THE GREAT WAGON ROAD

When I began this endeavor, I was struck by the divergence in the geographical data points I found.  I noticed however, that in terms of the earliest occurrences in the record, there was a definite directional pattern.  Then I discovered the Great Road, and the veil was lifted.

The Great Road, or the Great Philadelphia Wagon Road,  ran from Pennsylvania all the way to Georgia, and was one of the most heavily traveled routes for settlers in America.  This route began as a migration route for bison and deer, and was later used by Native Americans for hunting and war making.  For our purposes, we will deal with it's northern portion, which extended westerly from Philadelphia into Maryland, and then southwesterly across a portion of West Virginia into the great Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.

The migration of the family began on the docks in Philadelphia (1).  It is not known how long they lingered in Philadelphia, but in less than two years' time, they had traversed the Great Wagon Road to Lancaster, and had settled in northern Lancaster County (2), near a area known today as Penryn.  It was here that Bernhard and Salome raised their family, and it was here that they were buried, Salome in 1774 and Bernhard in 1784. 

Arguably, daughter Magdalena was the first to move west down the Great Road, when she married Johannes Lauman in 1769 in Cumberland Co. Pennsylvania.  Magdelena and Johannes moved further down the Great Road around 1800, to Middlebrook in Augusta Co., Virginia, but by that time they were following other members of the family into the Shenandoah. 

Around 1777-1778,  Bernhard Jr., Christopher, and Jacob moved out of present-day Penryn.  Jacob, the youngest, moved northeast into Cocalico Township near Ephrata (3) and became a blacksmith. He was buried in the Springville (Keller) Mennonite Cemetery in Ephrata in 1831.  Older brothers Bernhard Jr.* and Christopher followed the Great Wagon Road through York and Gettysburg into northern York County, (now Adams Co.) and together farmed about 425 acres in area known today as Arendtsville (4). 

Christopher and his family were the next to migrate farther down the Great Wagon Road after he lost his farm in present-day Arendtsville at a Sheriff's Sale (foreclosure) in 1789, traveling over the Blue Ridge Summit of South Mountain into Washington Township, Franklin County (5).  Christopher's farm there was situated between present-day Penmar and Rouzerville. He was buried in a family cemetery on his farm in 1834.

The next movement of the family down the Great Wagon Road was that of Bernhard Jr.'s three sons, first Jacob and Johannes likely soon after 1790, followed by George a little later, into Shenandoah County, Virginia (6) where they were known as Santmyers or Sentmires.  (Spelling the surname with "S" had been an early alternative to "Z" as early as Lancaster Co., and today is roughly equivalent in terms of usage)  The area where Jacob settled is near present-day Front Royal, Warren Co.  A generation later, this portion of the Great Wagon Road was called The Valley Road, or The Valley Pike.

After marrying Barbara Windle in the Shenandoah, Johannes, now known as Zentmeyer or Centmeyer, was recorded as having his firstborn in Roanoke, then called Big Lick (7) in 1792.  (Centmeyer was an alternative spelling also seen earlier in Germany)  He was recorded as buying land in Big Lick in 1797 as St.Moyer.  Although he had previously acquired a land grant in Christiansburg (8) in 1783, there is no evidence he ever lived on that land.  It is clear that he moved to his farm in Montgomery County near present-day Floyd, Virginia (9) as early as 1803.  There he was known as Sint Muyer, Centmeyer, C.Meyer, and St.Mire, although his headstone reads Zentmeyer.

The next migration down the Road, albeit a catch-up, was that of Bernhard Jr.* into the Shenandoah.  We believe that Bernhard Jr.*, after also losing his farm near present-day Arendtsville in a tax sale, moved into the Shenandoah to live with his son Jacob in the middle 1790s. He was known there as St. Moyer, and was buried in the family cemetery on a hilltop known locally as the Santmyers Cemetery sometime in the 1820s. 

At Big Lick, (7) the Great Wagon Road split.  The main portion headed south into the Carolinas and ultimately to Georgia, while the westerly branch was known as the Wilderness Road, a route pioneered by Daniel Boone through the Cumberland Gap of the Appalachians into central Kentucky.  From here the Wilderness Road headed northwest towards Louisville, with a branch heading north through Boonesborough.

George Zentmeyer, youngest child of Bernhard Jr.*, married Elizabeth Dunn in the spring of 1797 in Frederick County, Virginia as Sentmire.  They remained in Virginia until about 1805, at which time they migrated into Ohio (10), where they were known as Zentmire.  It is not known at this writing which branch of the Wilderness Road they employed on this journey.  George and Elizabeth were buried in the Olive branch Cemetery in Warren Co. Ohio in 1836 and 1854 respectively, as Zentmyer.

* There is no instance in the record for the name Bernhard Jr., we have chosen this device (Jr.) to differentiate him from his father.