corner of section 21 of Clay County, range 8E, two miles